Tuesday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:49 PM CET - Dec,09 2003
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- Microsoft -- No security bulletins for December - Microsoft
currently has no security bulletins to release as part of the monthly release
cycle for the month of December.
That would be fine if there were no any outstanding issues......but there are
- A CHINESE RESEARCHER has discovered 7 new security holes in Internet
Explorer and Microsoft is looking into them, or perhaps through them.
According to Russ Cooper of TruSecure, two of the holes are critical
vulnerabilities which could permit an attacker to remotely execute malicious
programs.
- Police arrest iPod email suspect -
A 21 year-old
Cambridgeshire man has been arrested and released on police bail after a
hoax email on Friday had thousands of worried people jamming Cambridgeshire
Police's main switchboard. The arrest was made just hours after the email
began to circulate around the country, which led consumers to suspect that
their credit card details had been used to buy an iPod. The email, from a
company called Huntington Mail Order, appeared to be an invoice for a 40GB
iPod music player. It informed recipients that UKCards Ltd would charge
L399.99 to their credit cards.
- Mafia muscles in on spam and viruses -
Organised crime
is moving online into spam and virus writing - which means attacks may
become less common but more dangerous, a Russian antivirus expert has warned.
As criminal gangs get involved, the 'independent' operators that currently
dominate the spam and virus market will be squeezed out, reducing the total
number of attacks. Another story can be found at
TheRegister.
- Virus hunter: It's a "horrible world" - CNET has conducted
an
interview with Symantec's CEO John Thompson as he talks the growing
problem of worms, spam legislation and other security issues.
- Developers take Linux attacks to heart -
During
the last four months, unknown intruders have breached the security around
servers hosting programs and code published by the Linux kernel development
team, the Debian Project, the Gentoo Linux Project and the GNU Project, which
manages the development of many important programs used by Linux and other
Unix-like systems. The attacks have convinced open-source project leaders to
take another look at their security.
- Dell BIOS DoS (Invalid Characters in BIOS Password -
Dell Inspiron 2650 System BIOS, A11 (A11 is the current BIOS as of
writing, and was released in late September of this year). Unfortunately, once
a Hard Drive Password is set which contains one or more of the following
characters , < > . ; : ' [ ] { }. It can not be later entered to access the
machine. It appears as though a bug in the BIOS code prevents those characters
from being taken as input when the user is asked for the password - however,
the BIOS incorrectly allows users to set passwords containing those
characters.
- W32/Mimail.L-mm Hits with Offensive Porn Message - Last week, we
witnessed the appearance of yet another couple of Minmail strains. Designated
W32/Mimail.L-mm and W32/Mimail.M-mm, these viruses typically arrive as
explicit, pornographic messages that try to entice the reader into opening the
virus attachment. With a twist to the Mimail mass mailing scenario,
W32/Mimail.L-mm will attempt to replicate in a porn message, with a copy
of itself in an attachment. However, if that fails, Mimail.L will then try to
send another message without an attachment, but claiming your credit card will
be charged weekly for child porn.
- Oracle Patches Security Flaws - Oracle has issued
a security alert and software patches for a set of serious vulnerabilities
in the security protocols used by some of its server products. The flaws
affect certain versions of Oracle's 8i and 9i Database Server, Oracle 9i
Application Server, and versions 8 and 9 of the Oracle HTTP Server, according
to the alert, which is dated December 4.
- Coca-Cola Delves Into Digital Music - Coca-Cola is aiming to enter
the growing music download market by launching its own download service in the
U.K. in January. Run by European digital music company On Demand Distribution,
the music service will offer 250,000 tracks from over 8500 artists. Tracks
will cost $1.72 each, Coca-Cola said.
- Creator of Tetris works at Microsoft - In 1985, Alexey
Pajitnov developed Tetris as part programming exercise and as something fun to
do. He got the idea for Tetris from a popular puzzle game called Pentamino.
When Pajitnov saw Pentamino, he thought about adding a time element to
gameplay, so he added the twist of having the blocks drop. Alexey Pajitnov
wanted to produce more computer games, but he felt that the Soviet Union did
not have a large enough consumer base to support such a market. He moved to
the United States in 1991 after visiting in 1990. Pajitnov ended up working
for Microsoft's gaming division. Pajitnov likes puzzle games the best.
He is not a fan of shooters. He is currently working on a second version of
Pandora's Box. (thanks
WinXP.Bink.nu)
- Off-topic: Battlestar Galactica: Will You Be Watching? - For some
fans, the name stands up there with Star Wars and Star Trek. The battle lines
are drawn and two foes await to clash. However, instead of the remnants of
humankind fighting a fight of desperation again the robotic Cylons, the foes
are fans of the original sci-fi epic. One camp remains dedicated to the
classic incarnation of the show led, perhaps, by Richard Hatch (Apollo) of the
original cast. They saw their beloved show on one historic season on network
TV. The other camp
gets their shot starting tonight in a four hour miniseries on the Sci-Fi
Channel.
- Sharp Shows First Efficeon Notebook - Sharp has become the first
personal computer maker to announce a machine based on Transmeta's new
Efficeon processor, the companies said Tuesday.
The Sharp Mebius Muramasa PC-MM2-5NE will go on sale in Japan on January 2
and is expected to be priced around $1675, says Miyuki Nakayama, a
spokesperson for Sharp in Tokyo.
- VIA to sample PCI Express P4 chipset in January -
VIA Technologies will begin sampling the PT890, an 800MHz FSB (front-side
bus) Pentium 4 (P4) chipset supporting dual-channel DDR400 DDRII and PCI
Express, next month.
- DeltaChrome update -
For S3's DeltaChrome, Club3D receives a few "DeltaChrome S8" chip samples
from S3/VIA and work on board samples now. S3 will bring the DeltaChrome S8 to
hardware reviewers in the next weeks and into the market in the first weeks of
2004.
- MicroATX Case Madness - The MicroATX form factor continues to grow
in popularity.
THG take an in depth look at a variety of MicroATX chassis solutions prior
to our full ATX mid tower case review. However, not all MicroATX solutions are
the same and only a few made the grade here.
- 512MB Mushkin PC4000 Dual Pack Memory Modules review - Adrian's
Rojak Pot let us know he has posted
a review of two revisions of the 512MB Mushkin PC4000 Dual Pack Memory
Modules.
- Plextor PX-504A review - OCModShop have posted
a
positive review of Plextor PX-504A."The drive was also able to quick erase
a DVD+RW in 9 seconds and do a full erase of the media in 25 minutes. I have
to say that I am very impressed with the amount of time it takes to burn 4.7GB
of data."
- News Interceptor 1.10 -
Version 1.10 of News Interceptor is now available. This new version fixes
a problem which caused errors for some users when trying to log in. Also, a
modification done to the LiveUpdate feature will allow better and more
reliable software download updates.
- HyperSnap-DX v5.40.06 (SHW) -
HyperSnap-DX (download)
brings you professional quality, convenient Windows screen captures. It was
designed for ease of use, with powerful and useful features - including
capture from DirectX and 3dfx Glide games, and some DVD/Video players - to aid
the professional as well as support the needs of the occasional user.
- Capturex v1.4 -
Capturex is a DirectShow image grabber designed to save stills from videos
to a wide range of image formats. It has a intuitive GUI with an instant
preview of every grabbed frame and the possibility to open the image in any
external image editor direct from the application.
- Avant Browser 8.02 Build 207 -
Avant Browser is a
fast, stable, user-friendly, versatile web browser. Avant Browser is a
multi-window browser which features with many functions such as Pop-up
Stopper, Built-in Google Searching, Safe Recovery, Integrated Cleaner and
Advanced Browsing Options.
- AntiVir Personal Edition 6.22.09.09 - The private and individual
use of the AntiVir Personal
Edition is completely free of charge.
- AVG antivirus Free Edition 6.0 Build 550 -
With AVG
6.0 Free Edition and you will be able to use it without any limitations
for life of the product. However you must agree to the AVG Free Edition
license agreement and fill in the simple questionaire form. (A free
registration is required to run AVG. You will be emailed a registration code
and can not install it without it. The installer does provide a link during
installation to get your code)
- Integrated VGA driver for the KN400 / KM400 chipsets for Win2K/WinXP -
Microsoft's recently changed their requirements to a minimum frame buffer
of 16MB, however KPLE's maximum frame buffer is 8MB. Therefore, KPLE drivers
can no longer fulfill the requirements to get Microsoft's logo -
download.
- Serial ATA and RAID driver for the VT6420 controller and the VT8237
South Bridge - The advanced VIA DriveStationt V-RAID Controller is
featured in the VT8237 South Bridge, currently (August 2003) shipping with
most KT600 chipset mainboards and soon to ship with PT800 chipset mainboards
(and future chipsets as well). If you are not sure what South Bridge chip is
featured on your motherboard, please check your manual. The VT6420 Serial RAID
controller also utilises the same driver package -
download.
- DeepBurner version 1.1.0.85b (free) -
DeepBurner
is a new CD/DVD burning software that utilize power and effeciency. With
DeepBurner you can create data, bootable, and audio CDs as well as data DVDs.
- RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.2 -
RightMark Audio Analyzer
5.2 has been released. The test suite performs various tests of
electroacoustical performance of sound cards and other real-time audio
devices.
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Updated:03:04 PM CEST Jun,20
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