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ie8 fix

steganography

Alleged Russian agents used high-tech tricks

A clandestine network of Russian spies in the United States used private Wi-Fi networks, flash memory sticks, and text messages concealed in graphical images to exchange information, federal prosecutors said Monday.

The Justice Department has filed criminal charges against 11 people who allegedly were covert agents of the Russian government assigned to establish close ties with American policymakers, including White House officials and an unnamed political fundraiser.

The court papers made public on Monday (PDF and PDF) include details of 21st century spycraft more high-tech than anything Jason Bourne knew about: defendant Anna Chapman allegedly brought her laptop to a … Read more

Researchers warn of malware hidden in .zip files

Security researchers have discovered flaws in common file formats, including .zip, which can be used to sneak malware onto computers by evading antivirus detection.

Eight vulnerabilities were found in .zip, supported by Microsoft Office, along with seven others in the .7zip, .rar, .cab and .gzip file formats, said Mario Vuksan, president of ReversingLabs Corp.

The vulnerabilities could be used by attackers to hide malware that could then be slipped past antivirus software via an e-mail attachment and used to compromise a computer, he said.

"The file goes straight through Gmail or Hotmail because it's a trusted format," … Read more

Confusing user interface

Bon Kyu Bon uses steganography to encrypt files. That is, you can hide important files behind image files or text. However, thanks to its extremely confusing and unintuitive user interface, we were never able to get this freeware to work properly.

The program's user interface employs three steps, which, at first glance, seemed easy enough. But a closer look revealed confusing instructions for each step. It was hard to tell which files we were supposed to use for each step. But beyond that, once we went through all three steps, there wasn't anywhere to go from there. There … Read more

Trial prevents full use

Look but don't touch seems to be the theme with this file encryption program. Thanks to MAXA Security Tools Lite's highly restrictive trial limitations, we were unable to use any of its features.

After installation, we encountered an error message each time we tried to access MAXA Security Tools Lite. We were able to bypass the message and move on to the main interface, but it was annoying nonetheless. The user interface uses tabs for each of the program's features, which include file encryption, steganography, file manipulation, and more advanced settings. But no matter where we turned, … Read more