Norton Labs' App Advisor scans your social networks for these kind of attacks, and blocks them.

SAN FRANCISCO--Symantec detailed some of the dirty secrets of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ threats at its annual reviewers' workshop here today, and revealed a planned project to protect you from social networking manipulators.

The project from Norton Labs, currently called Norton App Advisor, combines Norton's Safe Web data with social network open API data to provide a safety rating for apps. It aims to prevent malicious apps that prey on your social network activity from collecting data on you and your friends, which Symantec representatives said was a major security concern.

"Social networks have a trust model built in, to trust posts from their friends. This trust model gets exploited by attackers, and it's difficult to distinguish between a post from a friend and a post from an attack," said Nishant Doshi, architect for Symantec's security response group that deals with browsers. He explained that the attacks are successful because they go viral, just like your latest favorite Nyan Cat video. They start small and spread fast.

There are basically three major kinds of attacks that show up on your social networking feeds, he told CNET. One is drive-by downloads, which is basically when somebody downl... [Read more]

On June 11 Apple announced a couple of Thunderbolt adapters to provide Ethernet and FireWire connectivity to Thunderbolt-based systems, and issued a driver update for OS X to provide software support for these adapters; however, for a number of users the update resulted in the inability to boot. Apple has reissued a fixed version of this update, which should install properly without any issues.

The driver update is a small plug-in for a required system kernel extension to give it support for the new adapters, but when installed prevented the system from loading the driver properly, which caused some systems to start up to an international "no" symbol, and caused others to kernel panic during boot with a message similar to the following:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff800064ba7b): "Unable to find driver for this platform: \"ACPI'.\n"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1699.26.8/iokit/Kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp:15 04

Attempts to start up in safe mode and otherwise clear the problem did not show any success, leaving reinstalling, restoring from backup, or reapplying the combo update via another Mac the only options for fix... [Read more]

A look at the Sprint Guardian app.

Last month, Sprint introduced a new app for its customers that combines two suites of protective controls. Now Sprint Guardian is ready for launch.

Mobile security company Lookout powers the Mobile Security apps, while Safely handles the Family Safety app, a bundle of Sprint Family Locator, parental controls, and an app you can use to monitor texting while driving.

Both apps are grouped into Sprint Guardian, which is available in the Sprint Zone app on your Android smartphone.

Sprint Guardian price chart.

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Camtasia is already a favorite screencasting tool for its extensive feature list, intuitive interface, and pro-level themes.

When it comes to producing professional-looking movies and demos from your computer screen, TechSmith's Camtasia Studio is known for striking the right balance between a powerful toolset and ease of use. Version 8, released today, adds even more useful features that encourage end-user interactivity without making the app any more complex to use.

The feature-packed screencast app, which includes HD production settings, does have a learning curve, but the user-friendly interface and front-and-center icons for most-used tools go a long way toward lowering the intimidation factor a notch. Plus, TechSmith provides a useful online help center that includes several video tutorials that do a nice job walking users through the main functionality of the software.

Even better, when you first launch Camtasia Studio 8, you're greeted with an integrated tutorial video that helps get you acquainted with the software. The main window features a content area in the upper right that showcases a variety of options. Here, you can view the clip bin, access your content library, and tweak features such as callouts, zoom-n-pan, audio, and transitions. TechSmith provi... [Read more]

Hands-on with Microsoft's Surface tablet (pictures)

LOS ANGELES--Microsoft debuted the Surface line of tablets here today, part of Windows 8's attempts to be all things to all people. The tablets are Microsoft's most aggressive entry to the tablet market to date, but the company has yet to do more than whet our int... [Read more]