The well-known Kaspersky Labs reported that it has been detected a malicious program that infects the WMA audio files with the purpose to install a Trojan that will offer to a cybercriminal the control over the user’s computer.

The worm, which was named Worm.Win32.GetCodec.a, will convert the MP3 files to the WMA (Windows Media Audio) audio format without changing the .mp3 file extension. Then it will add a marker with a link to an infected web page to the converted files. This marker will be automatically activated during the audio file playback, opening an infected page in Internet Explorer. The user will be asked to download and install a file which, according to the website, should be nothing but a harmless codec. If the user agrees to download and install that file, the Trojan known as Trojan-Proxy.Win32.Agent.arp will be downloaded to the computer, offering to the cybercriminals the control of the victim computer.

The difference between the earlier Trojans and this recently detected worm is that this last one actually infects the audio files, while the earlier Trojans were only using the WMA format to mask their presence on the system (i.e., the infected objects were not music files). According to the Kaspersky Lab virus analysts, this is the first such case.

What’s really worrying is that a successful attack is quite likely, as most of the users tend to trust their audio files and will not associate them with any potential infections.

Happily, immediately after the Worm.Win32.GetCodec.a was detected, its signatures were added to the Kaspersky Lab’s antivirus databases.

Source: Kaspersky Lab News

Downloadtube is probably for most of you “just another software directory”, one of the many you may find on the Internet. Well, things change. Soon you’ll have to admit Downloadtube is special. In the good sense of the word!

The first steps have already been made. Starting today, all the new softwares being reviewed by the Downloadtube’s team are thouroughly tested with two of the best antivirus engines, and the scan reports are available for anyone to see or copy to their website.  See here an example.

It’s been quite difficult to choose the antivirus engines from the many available on the market, but we finally managed to pick two of them, the ones that are most likely the best - Kaspersky and avast!. Why two antivirus programs? Choosing only one wouldn’t have been enough, choosing three would have been probably more than enough, the best two of them are just enough to provide a reliable report.

But that’s not the greatest part, yet. Downloadtube comes with something really special. Flash-based video presentations for the reviewed and tested softwares, showing in a clear way how that program installs and works, how its interface looks like, how fastly it loads and runs, etc. Why? Screenshots just aren’t enough to provide the user with accurate and reliable information about the program he/she intends to try. The Flash-presentations are simply the best option. They load fast enough, they show the user all what’s needed to be seen, they can be easily used by the software producers to promote their applications, etc.

You may see an example here - for the powerful yet freeware batch image processing (resizing images) and slideshow maker Imgares.

You might thing… “yeah, whatever, everybody brag about what they do”, everybody praise themselves”, etc. We’re not. We’re only presenting facts so far. But we’ll brag soon too, don’t worry

PS: Many thanks to those users and software producers who already noticed our new changes and appreciate what we are trying to do.

Another freeware tool that rocks is the little FreeSnap. This simple yet smart little software allows you to move or resize the windows on your desktop to specific positions and sizes only by pressing some keys.

Imagine how tedious it might be to have to move a window exactly to the left side of the desktop so that it touches the left edge of the screen. Having to drag it there using the mouse might be somehow uncomfortable, tedious, especially if you have to do this a lot of times while you work on your computer. Also, if you need to resize a window to a specific size, lets says 640 x 480, you will notice it might be a little  difficult, unless you use this tool.

FreeSnap is extremely simple. There’s actually no interface, not even a tray icon. What could be more unobtrusive than this? You just install it and start it from the Start menu. Except for a simple banner displayed for about one second after you’ve started FreeSnap, there’s nothing else to remind you this tool is running. You may also disable the banner if for any reason you don’t want it. Just add a “-nobanner” command line option to the shortcut to cancel it’s display.

Once FreeSnap is installed and launched, you will be able to resize and move the windows as easy as never before. You may resize the windows in two ways: either to a specific size, either to a specific position so that it will touch one the four edges of the screen.

Pressing the “Windows” key (the one between the Ctrl and Alt keys) and the “Plus” and “Minus” keys on the number-pad will resize the active window to the following specific sizes: 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 1024.

Pressing the “Windows” key and the “5″ key on the number-pad will center the active window on the screen without resizing it while pressing the number-pad “Enter” key maximizes the window when it is in normal size and vice-versa. The num-pad “0″ key (”ins” key) will minimize the window (this is a good way to quickly hide a window in the taskbar too).

You may also quickly resize the active window to a specific position so that it will touch one the four edges of the screen. Just press the “Windows” key and the four “direction” keys - up, down, right, left.

Moving the window to the corners of the screen without resizing it might be easily done by pressing the “Windows” and the Home, End, PgUP, and PgDn keys.

As you may see, the keys are chosen in a logical way, so you will find them very easy to remember.

As the latest FreeSnap version comes with support for multiple monitors, when multiple monitors are detected, the “5″ key will be remapped to move the window from one monitor to the next.

The undo function is also supported (just repeat the last command) .

FreeSnap also has an alternate set of keys that are more suitable for laptop users. You may see which are these keys on the producer’s website.

Except for the “-nobanner” command line there are two more command line options you might use: the “-noalternatekeys” command suppresses the set of keys added for laptop users and the “-stop” option stops FreeSnap.

Good parts: a lot. It’s a simple tool, light, works great and it may be incredibly useful. The keys are well chosen and therefore easy to remember and use.

Not-so-good parts: you can not change the default keys. Hoping the next version adds the feature to let the user customize the window moving and sizing keys, as some users may want for any reason to use other keys than, for example, the “Windows” key.

Streamripper is an Open Source (GPL) application that allows you to record streaming mp3 to your hard drive. It comes as a stand-alone application too, but it’s better known for its Winamp plug-in version.

There are quite many applications intended to allow the user to capture mp3 streams / internet radio stations and save them as separated songs, but few of them are free and even fewer are truly reliable and do a good job. Well, there’s a saying - “best things in life are free”, and Streamripper for Winamp manages to proove this saying is quite true.

Probably the nicest feature of this tool is not that it records quite flawlessly the shoutcast-compatible streams, but it is able to find the “meta data”, the track separation data, and uses this data as a marker for where the track should be separated. And it does a really good job separating the tracks as they should be. Furthermore, it will automatically name/tag the ripped tracks based on the original track tag received from the stream. This file naming feature is also user configurable.

Ripping the streams is easy - just choose a stream from the Winamp Media Library’s Internet Radio station or select one from www.shoutcast.com and wait to see the “press start to rip…” message on Streamripper’s interface. Then press “Start” and watch as what you’re listening to is instantly recorded to an audio file on your hard drive.

Checking the “Options” window first might be a good idea. In the “Connections” tab of this window you may enable the “Create relay stream” setting. This is particularly useful if you don’t have a fat pipe connection (cable modem/dsl, T1, etc.). Otherwise Streamripper creates a new connection to the stream you’re listening to, increasing your bandwidth usage. This won’t be a noticeable matter if you have a good connection, but otherwise it may count quite a lot. This option will make Streamripper rip the stream and send it on to Winamp. You might also want to use this option if you’re listening to streams that won’t accept a high number of listeners or if you don’t want to waste their server capacity. Once this option enabled Winamp will actually be playing through the Streamripper.

Here in the “Connections” tab of the “Options” window you will also be able to set a size limit for the ripped streams.

In the “File” tab you will find some more important options, such as selecting the output directory for the ripped streams or choosing between ripping to a single file or to separated files. Overwriting and ID3 tag adding options are also available here. You may also even configure Streamripper to automatically add the ripped tracks to the current Winamp playlist.

Browse the other tabs of the “Options” window to check other settings such as the output filename pattern, the Streamripper skins, the silence length for track splitting, etc.

I’ve also noticed that there’s no need to keep listening to the stream this tool is ripping from. I checked what other radio stations were playing or start playing a track from my computer, and Streamripper kept on ripping the stream it was set to rip. I was testing Streamripper 1.63.1 on Winamp 5 with no relay stream created when noticing this.

As some streams also broadcast announcements, commercials, advertisments or other non-music metadata,  you should know that by ripping using this tool you may handle this type of issues in two ways - either you’re recording the songs to separated files and then you may easily remove the unwanted metadata from the ripped files afterwards, or edit the file parse_rules.txt that came with the Streamripper distribution and add rules that describe the metadata you want to be ignored. For this second method you may check the producer’s website for an example and further details.

Well, Streamripper is not a sound recorder, so don’t expect it to rip online conversations or the music played directly in some websites (Flash-based or other similar) but as a stream ripper for mp3 radio stations, this Winamp plug-in is simply great.

Good parts: works really great, it’s light, simple and efficient. Its track separating and track auto naming / tagging features are truly great.

Not-so-good parts: lacking comprehensive, rich documentation and help, which may make this great tool  a bit hard to understand and use for the not-so-experienced users in the beginning. Anyway, it’s just a Winamp plugin after all, so, in the end, everyone should be able to use it properly.

NOTE:

You can use Streamripper to copy the streams of the following kinds:

-.mp3 Shoutcast streams - the kind of streams found on shoutcast.com.
-.mp3 Icecast streams - a GNU GPL/Open Source version of Shoutcast. Both Icecast 1.x and Icecast 2.x are supported. However, UDP metadata is not supported for Icecast 1.x.
-.nsv (Nullsoft Streaming Video) streams - which Winamp tv uses.
-.aac Shoutcast/Icecast streams - the kind of streams found on tuner2.com. NOTE: Streamripper can’t rip RealAudio AAC streams, only shoutcast/icecast AAC.
-.ogg streams - these streams are found at dir.xiph.org.

Streamripper can’t help with ripping stuff like RealPlayer, Windows MediaPlayer, MusicMatch or anything else similar.

The Guiness Book officials admitted - Mozilla has just set the new Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software ever in 24 hours: 8.002.530 individual downloads for the Firefox 3 web browser.

The “Download Day” idea of the Mozilla’s global marketing team seems to have worked just as expected. Guinness records manager Gareth Deaves has agreed that “Mobilizing over 8 million internet users within 24 hours is an extremely impressive accomplishment”.

The user community that supports Firefox has just proved, maybe as never before, its power and commitment. “The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was instrumental in achieving this record” agreed Mozilla marketing vice president Paul Kim.