Hasta La Gadget!

Just because Google abandoned its October Android event doesn’t mean it’s left its users out to dry — Hurricane Sandy now has its very own Google Crisis Map. It isn’t the first time Mountain View has lent its mapping tech to folks in harm’s way — survivors of Hurricane Issac used a similar Crisis Map to track the storm, follow public alerts and find shelters. Sandy’s map is no different, providing locals with information on the storm’s path, forecast information, evacuation routes, areas of high wind probability and even links to webcams surrounding affected areas. Google isn’t the only firm lending a hand, either — both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are lifting site paywalls during the storm, ensuring the public has access to developing news as long as their internet connection doesn’t give out.

Filed under: Internet, Google

Google puts Hurricane Sandy on its crisis map, hopes to help you weather the storm originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Oct 2012 20:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It used to be that we could go for months without reading about malware or viruses for Mac computers, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the case these days. That being said, if you’re a Mac user, there is a new trojan on the loose that you might want to take note of. Discovered by the folks at Integro, this particular trojan is dubbed Crisis and can apparently install itself onto Mac computers without any user interaction or user permissions. It will also attempt to hide itself from virus scanning software and detection applications, making this one heck of a sneaky trojan, which we guess was kind of the point to begin with.

Designed to run on OS X 10.6 and 10.7, the trojan will continue to run in the background even after rebooting the computer. It has also been reported that if the Mac computer has root access, the trojan will then attempt to install additional components that will make detection harder. According to Integro, the trojan attempts to contact a specific IP address every 5 minutes to await instructions, although at the moment the trojan has yet to be spotted in the wild. Given the sneakiness of the Crisis trojan, we’re surprised that Integro has considered it to be a low level threat, but either way you should probably avoid unsavory or suspicious websites to begin with.

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