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Update: Facebook responds to malware attacks.

Facebook malware attacks to date have largely consisted of getting user credentials via phishing sites and then spreading spam and additional phishing attempts. But a new worm is disseminating through Facebook that aims to install trojan software on a user’s machine.

The worm spreads when a compromised user’s account is used to send message to others with a title such as “LOL. You’ve been catched on hidden cam, yo:” and a link to a random URL. The linked website is a YouTube-like page that shows a video player along with what looks like a standard browser message to update your Flash installation. Clicking on the button begins a malware installation of a file called “codecsetup.exe.” We didn’t go so far as to install the software, but our guess is that it zombies your computer, installs a keylogger, and other fun stuff.

A nasty feature of the worm is that it takes the profile picture of the sending infected user and adds it to the linked website. This makes it all look much more legitimate for the potential victim. Facebook users are notoriously naive when it comes to security awareness, and a certain percentage of users will always end up falling for this kind of social hack. There’s little Facebook can do other than attempt to filter out the landing website in messages.

Screen shots below.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: Michael Arrington

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Israeli startup TuneWiki has come a long way.

Soon after the iPhone’s launch, the company released an application that allowed users to view highly-accurate lyrics synced karaoke style to any song stored in their music library. But because there was no App Store at the time, TuneWiki was limited to users with jailbroken (hacked) iPhones. Despite this, the application has racked up over 1.2 million downloads since its launch - a number competitive with those seen by the most popular Apple sanctioned apps. The company raised a funding round from Benchmark Capital’s Israel fund.

And now, after nearly a year of developing a Karaokee-like music program for hacked iPhones, the company has developed an application that stands a good chance at becoming the standard media player on Google’s forthcoming Android platform.

At first glance, the Android version of TuneWiki has more than a little in common with the iPhone’s default media player (except with a black color scheme). Songs are sorted into spartan but easy to navigate lists, and playing a song displays its album art alongside standard playback controls. The player integrates TuneWiki’s extensive database of lyrics, which are played karaoke-style alongside your songs (lyrics are pulled from a user-modified database). There’s also support for YouTube videos - if you search for a song you don’t have, the player will automatically take you to the YouTube version, which also support synced lyrics.

Perhaps most exciting is TuneWiki’s integration with location services. Because the player can optionally tell TuneWiki’s servers what song you’re listening to, it can offer an interactive map that displays musical tastes across the world. This could be a huge hit on college campuses, where breakthrough artists tend to be discovered first. It’s also fun to find people in Dubai who listen to Kelly Clarkson (see the video below).

One of the most key features to the iPhone’s success is its ability to sync seamlessly with a user’s media library through iTunes. TuneWiki recognizes this, and is doing everything it can to make syncing as painless as possible. The company will be offering plugins for iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Songbird, and will also feature support for wireless syncing across Bluetooth or Wi-fi.

Some of these features are already offered on the jailbroken iPhone app, but the Android version is clearly TuneWiki’s focus, and for good reason. The company is one of fifty finalists in Google’s Android Developer Challenge, and has received extensive support from Google and a number of other companies during development.

Android is an open platform, which means users (or at least device manufacturers) will be able to install whatever media player they want onto the phones. Despite this freedom, there will probably be one or two media players that emerge as the platform standards. TuneWiki has positioned itself to become one of these, with features that go above and beyond those found on the iPhone, and a focus on keeping things as simple as possible.

Here’s a demo video we took on the app running on the Android emulator:

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: Jason Kincaid

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Playbill - The Federal Communication Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) is currently field testing the performance of prototype White Space Devices, like laptops, which use the same free broadcast television spectrum as theatrical wireless microphones.

Source: Playbill

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AP - Computer security professionals tend to be a highly paranoid bunch, seeing potential threats everywhere. It turns out that some aren’t cautious enough, though.

Source: AP

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Facebook will announce later today that it is adding a “Features” tab to the “Insights” area of the application management page.

The new tab will give developers a greater range of statistics on application usage, including the number of canvas page views, clicks on profile boxes, confirmations of feed forms, and additions and removals of bookmarks (which have replaced application installations). Developers will be able to graph changes to these statistics over time and compare how daily counts fluctuate within particular time periods.

The Palo Alto-based social network claims to be adding this new tab in response to developers’ requests for more insight into how users are actually using their applications.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: Mark Hendrickson

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According to the Brazilian news magazine Exame, Google has made Brazil the center of its Latin American operations, placing former country director Alexandre Hohagen at the helm.

Google is understood to have chosen Brazil for its superior regional performance. While the Mountain View, California-based search giant doesn’t comment on regional numbers, the article claims that Brazil is Google’s fastest growing market (hard to verify, but it’s certainly one of the fastest growing), generating an estimated $500 million per year in revenues. This is all the more impressive considering the Brazilian office was opened just three years ago and has only 200 employees.

The decision to run Latin American operations from Brazil comes soon after another decision to move all development and management of Orkut to that country, with most of the engineering in the city of Belo Horizonte. Orkut is Google’s social network, which enjoys most of its popularity in Brazil and India.

Brazil is also said to have the second largest number of Gmail accounts, perhaps because of the popularity of Orkut. Google’s biggest white labeled Gmail customer may also be in Brazil: iG, a portal with over 9 million accounts.

Google is still in the process of replacing Hohagen with a new country director for Brazil.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: Mark Hendrickson

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The Internet telephone company said that a pullback in TV advertising led to lower recruitment of new customers in the second quarter, gaining just 2,000 lines in the period.

Source: By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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AP - It’s a puzzle worthy of The Riddler: Why is there no video game based on “The Dark Knight”?

Source: AP

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