Computer Tips -Tech Info

Author: Avery

  • More Sony lawsuit news… Texas files suit

    The security fix is reporting on the latest lawsuit filed against Sony/BMG for the DRM rootkit known as XCP.

    “Sony has engaged in a technological version of cloak and dagger deceit against consumers by hiding secret files on their computers,” Abbott is quoted as saying in a press release on his official Web site. “Consumers who purchased a Sony CD thought they were buying music. Instead, they received spyware that can damage a computer, subject it to viruses and expose the consumer to possible identity crime.”

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  • More on Sony’s copyright infringement with their DRM Rootkit

    “What a tangled web…” there is more today at freedom-to-tinker on the evidence that Sony (and or first4internet), have infringed on copyrighted code in their DRM software XCP which has been at the middle of quite a bit of controversy the last few weeks. Most of the coverage has been on some of the cloaking capabilities, the security vulnerabilities and the uninstaller vulnerabilities… but it looks fairly obvious that at least some GPL or LGPL code has been used without abiding by the terms of the GPL/LGPL

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  • Exploit for Unpatched Internet Explorer vulnerability

    Well…. buckle your seatbelts it’s going to be a bumpy start to the week.

    the securityfix as well as incidents.org are reporting on exploit code that has been released that takes advantage of an unpatched Internet Explorer vulnerability. According to the Sans institute diary entry… they have tested the exploit code and it remotely launched the calculator application, so this is a remote code execution vulnerability and can have SERIOUS consequences.

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  • Malicious .biz site and browser vulnerabilities

    This from incidents.org as well… A user visited a webpage and got redirected to hxxp://iframebiz.biz/dl/adv443.php (tt changed to xx to protect anyone from getting there…)
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  • Mambo exploit

    The sans institute (incidents.org) is warning of a Mambo exploit making the rounds. Full disclosure and security focus have more details. No word on this point of workarounds… Mambo, of course, is an open-source CMS (content management system.)

  • 10 Million Candlepower Spotlight

    I have no idea where to put this. It isn’t exactly high tech…. Anyway, we live out in a rural (becoming suburban…) area which means good lighting is very useful. We have a good outdoor houselight, but have never wanted an always on area light. Flashlights are good, but even the biggest mag-lights seem ineffective against the depths of the dark nights around here.

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  • Some links to purchase linux boxed set installs

    OK, truth be told linux is usually thought of as a download for free and install operating system and there are LOT’s of ways to do that. But it is also available for purchase at various places, from the different distributions web sites.

    Also, these are links to the product pages at Amazon. They have a new link style that I was curious to test out and see what it looked like.

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  • Sony’s OTHER DRM software uninstaller will be pulled

    According to zdnet.com, Sony and SunnComm are pulling the OTHER DRM uninstaller from the web and it will be replaced with a safer version of the uninstaller. Researchers blogging at freedom-to-tinker.com had detailed serious vulnerabilities in the uninstaller for the DRM software made by SunnComm (called MediaMax). The companies say an effort will be made to contact the 223 users who had downloaded the uninstaller for the MediaMax software.

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  • Apache2 ( apache webserver ) not restarting

    This is an error I’ve run into a few times. It’s rare enough that the second time I saw it, I had a vague memory that it had happened before. The third time though (was within the last week) I remembered and even remembered where the file was located to solve it. Here’s the problem….
    As far as I know this is an apache2 problem, not prior.
    Apache is not running. You try to start apache and receive the message…

    Cannot allocate shared memory: (17)File exists apache

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  • Running Windows Applications in Linux another look at Wine

    Recently I did a post on the release of version 5 of Crossover Office which is a commercially supported variation of the wine project. In fact, it’s very similar, the only exceptions I know of are the neater installer for software and paid support. Anyway, I’ve got a project I’ve been working on that I’ve used cxoffice quite a bit in to run a particular application that isn’t directly available on linux (there are alternatives but none that work exactly the same way… more on that in a future post…) Anyway, it got me thinking and I visited the wine site and found that 0.9.1 has now been released. I checked the wine version on my desktop and decided to upgrade to the newest plain vanilla wine release and see how well it does….

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