itunes Archives

Home » itunes

And the most security-riddled program of 2012 was….

Dave Farquhar security March 20, 2013March 18, 2013apple, chrome, firefox, itunes, JRE, oracle, vulnerability, windows 7, Windows Server

Secunia released its annual vulnerability review, a study of the 50 most vulnerable pieces of software in 2012. It was a fairly tight-three way race at the top, and the distance between #3 and #4 was huge.

I was actually surprised at who the top three were. They weren’t the three usual suspects. But in the case of the top two, they did, to their credit, roll out fixes within 30 days of disclosure.

So now that I’m killing you with suspense….
Read more

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

dfarq.homeip.net

So why are Apple and Google (and Microsoft) tracking us?

Dave Farquhar security April 27, 2011October 29, 2018android, apple, cissp, IOS, iphone, itunes, location tracking, PR, wi-fi

So what are Google and Apple doing with this location data? And Microsoft, now that it’s clear they’re gathering it too (but they claim they aren’t storing it anywhere on the phone).

They aren’t saying a lot, but they’ve said enough to take a pretty good guess. And no, I don’t think the intent is to be evil.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

iDo track your every move

Dave Farquhar security April 21, 2011April 25, 2011android, apple, iphone, itunes, location tracking

The scandal of the day is the iPhone and the discovery that it tracks your every move. Will that be featured in the next Android commercial? iDo track you. DROID DOESN’T. Update: Probably not.

Of course, the pundits are all over the map on this one. Nobody thinks it’s a particularly good idea. Some think it’s bad but are willing to live with it since they trust Apple not to misuse it. Some think it’s no big deal as long as Apple stops with the next patch. Others have gotten paranoid.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

DNS and iTunes and other streaming media

Dave Farquhar Servers and Networking December 30, 2010July 5, 2018apple, AT&T, benchmark, datacenter, itunes, Missouri, networking equipment, sprint, steve gibson

There are reports floating about regarding third-party DNS affecting downloads of movies and other media, particularly from iTunes.

So, if tweaking DNS settings used to be what all the cool kids are doing, maybe it’s about to become less trendy, thanks to advice circulating to ditch third-party, centralized DNS providers like Google and OpenDNS, because they “defeat the distributed nature of DNS itself.”

The answer of what DNS to use and why is more complex than that.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net

Maybe someone in the music industry is starting to get it

Dave Farquhar Music July 22, 2003January 19, 2026apple, itunes, matchbox, Media Player, RIAA, Windows Media Player

I remember just a couple of weeks ago, I was driving home from work and a song caught my attention on the radio. I was pretty sure I’d never heard it before, and given the nature of my two favorite radio stations, there was every possibility I’d never hear it again either. And the DJ never told me who it was.

Dave Farquhar

dfarq.homeip.net