Computer Tips -Tech Info

Category: Windows

  • Microsoft to use same RSS icon as Firefox

    Beta news is reporting that Internet Explorer 7 will use the same Icon for RSS feeds that Firefox currently uses. What’s more they say they’ll continue to work with Mozilla on consistency between the browsers….. All right, I’m going to be watching for the pigs flying next. No, seriously it’s great to see Microsoft warming up and not acting like they want to take over and crush the competition.

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  • Opera security patch

    I saw this earlier today, but had thought it was an issue already covered (just before Thanksgiving there was an opera security update I think.) Anyway… Secunia has an advisory on a security vulnerability in the Opera Web browser. Users are encouraged to upgrade to v. 8.51. The SecurityFix has the story. Download link here http://www.opera.com/download/

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  • Microsoft December 2005 Security updates

    Sans has the tip that information on the critical Windows updates expected tomorrow from Microsoft has started to be released.

    MS 05-54: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer

    This will hopefully patch the javascript issues…

    MS 05-55: Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege.

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  • VMware Player officially released

    Lookes like VMWare has officially released the first version of their VMPlayer. The previous was a pre-release preview/beta. It looks like it’s now officially a 1.0.0-final.

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  • Internet Explorer in standalone mode?

    Now, it can be useful to run several versions of the same program at the same time (especially if it’s a web browser.) I’ve accomplished this under linux with internet explorer, but didn’t realize there was a way to do so on Windows. Sunbelt blog found a good guide to installing Internet Explorer 7 beta 1 on a system without tampering with their (working) IE 6 install.

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  • More on Firefox 1.5 “vulnerability”

    I put vulnerability in quotes because it’s looking less like a problem. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) Here’s the situation. Both Sans and Mozilla have failed to duplicate the crash although have duplicated extremely slow browser performance. Here’s the official response from mozilla.org…

    We have investigated this issue and can find no basis for claims that variants of this denial-of-service attack can cause an exploitable crash, and no evidence for this claim has been offered. There does not appear to be any risk to users or their computers beyond the temporary unresponsiveness at startup.

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  • Two critical fixes from Microsoft on December patch Tuesday

    December’s rendition of Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday will feature two critical security fixes. The malicious software removal tool will also be updated…

    Additionally, Microsoft will issue two non-security high-priority updates through Windows Update and Software Update Services, and three non-security high-priority updates through Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services. It is standard Microsoft procedure to not disclose the nature of the updates beforehand for security reasons.

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  • Outlook express pet peeve #375

    Migrating Outlook Express data from one machine to another. Addresses are easy to export… file export Address Book gives a good option to CSV (comma seperated value) output. Which is a nice common denominator. (WAB/PAB output wouldn’t hurt.) But, File, Export, Messages only let’s you dump your Outlook Express messages into Exchange/Outlook. (!) Now, this is a pet peeve I’ve had for sometime with Outlook Express. There are just too many places to tell people to look for their data.

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  • Firefox 1.5 vulnerability

    Incidents.org has reported on the first announced vulnerability with Mozilla Firefox 1.5 since it’s release. The vulnerability is along these lines. History of visited sites is kept in a file called history.dat IF a URL for a visited site is long enough it will cause a buffer overflow and denial of service. (After visiting such a url, the browser will crash on each attempted start. (until history.dat is deleted.))

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  • Internet Explorer 7 to have tighter security zone settings

    One of the changes Internet explorer 7.0 will see is a tightening of restrictions on the zone settings. Currently, there are four security zones for web sites: Internet, Intranet, Trusted Sites and Restricted Sites. Explorer tries to autodetect if a site is within the intranet (which becomes more trusted), or the internet (which becomes less trusted. The problem is this detection can be tricked and so, malicious websites can run in a less restrictive zone.

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