Computer Tips -Tech Info

There are a number of references out today to a December 31st article (on a study by av-test) about how well antivirus products were keeping up with the shifting signatures of the WMF exploits. There was a list of about 12 products that were at 100% detection. Unfortunately, the important point is that the original […]

There’s a zdnet article that seems to indicate that Google may be close to releasing a standalone video player. Currently videos.google.com uses a plugin that’s called google video viewer. The above article gives some interesting information and a good bit of speculation. The speculation is that they will release vlc (video lan client) in a […]

It looks like, the Windows patch (or a beta) for the WMF exploit has been leaked online. It sounds as though Steve Gibson got a hold of a copy and has tested it along side the unofficial patch. All seems to go well. He notes that the build date was December 28th. So, they have […]

I hung on to the last batch of 20 wmf exploit samples I had been working with for the purpose of testing my clamantivirus install against them to see when “full detection” of all 20 had been acheived. Last night, with version 1227 of the daily.cvd database, they were still detecting 8 out of the […]

This is something you should consider if you are looking to abandoned a pre-Winxp operating system in favor of a flavor of XP. The product life cycle. In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft has different support plans for consumer products than “business-products”. As such… arstechnica.com has a post explaining why support for Windows XP Home will […]

Yesterday the hexblog, which is the site of the person that wrote the unofficial patch for the WMF exploit, was offline for bandwidth over use. Several mirror sites popped up to host the patch. Today the site is back up at http://www.hexblog.com/ in a more minimal form. It’s suggested if you can’t reach the page […]

F-Secure is reporting on another SPAM attack that tries to get people to click on a link to a site with an exploit-crafted WMF file. The message is along the lines of a claimed Professor at Yale announcing the unfortunate vandalism over the New Year holiday, the link purports to be pictures of the act […]

Just saw this over at engadget. It’s a Lexar jumpdrive with “amount filled” indicator. The twist is the “amount filled” is done with electronic paper. What this means is that you can see how full the drive is without plugging it into a pc. The electronic paper doesn’t draw power to hold the display.    […]

The Sunbelt Blog has picked up on a report of some network printing problems with the unofficial WMF exploit patch installed. The first report was on the fulldisclosure list. It is recommended that the patch be tested before rolling out. The variation of software configurations varies by environment…    Send article as PDF   

I want to try to clarify a point. I’ve spent a couple days trying to get current exploits to work on a Windows 98 SE virtual machine. Not to prove that Windows 98 is safe, but to determine if current exploits affect Windows 98. Yesterday evening there were apocalyptic headlines saying that virus threatens every […]