Java malware served to users of Yahoo.com via adverts

[Feathers McGraw]

http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/th...searchers-say/

Not good timing for Yahoo, who are trying to make a turnaround.

Anddd...one more reason to use an adblocking hosts file! Although I'm pretty sure we're talking Windows malware in this case, it still makes a good point about methods of infection.

I actually didn't realise that Java is ever used in web browsers, I thought out was always Javascript...

[oshunluvr]

Yahoo is nothing but a spam farm. Stay away.

[SteveRiley]

Although I'm pretty sure we're talking Windows malware in this case

It's a Java exploit. But the payload is indeed a collection on Windows malware. So while the Java runtime on Linux might be vulnerable, this particular exploit won't do much, because the payload won't run on Linux machines.

I actually didn't realise that Java is ever used in web browsers, I thought out was always Javascript...

Java and JavaScript have nothing in common except the letters J A V A. While you don't see much Java on the public web these days, it's still prevalent in corporate IT shops.

[Simon]

Yahoo is nothing but a spam farm. Stay away.

LOL, I still have my old Yahoo Email but hardly check in anymore.

Recently Feathers, I click on one of those stupid things that gives Windows users a hard time and it just failed. I knew right away, that if I was running Windows, I would have been infested. But the people at Oracle should be hit harder than Yahoo or any other search engine for that matter. Yahoo might get the bad press but they didn't develop the plugins, they are the clients.

[Feathers McGraw]

A close shave, then! That turned a potentially very annoying event into one that is just interesting.

Yahoo might get the bad press but they didn't develop the plugins, they are the clients.

Although they should really have been checking the content of the adverts they were serving on the website. That's not really Oracle's fault!

[Simon]

This is true for all pages, I know some pages I visit have such "bad taste" in advertisers I am glad to have my Adblock and Ghostry running. I am often surprised that more trackers and ads get counted on the more ordinary and mundane pages. While the malware is not their fault, it is Oracle's job to make sure the software doesn't have holes to exploit.

[Feathers McGraw]

I am often surprised that more trackers and ads get counted on the more ordinary and mundane pages.

True, try the guardian website, it's chocka block with trackers. That's what you get when it's not paywalled, I guess - they have to make money somehow.

[GreyGeek]

... Java and JavaScript have nothing in common except the letters J A V A. While you don't see much Java on the public web these days, it's still prevalent in corporate IT shops.

Especially at corporate or government shops that use the Oracle data base. Java was once touted as a "write once and use anywhere" language because of its runtime engine. Personally, I hated Java because it reminded me of COBOL -- too verbose and too structured.

[Simon]

I once read somewhere that Assembler and COBOL tied for being the most difficult languages to learn to program. However there is an IT professor at the college who once told me that an old defunct IBM language called RPG/400 was the worse. As he explained it, you have forms you fill out similar to old computer punch cards. Each form then needed to be typed into the computer making sure you got everything in the proper column. When you compile the program he said you would end up with errors that were in code and needed to be researched.

Example Here

I am not a programmer, I dabble in Bash scripting and before that I tried to learn some C++ but quickly learned it was beyond my scope of understanding. I think I need a point and click programming language.

[GreyGeek]

I used to teach COBOL and RPG4 in college. RPG stands for Report Program Generator. "4" is the version number. RPG is restricted by COLBOL's structure. Programming in either is like trying to put your clothes on while wearing a straight jacket. With modern tools like Qt4, one can write a screen that connects to a database and has all the usual function on one page: add, edit or delete a record, and generate reports on data in a database. Using RPG one writes a screen to add, another to edit, another to delete and yet others to create reports, one for screen display and another for the printer. Switching between screens is a pain. When the Dept of Revenue hired me they were using COLBOL and RPG4 extensively. My main job was to use modern top down GUI dev tools against modern databases to replace the existing COLBOL and RPG4 stuff. Watching the joy light up the faces of employees who had been using RPG4 screens for years and were stunned at the ease and speed with which they could do their job using the new software was a joy to me.

Assembler is the first level of structured programming above machine code. It allows the use of human language and rudimentary structure to replace hex codes. To use it one has to have an intimate knowledge of the CPU stack, the GPU, address and bus memory space, plus all the entry points for functions in microcode and firmware. The advantage is blazing speed. For a given program an assembler version could take 1,000 to 10,000 times as long, or more, to code when compared to Qt4. But, the compiled assembler code could run 1,000 or 10,000 times faster. Most programmers write small subroutines in assembler at points in the code where speed is critical, like interrupts, time splitting, etc....

Between Assembler and higher level languages like COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC or Qt4 is one language which I love. It is an extensible, threaded, class actor language which uses an RPN stack (Reverse Polish Notation). It is called FORTH. You begin a programming project by starting with a rudimentary installation of FORTH. Using its predefined "words" you build other words. Using those words you build yet more words, and a bottom up methodology, just the opposite of the classic Top Down method used by the framework Qt4, based on C++, which starts with a naked GUI window to which the programmer adds "controls" that interact with the C++ code. Eventually, in FORTH, one ends up with a single word which when executed presents the interface (or GUI) from which the entire application is run. There is an excellent book available in PDF on the Internet called "Starting FORTH", by Lee Brodie. This later release is not so funny but equally informative. The original featured Monks and was very funny. An on line version of it is here. A more recent and professional version is called "Thinking Forth".
There is a FORTH app in the repository called "gforth".
http://www.forth.org/index.html

Unfortunately, the inventor of FORTH, Charles Moore, an astronomer who wrote it to control telescopes, wasn't good a marketing or business and like the inventor of another powerful language, SAVVY, which was made using FORTH, allowed lesser languages to rise to the top. FORTH and SAVVY are the most powerful (easy to use) languages I've ever used, even when compared to modern languages and frameworks.

[oshunluvr]

Talk about a flashback. I learned FORTRAN IV with WATFIV in high school and Assembler, COBOL, and RPG4 in college. Ahhhh...good times, good times.

[SteveRiley]

My history...

• High school: BASIC, Pascal.
• College: COBOL, x86 assembler, Pascal.
• First job after college: FORTRAN (on the airplane from Columbus to Philadelphia, to fix a sick VAX controlling a methylene anhydride production line).

Pascal is (was?) a fabulous language. Properly compiled, it could be as fast as C. And you never had to worry about shooting yourself in the foot.

[oshunluvr]

Funny link - I had forgotten about that analogy. I had also learned a little Pascal on my own after college and basic on my first Apple II.

EDIT: but that was like 1000 years ago.

[GreyGeek]

...Pascal is (was?) a fabulous language. Properly compiled, it could be as fast as C. And you never had to worry about shooting yourself in the foot.

Ah, Pascal! I LOVED that language!

I first used it to teach programming in the HS where I was teaching when UCSD Pascal was released on 5.25" floppy disks for my Apple II+. When I resigned from that school in 1980 and began my computer consulting business I used the newly released Turbo Pascal from Borland to program amortization programs for bank in my area. Later, when Borland released Turbo Pascal 3.02A along with their LunchBox, which included database capabilities, I wrote cattle feedlot programs, land leveling programs, and a skeleton of a GAAP enterprise accounting program, which I'd customize for specific clients.

I still have those 2.5" diskettes that contain TP 3.02A, and I've downloaded zip files that contain them. But, like many of the other languages I promised myself that I would resume using once I retired, I haven't touch any of them since.

[SteveRiley]

It occurs to me that I omitted one: LISP, in high school. Or as we called it, "Lithp." LOL.