Computer Tips -Tech Info

Category: Computers

  • Web 2.0 could lead to virus 2.0…

    The last couple days, there’s been a virus spreading making use of yahoo mail’s interface. Usually web mail is considered a fairly safe way to get email, but in this case all that was done was the user clicking on a malicious email and the virus ran. It appears that javascript/AJAX/Web 2.0 applications are going to have to get closer scrutiny. In the Sans diary, they mention that they’ve analyzed javascript from several web applications and there are some that are vulnerable. (They’re contacting vendors.) They also point out web designers should keep this in mind as well..

    The current worm could be readily modified to spread across many systems that do not escape javascript when displaying data from a foreign source. Many web developers should reexamine their code, and make sure that display functions do not deliver potentially malicious code.

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  • Google Earth for Linux

    One of the big linux news stories yesterday was the release of google earth for linux. Essentially the Google earth team has released “release 4” which is a beta version of the next release. It looks like there are greater “user contribution” capabilities with this release. I’ve tried the download for linux and can say that it installs well, the user interface looks fine (it’s not a wine-wrapper application – it’s a true linux port.) It’s not usable yet (for me…)

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  • VMPlayer on Mandriva 2006 finally…

    As you might recall some time back I talked about the release of vmplayer which is a free virtual machine “player” from vmware. Mostly, I wrote about the problems I had running it on my main desktop which was running Mandrake 10.1 at the time. The error was basically a signal 11 in the log file, which MOST everyone says is a hardware problem (or kernel…) Well, I tested the memory, everything seemed fine. Finally, I was having other issues and an itch for an upgrade, so I upgraded to an AMD64 3000 based system with 1GB of memory and did the upgrade to Mandriva 2006 as well (first with the original kernel, now with the updated kernel.) Vmplayer still refused to run.

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  • More Vista talk coming in

    While, I’m still waiting to get the Vista Beta download anyway… I’ve seen the first of what I expect will be many posts out and about complaining about the upcoming OS from Microsoft. Admittedly it’s a beta and after seeing a lot of beta-release candidate – final cycles from open source software, I’m sure much will change. However…. some good points are raised.

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  • Get ready for GBuy?

    A while back there were rumors of Google Payments, a Paypal competitor on the way. Well, if this is right, it will be named GBuy and will be launched June 28th. Also, it sounds as though there may be no fee for merchants during the test. After that, there will be a percentage fee on each transaction – they’re saying 1.5-2% which is less than paypals rate currently.

    Sounds like things could heat up quickly between Ebay/Paypal and Google this summer. Google Base, with an integrated GBuy….

  • Another wolf in sheeps clothing to watch for

    Wolves in sheeps clothing are the label I give to those rogue antispyware, or antivirus programs that bring pests instead of protect against them, or are otherwise questionable in their tactics. Titan Shield seems to be a new threat on the block in this area, I haven’t seen it first hand yet, but it looks like it is one you’ll want to avoid *(You may want to block antispywarebox(dot)com and titanshield(dot)com if you’re in a position to do such things in your network.)

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  • That’s bad – data on Nuclear agency workers stolen…

    According to reuters data on US Nuclear Safety Administration employees (*some 1500) was stolen in a computer cracking incident.

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  • Qemu 0.8.1 speed improvement with -kernel-kqemu and kqemu 1.3.0pre7

    I mentioned the other day revisiting the qemu site to discover new versions of both qemu and the non-redistributable kernel module kqemu (qemu is now at version 0.8.1 and kqemu is at 1.3.0pre7). There’s also a new startup switch -kernel-kqemu which enables FULL virtualization of both kernel and user code. I could feel a difference in speed, but I wanted to give a test with a stopwatch to see what the numbers were and this is what I found.

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  • Windows 98 won’t see the MS06-15 patch

    It turns out that Windows 98 is just too hard for Microsoft to support with a security patch for MS06-15 now. The official support period ends in July, but they’ve announced that this one won’t be getting a patch as the changes would be just too substantial. Some of the mitigation suggestions involve using restricted zones settings to limit ActiveX and Active Scripting. (Of course, installing something other than Windows 95/98/ME might be considered a mitigating factor as well.)

  • Bye bye ethereal — hello wireshark

    Ethereal has quite a reputation for itself, I’ve used it in analyzing traffic on the home network and experimenting with virtual images… anyway, it’s a packet sniffer and network protocol analyzer and it now has a new name and new home…. wireshark.org. Apparently the lead developer did not own the rights to the name ethereal and is transfering to a new job, the old company keeps the ethereal name. He said in the explanation that he is NOT going through a namechange like that again for the project and is in the process of trademarking and will ask for input shortly as to how the development team wants to hold the trademark.

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