Do you remember the big bruhaha a month or so back about the “apple wireless vulnerability” that everybody picked apart because in the video taped demonstration they used a third party card…. EVEN though the demonstrators stated that the same vulnerability existed in Apple’s own driver some on the internet tore one reporter up over stating that because Apple denied being shown exploit code (slight semantic issue there…) Well… those driver vulnerabilities that must have not existed, were fixed today by Apple. Brian Krebs has the story, as well as incidents.org
Category: Mac Tech Support
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Microsoft Update day for September…. AND Flash… AND Apple
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….
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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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Apple next with 1.8 million laptop battery recall
A bit over a week ago Dell had a massive recall announced for potentially hazardous laptop computer battery issues. (Flaming laptops.) Now, it’s Apple’s turn. It seems as though Sony is the common supplier for both issues. The BBC has an overview here. Here’s a link at Apple’s site giving more information on getting a replacement and identifying if your battery is affected.
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But it’s brand new, how could it have so many updates?
This morning I was doing a fresh install of Windows XP SP2 into a Virtual Machine. So far, things are fine I went through windowsupdate and found 3 updates the first time, then rebooted and hit windowsupdate again to see 55 updates available. A lot of times when I set up a new pc for somebody they wonder why I want to check windows update multiple times. They’ll usually say something along the lines “but it’s brand new there shouldn’t be any updates.” Well, this install was from a SP2 disk and there have been a large number of updates since that was released. Many manufacturers use fairly sophisticated techniques to roll out the default install images they use, but it’s still very possible that your machine will have several updates waiting for it when you get it.
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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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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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Wireless Driver Vulnerabilities
There are a couple notes to pass along with regards to some pretty serious vulnerabilities in various wireless network adapter drivers. First, Sans has information on some Intel Centrino updates that resolve some vulnerabilities that would affect the Windows Centrino driver and the ProSet management software. F-secure chimes in on this noting that the download is a whopping 129MB.
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New site domain www.computerrepairasheville.com
Just by way of information….. I’ve seperated out the www.computerrepairasheville.com and www.ashevillecomputerhelp.com domains now to point to a seperate web site with the main goal of simplifying and clarifying my computer services in the Asheville, NC area. I’ll keep the brief page on this site that gives an overview, but the new computerrepairasheville.com domain will act as the main point of information for those services. On there I’ve tried to put a list of all of the “things I do” although I’m sure I’ve forgotten something.