Java bug could lead to attack

A Google researcher has published details of a bug in the Java virtual machine (JVM) that could be used to run malicious programs on a computer, says ITWorld.

The attack was disclosed by Google's Tavis Ormandy, who notified Oracle about the flaw. "They informed me that they do not consider this vulnerability to be of high enough priority to break their quarterly patch cycle," says Ormandy.

The attack works as Java allows developers to tell the JVM to install alternate Java libraries. By creating a malicious library and telling the JVM to install it, an attacker can run the malicious code. The bug has been cited as a flaw in Java, rather than a programming error.

Adobe has released the Adobe Creative Suite 5 (CS5), the latest release of its design and development software that the company claims suits virtually every creative workflow, says eWeek.

Adobe says the focus of the new version of its CS suite is on interactivity, performance and maximising the impact of digital content and marketing campaigns across media and devices.

The upgrade brings full-version upgrades to its flagship creative tools. With the acquisition of Omniture, CS5 includes access to Omniture technologies to capture, store and analyse information generated by Web sites and other sources.

Micro-blogging service Twitter can be used to predict the future box-office takings of blockbuster films, according to researchers at HP, reports BBC News.

The computer scientists studied three million tweets about 25 movies, including Avatar. They found the rate at which messages were produced could be used to accurately predict the box office takings before the film opened.

Further analysis of the content of the messages could predict ongoing success. "Our predictions were incredibly close," Bernardo Huberman, head of the social computing lab at HP, told BBC News.

HP's Information and Quantum Systems Lab has introduced a circuit which it touts could replace the transistors used in all current processors, reports Computing.co.uk.

Titled the memristor, the resistor contains memory which can be used to store and process data simultaneously. The memristors can be stacked for greater compression, with claims that the solution can offer 10 times the storage and processing power of current chip architectures.

"Memristive devices could change the standard paradigm of computing by enabling calculations to be performed in the chips where data is stored rather than in a specialised central processing unit," says HP senior fellow R Stanley Williams.