Computer Tips -Tech Info

There’s another patch for those Win98 users that are nervous about the WMF vulnerability that was announced at the tail end of the year. This site has made the patched version of gdi32.dll available to any and all. Their patch is open source. They basically say “it works for them…” no warranties. Steve Gibson has […]

I found a couple of interesting presentations on network security related topics. Primarily these are about using the internet and search engines for gathering information on specific “targets”. Their very interesting from a “self analysis” point of view as well.    Send article as PDF   

According to the securityfix, Florida leads the nation in the number of networks with signs of computers infested with the sony rootkit. In total, 12,588 networks in Florida seem to have computers with the rootkit. Now, these numbers could reflect as few as one machine per network….    Send article as PDF   

Brian Krebs has a post today on a Windows wireless networking “feature” which can be somewhat of a security risk. You see, it seems that With wireless networking enabled, Windows remembers the last wireless SSID that you connected to, so let’s say you were at a public Wireless access point called “Bob’s hotel” and you […]

Microsoft is disputing claims by Steve Gibson, that the WMF vulnerability was an intentionally placed backdoor. There is a response to the claims in the Microsoft Security Incident Response blog. Apparently since the SetAbortProc procedure relates to printing, previous versions of Windows ignored the call unless printing was involved. (Why did windows start paying attention […]

I’m not quite sure if I’m willing to attribute to design, what I could attribute to a mistake… but, slashdot has pointed out that Steve Gibson in his latest Security Now! podcast (link is to transcript), is suggesting that it appears as though the WMF vulnerability of recent weeks appears (to him) to have been […]

I’ve got a couple of older Mandrake 10.0 servers that I’m still maintaining. They’re systems that it hasn’t been practical (yet) to do an upgrade to a more recent release of the base operating system. Two of those are currenlty using Clamantivirus for their mailscanning. So, with the recent security vulnerability an update was needed. […]

Good news for Windows XP users (especially XP Home). Microsoft has extended the support period for XP Home and Pro. Originally, security patch related support was expected to end December 31st of this year. According to the article for XP Home… So for the consumer versions of Windows XP, mainstream support was going to end […]

There are a number of vulnerabilites reported with Apple Quicktime player related to the way it handles various file formats. Quicktime Player 7.0.4 is the current released GOOD version, everything from 7.0.3 and prior are vulnerable. The Security Fix has some details. There were a total of about 8 vulnerabilities fixed in 7.0.4 and they […]

Brian Krebs at the Security Fix has done an interesting study related to how long it takes Microsoft to release a security fix for a problem, starting from the time they are notified of the security vulnerability. For the most part, 134.5 days has been the window between notification and vulnerability patching for the last […]