Latest Software News

Google has released its free Ratproxy security tool to those wanting to test the security of their Web-based apps, including for cross-site scripting attacks. Google security ace Michal Zalewski wrote on the company’s security blog that Google’s information security engineering team developed the open-source Ratproxy to “transparently analyze legitimate, browser-driven interactions with a tested Web property and automatically pinpoint, annotate, and prioritize potential flaws or areas of concern.” Ratproxy is licensed under Apache 2.0, though “the proxy is designed solely to highlight interesting patterns in Web applications.” Meaning, you’re suggested to have your own people interpret the results. See code.google.com/p/ratproxy /wiki/RatproxyDoc for more.

With its early June release of Adobe Reader 9, Adobe announced the app now natively supports Flash, meaning PDFs can now hold Flash video and other multimedia goodness. Additionally, Reader 9 boasts faster launch times; 256-bit AES encryption; new digital signature ability; and PDF Portfolios, which Adobe says build upon the Packages introduced in Reader 8 to help organize multiple PDFs and different media types. With Reader 9 Adobe also detailed Acrobat.com, an online beta experiment where you can create up to five PDFs; author, store, and share documents; upload files; host Web conferences; and use AIR to tap into Acrobat.com from the Desktop.

Mark it down. Mozilla is now a proud member of the Guinness World Records family. Guinness bestowed the distinction upon Mozilla after more than 8 million people reportedly downloaded Firefox 3.0 during a 24-hour stretch in July—an event not hurt in the least by Mozilla’s steady stream of publicity leading up to the new browser’s download day. Self-promotion aside, Mozilla reportedly now owns a 19% share of the world browser market and could have a 20% or more stake as you read this. Microsoft, meanwhile, detailed new security features of the upcoming IE8 in early July, including a SmartScreen Filter antimalware tool. Look for IE8 Beta 2 in August.

USBDeview is a portable, freeware tool designed to show you the currently connected USB devices with a good amount of detail. It can also show you a history of devices that are not currently connected but have been at some point in the past. You can also output this information to a HTML/TXT file.
You can change how devices connected behave such as disabling/enabling them or making a file run when a particular device is plugged in (for example, a bat script that dumps the contents of a USB thumb drive when it is plugged in).