Next major worm outbreak coming from IM software? It would make an easy avenue for fast spreading malware to travel. Keep your AntiVirus up to date.
The Next Big Virus Threat: Instant Messaging: "In all likelihood, there are numerous vulnerabilities in today's IM clients. All software contains such holes. 'We've seen vulnerabilities in every free IM client out there,' says Chien. The difference is that, unlike most apps, an IM client is almost always exposed to the Internet."
This isn't a bad idea, cutting out all the features that the normal users do use or know about anyway. Probably makes it easier to secure if it has less points to attacks.
Microsoft Christens Cut-Rate Windows as 'XP Starter Edition': "Microsoft also stripped out some unspecified features from both products and slashed the price for the pair to 1,500 Thai Baht, or about $38 U.S. Microsoft Windows XP Home sells at retail for $225; Office XP Standard retails for $499."
Who hasn't seen this coming? They bought a romanian anti-virus company last year and, at that time, claimed that they weren't going to make a product, but instead wanted to have more information to better interoperate with existing anti-virus products.
Not that having built in anti-virus protection in Windows is a bad thing, lots of people fail to update their software, but it should be interesting to see how many AV companies die from this.
Geek.com Geek News - Microsoft to launch anti-virus product line: "Late last year the Redmond software giant acquired GeCAD Software, a Romanian-based software company, and all of GeCAD's existing anti-virus technology"
Windows Security has a new article on the differences between Host based IDS and Network based IDS. Decent intro to this ever-growing field.
Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) Part 2 - Classification; methods; techniques: "Primarily, an IDS is concerned with the detection of hostile actions. This network security tool uses either of two main techniques (described in more detail below). The first one, anomaly detection, explores issues in intrusion detection associated with deviations from normal system or user behavior. The second employs signature detection to discriminate between anomaly or attack patterns (signatures) and known intrusion detection signatures. Both methods have their distinct advantages and disadvantages as well as suitable application areas of intrusion detection."
Computer dust is toxic. This is bad news for those of us that clean computers on a regular basis, but also bad news for users of computers. The dust does circulate through the room due to the computer fans.
Geek.com Geek News - Harmful chemicals found in computer dust: "Two of the chemicals in question (penta and octa-brominated diphenyl) have already been banned and will no longer be used in production by the end of this year. The other, deca-brominated diphenyl, is still in use, but is under pressure from environmentalists to be banned as well. "
There has been a surge of new pop-ups lately, mainly because the advertisers are catching up to the tools that block them.
Geek.com Geek News - Pop-ups refusing to be blocked: "In fact, the trend is growing, as 6.4% of ads this April were via a pop-up mechanism, compared to 1.8% in April of 2002"
Good ideas related to configuring a wireless network. Keep this in mind when you set one up, and there should be a lot less "free wireless internet" on every block.
Wireless Security Primer (Part II)
Nice list of the many programs popping up lately that are malware, but claim to remove spyware. Definatly worth a look before you spend money on one of these.
Spyware Warrior: Updated list of fake spyware removers
