Making up passwords is something we have to do almost everyday it seems. Banking web sites, forums, email accounts, webhosting accounts, mail lists, etc. But it seems that making passwords is one of the things that some people have the hardest time doing. Maybe it’s not that it’s hard to make a password, but hard to make a GOOD password. First off, what’s a good password and what’s a bad password? Anything that is a dictionary word (even in another language) is a BAD password. Personal names are usually very bad choices. Why?
Tag: GOOD
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Photoshop and news pictures…
There was a time when people looked to shape images for political benefit. (I mean political in most ALL senses of the word whether it’s domestic or international or issue oriented politics etc.) By this I mean, “Framing the picture” the right way, in front of a banner, cropping tight on a speaker so you don’t see wacky signs and the best “message” can be put forward. It can mean having a “photo op” in front of an impressive symbol or it can simply be the way an image of a landscape is framed that can tell an amazing story. Yes, I know this still goes on, but I have to wonder if the “organic” ways of “controlling the message” conveyed by a picture have become a thing of the past. This weekend, late Saturday night to be exact, I saw the beginnings of a blog-storm over a Reuters photograph of the aftermath of some of the activity in Lebanon.
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More reason to be cautious with Firefox plugins
Again…. this article referring to an exploit related to the cross platform plugin capability in firefox, is a GOOD reminder to be cautious when looking at potential plugins to install for mozilla firefox. In fact, the advice is usually do NOT install software (including plugins) from untrusted sources. By all means, please investigate any piece of software before downloading and installing. (And please don’t take just the software makers word for it…. ie. “my toolbar is really cool and makes firefox work better” does not equal something you can now trust and install.)
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Microsoft security roundup
OK – there have been a number of Excel problems floating around in the last week – week and a half. Securiteam blog has a FAQ on the Excel 0-day vulnerabilities with Excel and Excel Viewer Incidents.org kindly gives us a scoresheet documenting the three different vulnerabilities that have been recently exploited. I have not thoroughly read details, but suspect that avoiding opening unexpected xls attachments would likely be a GOOD preventative measure. If you take the attitude… “oh junk mail…. ooo attachment – wonder whats in there – let’s see…” then you’re likely already stuck by a few viruses.
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Would you trust antispyware that installed adware?
There are a couple stories on spywarecleaner’s recent practice of bundling whenu with the free version of their “antispyware scanner”. According to spyware confidential, SpywareCleaner made the rogue antispyware products list and was delisted after they corrected some “issues”. Now, they’ve been relisted due to the adware bundling of WhenU Save.
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Apple Quicktime security vulnerabilites and update
There are a number of vulnerabilites reported with Apple Quicktime player related to the way it handles various file formats. Quicktime Player 7.0.4 is the current released GOOD version, everything from 7.0.3 and prior are vulnerable. The Security Fix has some details. There were a total of about 8 vulnerabilities fixed in 7.0.4 and they affect both Windows And Mac….
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Microsoft touts Windows vista restart manager
Okay – here we go…. Microsoft is talking about a new feature of Vista that allows you to …
update parts of the operating system or applications without having to reboot the entire machine.
If that works as advertised that’s great. Update something related to networking, just restart networking *(kind of like what unix based systems do “service network stop/start/restart…)
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OpenSuSE 10 beta 1 screenshots
Osdir.com is at it again with the screenshots…., this time there’s a lizard on the desktop. Yes, screenshots from openSuSe 10 beta 1. Just several days ago Novell announced that they were “opening” the SuSE Linux project and the first beta was not far behind.