How hackers snoop on private web browsing

Experts have identified how their web browser's 'private mode' setting is also vulnerable to hackers.

Most web browsers offer a private mode, intended to leave no trace of surfing history on the computer.

But Collin Jackson at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and colleagues, have found ways to detect which sites were visited with the mode enabled.

Even if private browsing is enabled, details relating to the key remain stored on the computer's hard drive, allowing a hacker to establish that a particular site had been visited.

A hacker could "guess what sites you've been to based on traces left behind," New Scientist quoted Jackson as saying.

These attacks on privacy "do not require a great deal of technical sophistication and could easily be built into forensics tools," he added.

However, Rik Ferguson -- a UK-based security researcher at Trend Micro of Tokyo, Japan -- says that any attacker with the knowledge to exploit the weaknesses would probably look to other attacks first, which may yield more detailed information.

"If someone is capable of tracking your browsing habits in this way, then they are probably also tech-savvy enough to know about commercial spyware which could much more effectively track your computer use," says Ferguson.

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Mozilla Releases Firefox 4.0 Beta

Mozilla has released the first beta of its Firefox 4.0 web browser based on the Gecko 2.0 Web platform layout engine. Obviously, all the add-ons you've been using with the Firefox 3.7 version won't work on with the new Firefox 4.0 beta. This new 4.0 beta version of the web browser mainly revamps the looks and brings a sizeable number of features that include WebM video format and HTML5 support.

The first noticeable feature of this new Firefox 4.0 beta is that all tabs would be visible on the top. However, this is visible for Windows based OS users only. We believe that the visual delight would slowly appear for the Linux and Mac OS X versions of the web browser when the final build of Firefox 4.0 releases. The new significant features included in the Firefox 4.0 beta are:

* Add-ons Manager: More space to efficiently manage your favorite add-ons, plugins and themes.
* HD Video: The future WebM format is supported and promises HD-quality hardware accelerated HTML5 video on the web.
* HTML5 Support: Better HTML parsing, support for HTML5 form controls and also runs the latest web apps based on HTML5 such as Google's Gmail and Yahoo's Mail interface for the mobile phones.
* Full WebGL support for in-browser 3D rendering.

Apart from these features, the new Firefox 4.0 beta also promises performance improvement and the necessary security improvements to protect browser history.

Download the Firefox 4.0 beta for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X from here.

MJ's medical history a blur, says biographer

Michael Jackson had a long and intricate history of health problems, say people who knew him but it has always been difficult to separate the rumours from his medical history.

‘‘It’s always been a subject of confusion,’’ said J Randy Taraborrelli, a Jackson biographer who knew him for 40 years. ‘‘His doctors have generally not betrayed him, so there is no way to be conclusive about this kind of information.’’
A celebrity website citing an interview with an unidentified ‘‘close member’’ of the Jackson family, reported the entertainer was injected with Demerol about half an hour before he went into cardiac arrest. A senior law enforcement official told a news channel that Jackson was ‘‘heavily addicted’’ to the painkiller Oxycontin and was injected daily with that medication, along with Demerol.

The young Taraborrelli who first met Jackson when the singer was 10 said he was private about most of his health matters and doctors would sometimes change their opinions of things that were ailing him. ‘‘Just when you think you have information, someone comes and recants the diagnosis,’’ said Taraborrelli, author of ‘Michael Jackson: The Magic and The Madness’, written in 1991 and updated in 2005. ‘‘It just got to a point where I stopped trying to verify.’’
Stacy Brown, co-author of the 2005 book, ‘Michael Jackson: the Man Behind the Mask’, said the singer’s family had been very concerned recently about his use of painkillers, especially Demerol that had been one of the concerns for a long time. He said Jackson was receiving one injection per day, always administered by a doctor.

In 1993, in a recorded statement, he said that charges of child molestation against him were contributing to his continued drug use.

‘‘I became increasingly more dependent to (sic) the painkillers to get me through the days of the tour,’’ he said. ‘‘My friends and doctors advised me to seek professional guidance immediately in order to eliminate what has become an addiction.’’