It’s funny, in the last couple days 180solutions had a blog post that was somewhat… what’s the term I’m looking for ? well they were quite defensive and concerned about “anti-spyware zealots” about “Scanning companies” and trying to work with them to explain their business model. Of course, legal action is not something they want to pursue, but if the business talks with the scanning companies fail, well it’s an option. Some months ago they claimed to be trying to clean up their act. Supposedly they were to crack down on “affiliates” using unscrupulous means to spread their ad content.
Tag: post
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Sony still dragging heels on DRM recall
New York’s Attorney General is trying to hold Sony’s feet to the fire. Over a week after the recall of the Sony discs carrying the controversial DRM Rootkit XCP, affected discs were still available for purchase at several retail outlets. From the betanews article…
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More on the MediaMax DRM software
The OTHER Sony-BMG DRM (Digital Rights Management) software is in the news again today. freedom-to-tinker which did great research into the security flaws that the UNINSTALL process for both XCP and MediaMax had is back to give more disturbing news. What’s interesting here is that even declining the EULA for the software is no protection against having the MediaMax system service install and run….
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Worldnic DNS server outage teaches lesson…
Incidents.org has a post on a DNS server outage for Worldnic. Which effects a number of Network Solutions customers. Apparently they’re aware of the problem and are working on a fix. It doesn’t affect EVERY Network Solutions customer, there are some specifics…
To clarify the impact to the casual reader:
Not all customers of Network Solutions are affected.
No root or TLD servers are known to reside on these machines.
It’s “just” individual domains that are affected, but it might be a lot of them.
Only domains that have all their namervers on these machines will have significant impact.
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The virus arms race? is locking down systems the key?
The securityfix has a post on the “dirty little secret” about antivirus. Eugene Kaspersky of Kaspersky antivirus has posted an introspective article on the antivirus industry and it’s current problems. The biggest problem with antivirus is that it’s always one step behind the virus writers. Antivirus software only can prevent you being infected by those viruses that the antivirus software knows about. In other words a quick, fast spreading infection can hit you anywhere between hours-days before your AV vendor has an update.
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Microsoft’s unpatched security bugs
George Ou at ZDnet is mystified (as many of us are) at why Microsoft can’t patch ALL their security vulnerabilities. Most of the unpatched vulnerabilities are considered minor (as was the 6 month old bug that in the last week was discovered could be exploited for more than a Denial of Service…) His point is, if small companies (even open source groups) can patch ALL security bugs big and small, then why can’t Microsoft with it’s legions of coders?
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Linux won’t boot – corrupt MBR (Master Boot Record) repair tip
How many times have I seen this, a dual-boot system with a sideways Master Boot Record (MBR). This is one of those ways that Windows systems sometimes don’t “play well with others”. This tip at linuxhelp.blogspot.com tells of an unfortunate Windows hibernate that rendered his system unbootable. A linux cd is all it takes to repair the damage.
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VMWare’s free VMPlayer
One of the other things I had hoped to do this weekend was play around with the new VMWare player. VMware is a company that makes virtual machine software, the entry level pricing usually starting at $199 and going up from there. They’ve recently released a “Player” that can run preconfigured vmware system images. Which means a person can setup a system image in a file then zip it up and send to another person to run in their “player”.
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Sounds under the creative commons license – freesound
The last post was disabling unwanted sounds on a laptop running Mandriva 2006…. this is about an archive of Creative Commons licensed audio free for the downloading. The Freesound project boasts a collection of over 10,000 sounds. Mostly sound effects of various types. (Thunder, rain, record scratch, hens, etc. etc.) So, if you’re looking for some sound effects to customize your desktop or…
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Another wolf in sheeps clothing
I did an article a while back on “wolves in sheeps clothing” software that poses as security software but will usually turn around and bite you. Sunbeltblog has a post on another fake security center site. Keep an eye peeled for these, information is power in protecting yourself against this kind of stuff. This site is at www.updateyoursystem.com