Category: Computer

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New Laptop-Protection System “BackStopp” Can Automatically Wipe Hard Disk

Laptop

A U.K. company has come up with a nifty laptop-protection system that can automatically wipe hard disk data on machines taken from authorized locations.

Sold as a hosted service, Virtuity’s BackStopp server monitors a protected laptop using any medium available, including the Internet, or locally using Wi-Fi or GSM.

If a laptop is reported stolen — or even just moved from a designated space – the system can reach out and execute a file deletion routine that clears the laptop of all important data.

For laptops stolen while switched off, the location system can use RFID tags to make a judgement about whether that movement is within allowed parameters. A full log of all deletions is sent back to the service center once completed.

Its makers even boast that BackStopp can use a webcam, if one is installed, to take pictures of the thieves, sending these back for analysis without the offenders knowing.

Data destruction routines met standards set down by the U.S. Department of Defense’s National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual, the company said, ensuring that it could not be resurrected. An important aspect of the system is that a thief would not know it was in operation until after data had been wiped, making it extremely hard to circumvent.

Prices for BackStopp start at $19 per month for each laptop being protected.

source:pcworld 

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Microsoft Plans To Authorize A Proxy Fight To Oust Yahoo

 Micro-yahoo

Microsoft plans to strengthen its pursuit of Yahoo this week when it authorizes a proxy fight to get rid of Yahoo’s board, meaning the 19-day-old acquisition attempt will soon turn a darker shade of ugly, according to The New York Times.

The proxy fight will cost Microsoft between $20 million and $30 million, much less than having to significantly up its offer for Yahoo, The Times reported Tuesday morning, quoting anonymous sources.

The aggressive move would be reliable with Microsoft’s statements hinting that it’s willing to acquire Yahoo via unsympathetic means if necessary. Yahoo’s board rejected unanimously Microsoft’s offer, calling it too low.

source:pcworld 

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Intel Revives Centrino Brand Name for Montevina platform

Intel

Intel is planning to rename its brand name for the upcoming notebook Montevina platform to Centrino 2 in order to clear up confusion for consumers, according to sources at notebook makers.This new platform will be launched at Computex 08 which will be held in June in Taipei.

This new launch will mark the transition of Intel’s notebook processors to a 45nm platform, with the launch of 6 new CPUs all running at a 1066 MHz FSB. The core-speeds for each of these processors will range from 2.0 GHz to 3.06 Ghz. These will be further followed up by the release of an astonishing, seven SFF (small form factor) 45nm processors similar to the one that have been used in the Macbook Air.

source:digitimes 

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Windows 2008 Products Are Really Reedy For Launch??

MS-2008

In Los Angeles on Feb. 27, Microsoft will formally introduce Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008. In many respects, they need no introduction. As the flagship products in Microsoft’s enterprise line, they’re used by millions of customers. Sales of Microsoft’s servers and tools have grown more than 10% annually for the last 22 quarters, fueling an $11.2 billion business. Windows Server Enterprise Edition alone grew at 35% last quarter.

The game tables are idle and the hallways are quiet on Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus. All heads are down as the company’s developers race to meet their deadline for what’s billed as Microsoft’s biggest enterprise product launch ever. They’re not even close to making it.

But it’s been five years since Microsoft released a new server operating system–Windows Server 2003–and three years since it upgraded the database that runs on top of it, SQL Server. So the hoopla isn’t surprising, and, according to InformationWeek’s just-completed survey, there’s pent-up demand. But Microsoft–as it too often does–has fallen behind on two of the key pieces. SQL Server 2008’s delivery date has been pushed back to the third quarter, and the much-anticipated Hyper-V virtual machine hypervisor is running as much as six months behind Windows Server 2008, meaning Hyper-V probably won’t ship until the third quarter, either.

In other words, it will still be months before IT departments can push ahead with Windows Server virtualization or SQL Server upgrades, and it’s impossible to know the quality of those releases in the meantime. Microsoft’s vision for data center automation–a work-in-progress for the past five years that it now calls “Dynamic IT”–remains unfinished business. We’ll get back to that, but first the basics:

  • Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing earlier this month and will be generally available March 1. In addition to Hyper-V, major improvements include Server Core for task-specific deployment, Server Manager for simplified management, and a new version of Microsoft’s Web server, Internet Information Services 7.0.
  • SQL Server 2008’s key advances include no-fuss data encryption and a resource governor for tuning performance.
  • Visual Studio 2008 shipped in January. Its distinguishing features are the ability to develop applications for multiple versions of the .Net Framework and a focus on Web development.

Microsoft officials are trying to assuage concerns about Windows Server 2008’s compatibility with the applications customers use. A major compatibility program is under way, with 80 apps expected to be certified for use with Windows Server 2008 by late February and hundreds more vetted by Microsoft to work with the new operating system. The company has set up a Web site (www.windowsservercatalog.com) to track progress.

Adam Baum, an IT architect with the city of Mesa, Ariz., says Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 are evidence that Microsoft’s data center strategy is progressing. “They’ve listened and added what people wanted,” he says.

 

source:informationweek
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New Microsoft Forums

MS-Logo

Microsoft has been running newsgroups and forums to provide community support for its products.. incidentally, many MVPs come from forums where they are TOP contributors to the forums..

but this isn’t about MVPs today 🙂

it is about MS forums… to begin with Microsoft used Community Server from Telligent to host its forums. And now they are revamping the same on to its own code.. in the background, there seems to be an entire Community Platform emerging with blogs, tags, forums & wikis within Microsoft.. (very much in line with MSs focus on community)..

The new forums are available at:
http://forums.msdn.microsoft.com/

http://forums.technet.microsoft.com/

http://forums.community.microsoft.com/

source:reuters 

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Hackers Attack Code For Works Bug Using Microsoft Products

MS-bugs

No sooner had Microsoft issued a massive set of security patches for its software than hackers started posting code showing how to exploit one of the flaws.

The proof-of-concept code, posted Wednesday to the Milw0rm Web site, exploits a bug in the Microsoft Works file converter software that is part of Office 2003 and can be used to run unauthorized software on a victim’s computer.

The flaw also affects Works 8 and Works Suite 2005. To fall prey to the attack, a victim would first have to open a malicious Works attachment.

Hackers have uncovered many of these file-format bugs in recent years and they are generally not used in widespread attacks. In fact, security vendor Symantec predicts that we’ll see fewer of these attacks in the months ahead as online criminals increasingly rely on browser bugs to do their dirty work.

Still, Periman expects criminals to try out this latest attack code. “It’s so simple,” he said. “All you have to do is get someone to open the document.”

The software vendor released 11 sets of patches this week, fixing 17 flaws in its products, but this is the first exploit code to pop up following the updates. A second program exploiting one of these vulnerabilities — this one in an ActiveX control used by the Visual FoxPro database — was posted to Milw0rm in September, months before Microsoft patched the issue.

source:pcworld 

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The Web Is Scarier Than Most People Realize- Google

Hacker

The Web is scarier than most people realize, according to research published recently by Google.

The search engine giant trained its Web crawling software on billions of Web addresses over the past year looking for malicious pages that tried to attack their visitors. They found more than 3 million of them, meaning that about one in 1,000 Web pages is malicious, according to Neils Provos, a senior staff software engineer with Google.

These Web-based attacks, called “drive-by downloads” by security experts, have become much more common in recent years as firewalls and better security practices by Microsoft have made it harder for worms and viruses to directly attack computers.

In the past year the Web sites of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” movie and the Miami Dolphins were hacked, and the MySpace profile of Alicia Keys was used to attack visitors.

Criminals are getting better at this kind of work. They have built very successful automated tools that poke and prod Web sites, looking for programming errors and then exploit these flaws to install the drive-by download software. Often this code opens an invisible iFrame page on the victim’s browser that redirects it to a malicious Web server. That server then tries to install code on the victim’s PC. “The bad guys are getting exceptionally good at automating those attacks,” said Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security vendor Grisoft.

In response, Google has stepped up its game. One of the reasons it has been scouring the Web for malicious pages is so that it can identify drive-by-download sites and warn Google searchers before they visit them. Nowadays about 1.3 percent of all Google search queries list malicious results somewhere on the first few pages.

Google’s Provos has this advice for Web surfers: Turn automatic updates on. “You should always run your software as updated as possible and install some kind of antivirus technology,” he said.

But he also thinks that Webmasters will have to get smarter about building secure Web sites. “I think it will take concentrated efforts on all parts,” for the problem to go away, he said.

source:pcworld 

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Firefox 3.0 Beta: It was Having Hundreds of Memory Leaks Before

Mozilla

Firefox 3.0’s memory consumption is “dramatically improved,” claimed Mozilla Corp.’s chief engineer Thursday, because developers have aggressively attacked the open-source browser’s notorious memory “leaks.”

“We’ve been working on memory leaks for years,” said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s vice president of engineering. “But it really started to come together in the last six months.”

Another milestone, however, might have been three months ago, when a member of the Mozilla board of directors said attention had to be paid to Firefox’s memory allocation if the browser was going to compete in the RAM-tight mobile market.

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” said Schroepfer. “Our memory usage is significantly improved, and dramatically better than Internet Explorer 7.”

But the work’s not finished. “Most of the big memory issues are resolved, and we’re seeing some pretty good numbers on memory consumption, but some additional work is one reason why we felt we needed Beta 4.”

In the run-up to releasing Beta 4, Mozilla acknowledged that it would take the time to do at least one more beta build. According to Schroepfer, Beta 4’s code freeze date — when all work stops in preparation for the build to enter final testing before release — has been set as Feb. 26.

 

source:pcworld
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‘Apple MAC’ Next Major Target For Hackers & Crooks

MAC

A web poll of 355 computer users, conducted by security firm Sophos after the discovery of the first financially motivated malware for Mac OS X, has revealed that 93% believe Apple Macs will be targeted more in future. Not surprisingly, however, half of those polled said they did not believe the problem would be as great as that faced by users of Microsoft Windows.

The survey results, revealed in a Sophos podcast entitled “Big Mac attack or super-sized hype?”, purportedly show that Apple Mac users are becoming less optimistic about the likelihood of their computers being attacked in future. According to Sophos, a similar survey two years ago, found only 79% believed that Macintosh computers would become more commonly targeted by hackers. However, as neither survey identified how many Mac users were among the respondents, it is difficult to see how a conclusion about the optimism of Mac users concerning their computer security can be drawn.

In the latest Sophos web poll, the following questions were asked between 9 January-7 February 2008 with the resulting responses:

The first financially motivated malware for Macintoshes has been discovered. Do you think in the future Macs will be targeted more often?

Yes, but not as much as Windows        50%
Yes                                                            43%
No                                                            07%

“Yes, the Macintosh malware threat is a concern – but it’s important to put it in perspective. Sophos’s podcast discusses the history and evolution of Macintosh malware, helping IT administrators better understand the problem and protect their systems.”

Last month Sophos published its annual Security Threat Report, which described how financially motivated hackers had targeted Apple Mac computers with malware for the first time.

 

source:itwire
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Microsoft moved up the Vista SP1 Release for Tech Users

SP1

It was the second time in three days that Microsoft changed the release of the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) version of Vista SP1 for the IT professionals and developers who pay hundreds of dollars annually for the right to download and test software before it’s offered to the general public.

Microsoft Corp. has moved up the availability of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) for TechNet and Microsoft Developer Network subscribers, saying they will be able to download the update by Friday at the latest.

Saying “We heard you,” an unidentified Microsoft employee posting to the MSDN Subscriptions blog spelled out the new timetable: “Windows Vista SP1 anticipated to be available to MSDN Subscribers by end of week,” the blogger wrote.

On the TechNet Plus blog, where subscribers had denounced Microsoft’s decision to delay the final code until early next month — and then in a change announced Monday to a vague “later this month” — another Microsoft blogger confirmed that SP1 would also be available to TechNet subscribers on the same day. “It will become available for both programs at once,” said Kathy Dixon of Microsoft.

Dixon was responding to a user who noted the availability change for MSDN subscribers.

Although Microsoft did not specify the day, Friday is the most likely candidate; earlier this week, the company said it would let Volume Licensing customers download the bits on Friday.

Although Microsoft did not specify the day, Friday is the most likely candidate; earlier this week, the company said it would let Volume Licensing customers download the bits on Friday

source:pcworld