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Malware Warnings, Drupal Bugs and Security

John T. Haller's picture
Submitted by John T. Haller on February 3, 2012 - 11:44pm

Earlier today, a 'possible malware' warning appeared about PortableApps.com within Norton 360, Mozilla Firefox, within Google search results and similar products. This was due to an attempted hack on PortableApps.com via a Drupal exploit Plesk exploit. No PortableApps.com portable apps, databases, logins, user data, project data or security credentials were compromised. A full security audit was undertaken in the hours after the attempt to ensure nothing else was affected (it wasn't) and additional security measures were implemented to ensure everything keeps on working. The full details follow...

Google Chrome: My new favorite browser.

Pyromaniac's picture
Submitted by Pyromaniac on January 17, 2012 - 7:02pm

When I lost my 8 GB flash drive a couple of weeks ago, my digital life was over. With no working computer at home, my browser, games, homework, college essays, music, videos, and some projects I was working on were gone--nor could I do anything about it either. I had deleted my old backup data on my 2 GB so I could keep a copy of the original StarCraft on it after my laptop broke a while back. I was on the last mission of the Zerg in the expansion, when I realized my laptop wouldn't make it--I still got to finish that up some time.

Creating a Portable App, Part 2 — Community

Submitted by Aluísio A. S. G. on December 10, 2011 - 12:15am

There are many communities out there dedicated to software portablization. By joining one of them, you can:

  • get assistance on portablizing applications;
  • help other developers and users of portable applications;
  • offer your application for testing before publishing it in the wild.

Each community usually has its own standard and guidelines for portable applications, as well as specific ways to achieve portability. This guide will focus on PortableApps.com, the site I am member of. You are free to choose any other, but you will need to adapt or ignore many parts of the rest of the guide.

Creating a Portable App, Part 1 — Definition

Submitted by Aluísio A. S. G. on November 22, 2011 - 8:59pm

Introduction

Have you ever wanted to take your favorite applications, as well as their settings, and be able to use them on any computer? Have you ever wanted to be able to reinstall Windows without having to reinstall and reconfigure all your programs? Have you ever wanted to demonstrate a new app to a friend without installing it first?

If you have answered "yes" to any of the previous questions, then you are looking for portable applications. They do not depend on the computer they are running on, and can be easily shared with anyone. They are your computer on any computer.

Do you have an application you want to make portable? We'll see how to do it. But first, there are a few things we have to learn, like the full definition of portable application.

VirusTotal competion?

Pyromaniac's picture
Submitted by Pyromaniac on November 12, 2011 - 1:59pm

I stumbled across this article about IObit Cloud, an alternative to other sites like VirusTotal, talking about how it works and the guys perspective on it.

I tried it out, uploading FirefoxPortable.exe and Halo SightJacker (SightJacker.exe), which is not a virus, but Sophos has been freaking out over it lately for very suspicious behavior (it lets you spy on other players in Halo to see if they use bots).

Here are the results:

"Creating a Portable App"

Submitted by Aluísio A. S. G. on November 3, 2011 - 10:26pm

I am currently working on a series of posts about the development cycle of a portable app. This guide will cover all major aspects of portable apps: since the definition of "portable app" (and a bit of history), licensing issues, trace detection and analysis, until the official release.
I hope to be able to post within a 1 week/month interval. Meanwhile, drafts can be found at my website.

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