Computer Tips -Tech Info

11 patches will be released by Microsoft on the 10th of October. Bulletin is here, 6 for windows, 4 for Office (at least one in each of those two batches is critical) and 1 .NET (moderate) – yes the Windows updates will likely require a restart. Betanews has a bit more coverage hoping the WebViewFolderIcon […]

Wolves in sheeps clothing…. from Sunbelt blog…. Watch out for pestcapture and “friends” (using dlls from spysheriff). Thanks to sunbelt for keeping their eyes open on the threat of wolves in sheepdogs clothing…. It’s so frustrating having to explain to someone that the software they downloaded to solve their problems has become part of the […]

Vmware has launched a tool (windows only it seems) aimed to convert a REAL running system into a virtual machine. (For use with VMWare’s virtualization products. The converter also can convert images from competing virtual machine “platforms”(?) (Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (formerly LiveState Recovery) and Norton Ghost9 (or […]

So, I was formatting a drive the other day. It’s an external hard drive that will need to be readable AND writable by both Mac and Windows XP machines. So, the only choice (without paying for MacDrive to read/write to HFS+) is really FAT32. The drive is in the 250GB-300GB ballpark. So, I reference the […]

For starters, if you’re using Windows 98 or ME still in a production system, you REALLY need to be looking at migration options and you should realize that the architecture of those systems is NOT conducive to a good secure platform. No XP isn’t perfect, but it is an improvement in many areas. That much […]

I saw a comment somewhere else that zero-day was overused and in essense ANY previously unknown vulnerability in open source software is technically zero day… the intent here though is to use the word in this context…. “vulnerability has been released without giving the vendor an opportunity to patch…” Yes, the fun vulnerability weekend seems […]

Sometimes you feel like the little Dutch boy of myth/legend with his finger trying to plug the hole in a dam…. Incidents bring us this as well…. another powerpoint vulnerability seems to have been disclosed. MS has an advisory. All currently supported Office versions are vulnerable (even on Mac?) Workarounds include not opening powerpoint files… […]

Translation – Microsoft patched one vulnerability another surfaces…. Incidents.org brings us the frustrating news…. If you remember the month of browser bugs series of exploits back in July, there was a denial of service there that appears to have code execution after all. Coincidence or not, it got publicly released after the out of cycle […]

The big news this afternoon is that Microsoft HAS gone out of the routine patch cycle to release a security fix for the VML vulnerability that’s been actively exploited in recent days for everything from sneak keylogger installs to massive spyware installs. Sans has a few links, if you de-registered the affected DLL you should […]

Just catching up on the days VML vulnerability news from today…. It looks as though… the exploit is now MUCH more widespread this blog has some video of an infection, what’s notable is that the first take was VERY UNEVENTFUL, it was used to stealthily install a keylogger. (So that they can harvest paypal/bank/etc. passwords…) […]