Yesterday, of course, Microsoft released it’s monthly patches. I found the Windows update site to be painfully slow (and in some cases unresponsive.) It wasn’t quite a huge update day by recent standards, but here’s the summary…. Incidents.org has a nice chart showing the two re-released patches (one is actually re-re-released…) They are MS06-040 (server service patch – critical) and MS06-042 (IE 6 patch). Both of those vulnerabilities addressed are well known and could be actively exploited. The “first release” updates from this month affect Microsoft Queue System MS06-052 which is the most important of the releases….
Category: Mac Software
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Firefox code under the microscope
So, the stories are out of the analysis of the code for Mozilla Firefox. It seems there were a large number of potential flaws found (71 potential security vulnerabilities) according to the article. This was done using an automated tool and many say, that in order to evaluate the true severity of the flaws, you have to be familiar with the code. Some, I’m sure will pounce on this with the “I thought open source software was supposed to be more secure…. I’m going back…” but it’s time to stop and think about things a moment. Open Source software…. anyone can access the source, anyone can analyze it for problems, anyone can run an automated tool to test it…..
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Codeweavers releases beta of Windows compatibility software for Apple Mac OS X
Yesterday codeweavers announced a beta release of their Crossover Office product geared towards Apple Mac OS X users. The software will allow certain windows applications to run on top of Apple’s operating system. They’re of course, seeking feedback and suggestions for what direction to take the project. This is based on the wine project, codeweavers also has Crossover Office for Linux. (The beta release is 6.0, currently the linux version is at 5.0.3)
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Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 approaching
Mozilla is soliciting people to test the candidates for version 1.5.0.7 of both Firefox and Thunderbird, so that sounds as though release is VERY close for that version. It sounds as though there are security issues addressed. (September 7 is the tentative release date… according to this page.)
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Mac Wireless driver Security vulnerability revisited
A couple weeks ago the hot story was about the demonstration of a vulnerability in a 3rd party wireless card driver on a Mac. The individuals that demonstrated the vulnerability (in a video taped presentation) also claimed that many wireless drivers were vulnerable to this same flaw and it included the MacBook native drivers (among others.) There was immediate controversy over the fact it was a video demo. I thought their explanation for that was reasonable. (They didn’t want to give a room full of crackers a chance to sniff the wireless traffic and get TOO much detail on the exploit before vendors had a good chance to give updates.) Well… at this point it sounds like among other things, they have not yet demonstrated to Apple an effective use of this exploit against the wireless drivers on the macbook.
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HDR – High Dynamic Range – Images under linux
HDR – recently I heard someone talking about this with regards to digital imaging. The idea is that you have three identical images (landscapes) taken from a stationary (tripod) camera. The only difference is the exposure times vary. Together you can blend them to create a more impressive final picture. Yes, I just talked about fake photos and digital imaging. This, to me, is in a different class of photo editing…. enhancement(?) – well… anyway. There are a number of ways to do this, photoshop, I understand has support for doing this and it’s possible under linux as well with the Gimp.
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Vmware coming to Mac soon…
It looks as though VMWare is looking to test some of their software for the Mac. Unlike Parallels desktop, Vmware’s offering will be geared more towards a corporate environment.
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Firefox 1.5.0.6 is out
That was a quick turn around…. It appears as though some of the multimedia streaming issues were severe enough to require a quick turnaround for Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 Sans had the initial heads up…. But it looks as though it’s now officially out (and labeled as a stability update.) Download page.
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Time for Apple Mac OS X updates again
From the look of it Apple has released a bunch of updates for OS X. A number of security issues are detailed. As always, SANS has some good details and links to more info on each of the ~13 issues. Many of them are legacy bugs if you will from older *nix-based systems. This is as good a time as any for the now familiar lesson – NO operating system is invulnerable, you must keep any software install updated with current security patches.
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Mozilla Firefox user-agent spoofing
Sometimes you run across a site that’s a browser snob. You know the type…. you visit it in Mozilla Firefox or (anything other than IE) and it says, “you must use Internet Explorer version 6 or newer to use this site. Well, some browsers have nice ways of changing the user agent through the menus, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a plugin for this in firefox (haven’t yet looked.) But, there is a way in about:config.