According to TechARP.com, Microsoft will publicly announce prices for Windows 7 in mid-June. Although Microsoft has detailed the Windows 7 versions it will ship later this year, it has not set prices or a launch date for Vista's successor.
A report last week cited a Dell product director as saying that the average price of Windows 7 would be higher than Vista, but did not go into specifics.
"In tough economic times, I think it's naive to believe that you can increase your prices on average and then still see a stronger swell than if you held prices flat or even lowered them," Darrel Ward, director of product management for Dell's business client product group, told CNET.
"I can tell you that the licensing tiers at retail are more expensive than they were for Vista."
According to TechARP, Microsoft set Windows 7 pricing for computer makers such as Dell several weeks ago. By now, Microsoft has also informed major retailers of the Windows 7 prices.
One analyst didn't have any idea what Microsoft will charge for Windows 7, but was sure of one thing: continuing economic problems put a very big monkey wrench in Microsoft's plans.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Twitter used Pishing Scam
Twitter users who thought friends were directing them to a 'funny blog' on Thursday ended up experiencing something completely different: a phishing scam. Twitter was hit by two different rounds of phishing as criminals tried to take control of user accounts and then use them as a springboard to attack others.
Here's how Thursday's attack worked: In the first Twitter phishing round, hackers created fake Twitter accounts and then started following legitimate Twitter users. Twitter notifies users when they have new followers, sending the user a link to the follower's Twitter profile page.
In this case, the profile page contained a link to a phishing site. So the victim, while investigating his new follower, would end up on the fake site Tvviter(.)com (this page is not safe to visit) where he would be asked to enter his Twitter username and password.
Once the phishers obtained their victim's login credentials, they used them to launch the second round of attacks. In this round, they posted Twitter messages such as "hey check thiss out" or "Hey. there is this funny blog going around". These messages include a link to another phishing site.
Scammers are phishing social networks because they have a better chance of tricking their victims, said Rik Ferguson, a security researcher with Trend Micro who blogged about Thursday's phishing campaign. They "tend to be more successful, because they take advantage of the inherent trust that these systems are based on", he said.
Once criminals have access to these accounts they can make money by sending out spam messages via Twitter or Facebook, or they can re-use the username and password combinations to try to log into other services such as web-based email, Ferguson said.
On Thursday, security vendor AppRiver reported a new round of Facebook phishing attacks. These messages have the subject line 'Hello' and read 'Check areps(.)at'. This scam, which tries to steal Facebook usernames and login credentials, also promotes the bests(.)at domain. (These domains are also unsafe to visit.)
Another reason why Twitter spam is so effective is because Twitter users rarely know what websites they're going to visit. Because messages can't be more than 140 characters long, senders often use services like TinyURL or UR.LC to shorten their links, hiding the ultimate destination from web surfers until they arrive at the site.
Here's how Thursday's attack worked: In the first Twitter phishing round, hackers created fake Twitter accounts and then started following legitimate Twitter users. Twitter notifies users when they have new followers, sending the user a link to the follower's Twitter profile page.
In this case, the profile page contained a link to a phishing site. So the victim, while investigating his new follower, would end up on the fake site Tvviter(.)com (this page is not safe to visit) where he would be asked to enter his Twitter username and password.
Once the phishers obtained their victim's login credentials, they used them to launch the second round of attacks. In this round, they posted Twitter messages such as "hey check thiss out" or "Hey. there is this funny blog going around". These messages include a link to another phishing site.
Scammers are phishing social networks because they have a better chance of tricking their victims, said Rik Ferguson, a security researcher with Trend Micro who blogged about Thursday's phishing campaign. They "tend to be more successful, because they take advantage of the inherent trust that these systems are based on", he said.
Once criminals have access to these accounts they can make money by sending out spam messages via Twitter or Facebook, or they can re-use the username and password combinations to try to log into other services such as web-based email, Ferguson said.
On Thursday, security vendor AppRiver reported a new round of Facebook phishing attacks. These messages have the subject line 'Hello' and read 'Check areps(.)at'. This scam, which tries to steal Facebook usernames and login credentials, also promotes the bests(.)at domain. (These domains are also unsafe to visit.)
Another reason why Twitter spam is so effective is because Twitter users rarely know what websites they're going to visit. Because messages can't be more than 140 characters long, senders often use services like TinyURL or UR.LC to shorten their links, hiding the ultimate destination from web surfers until they arrive at the site.
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