Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – June 9, 2009

From Starter to Ultimate: What’s really in each Windows 7 Edition? – With Windows 7, Microsoft has actually put together a basic feature set that makes sense across the board, with a consistent upgrade strategy to move between versions based on your requirements and your budget.

Video: Find and delete hidden Windows Vista and XP device drivers – Sorting out device driver problems in Windows, can be a tricky. Windows Vista and XP often retain old drivers even if you upgrade or change hardware. Unfortunately, these old, and sometimes hidden, drivers can cause hardware conflicts or make your system behave erratically — even if you’re no longer using them.

Malware poses as fake Yellowsn0w iPhone unlocker – The (now down) WordPress blog yellowsn0w221.wordpress.com was promoting Yellowsn0w-iPhone-Unlock-3G-2-2-1-final.exe at the following IP 74.52.118.244 which is now returning a reported attack site image, presumably in an attempt by the author to cover up his activities.

Symantec Says Phishers Have New Tools – Automated toolkits are making it easier to attack services such as Facebook, Twitter and financial services brands.

Snow Leopard and Windows 7: Two flavors of the same GUI? – Has Microsoft, after more than 20 years of work, finally come up with an operating system that rivals the Mac OS? Are the two just different flavors of the same GUI?

Feds Need 10,000 Cyber Security Experts – The head of the DoD-sponsored Digital Forensics Challenge said that contests like this will help the U.S. government find the talent it needs.

Microsoft is ‘Bing’ for a Day – For one day, at least, Microsoft’s Bing pulled ahead of Yahoo.

Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – June 8, 2009

10 reasons Vista haters will love Windows 7 – While some tech pundits are saying 7 isn’t really all that different from Vista — and indeed, one of the attractions for Vista users is that 7 can generally use the same drivers and run the same apps as Vista — the consensus among anti-Vista folks I know who’ve tried the 7 beta seems to be that the new operating system is “Vista done right.”

Why enterprise networks run Windows, not the Mac – Have you ever considered why the Mac is so well suited to the home environment? Has it ever occurred to you why the Mac is great with multimedia, with fun stuff like graphics and movie editing, but not so great at the serious stuff? With these, have you ever pondered as to why you very rarely see a bunch of Macs in an enterprise, corporate setting?

Study: Web Trackers Systematically Compromise Users’ Privacy – The study by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley (PDF), which was released late Monday, indicates that Web users may be tracked (“bugged,” as the researchers put it) by dozens of sources on a visit to a single site. In a single month, they found 100 monitoring agents on one site, blogspot.com.

With behavioral data, companies value, avoid customers – Sears decided to track very precise details about customers’ online browsing, including details about online shopping, drug-prescription records, video rentals, library-borrowing histories, names and addresses of e-mail correspondents as well as bank statements. The problem? Sears didn’t tell the customers just how much it would track.

Tony La Russa sues Twitter over alleged fake tweets – Let he who has not been fooled by a fake Twitter page cast the first stone.

Judge Throws Out Wiretapping Lawsuits – Federal judge tosses out more than three dozen lawsuits filed against telecom companies for allegedly taking part in the government’s e-mail and telephone eavesdropping program without court approval.

Patch Tuesday To Include 10 Bulletins – Microsoft has six Windows, three Office, and one Internet Explorer vulnerability.

Trend Micro Updates Free HouseCall Scanning Service – HouseCall 7.0 includes a new user interface and streamlined processes resulting in shorter scan times.

Autorun Worm Invades ZIP – Worm has a unique way of hiding — by copying itself in every ZIP-compressed file it finds on a system.

The 6 Worst Cloud Security Mistakes – A look at the most common missteps when choosing a cloud-based service — and how to avoid them.

Tech Thoughts Net News – June 7, 2009

The Risky Solid-State Drive – Solid-state drives (SSDs) are the latest in a line of crummy flash-based storage technologies. Why am I the only one who remembers the hybrid hard disk fiasco?

Microsoft Bing – Bing’s search results are on a par with those of the other two big players, but its organized, consistent layout and helper features for travel, shopping, and health vault it over the top.

Tell me; is this a safe and legitimate email? – I am going to try something a little different with this article as a way to learn from each other. I am going to make it interactive and request your participation….

New FinallyFast – Same Scam – Exposed! – Anyone who watches cable TV, will be aware of a “wonder product” for computers that goes by the names of FinallyFast and FastAtLast (and also, a very similar product, “Stop-Sign”). FinallyFast claims to increase your Internet speed by “up to 375%”, and “cure” all sorts of “computer errors” which can make your machine seem slow.

Postcards from a family member really contain malware – SophosLabs has intercepted a widespread attack by hackers who have spammed out a Trojan horse posing as an electronic greeting card from a family member.

Trust And Web Ad Services – Well-respected, highly secure Websites commonly infect the people who surf them. So if they are so secure, then why does this keep happening?

Hacking Tool Lets A VM Break Out And Attack Its Host – ‘Cloudburst’ memory-corruption exploit released with Immunity’s new version of Canvas penetration testing software.

Tech Thoughts Net News – June 6, 2009

Build It: Recession Special – Need a new desktop on a tight budget? Here’s how to build a surprisingly robust system for about $400.

Nifty Clicks: LegalZoom, Widgets, PDFs, Cheap Gas – Andrew Lock, irreverent marketing guru and Web host of Help! My Business Sucks, shares more of his favorite cool tools to make your life a bit easier.

WatchDox Aims to Secure E-mail and Beyond – For all the talk about protecting small business data, e-mail remains the big pachyderm in the security room. Think about it. You spend hours preparing confidential business proposals, price lists or designs. Once you send them out into the world electronically, you no longer have control over who views, forwards, prints or copies them.

Microsoft Adds Another Porn Filter to Bing – Microsoft has added an additional filter to its Bing search engine to help block what some have called an unexpected portal to porn.

Social Engineering Fueled by Social Networks is a Potent Threat – Security pros still worry about protecting what’s left of the digial perimeter. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter, however, are making it far easier to target–or spear phish–information from hapless users.

StrongWebmail CEO’s mail account hacked via XSS – A Webmail service that touts itself as hack-proof and offered $10,000 to anyone who could break into the CEO’s e-mail has lost the challenge. A trio of hackers successfully compromised the e-mail using persistent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability and are now claiming the bounty.

Typo’d Google domains in Top 10 malware exploit sites – Misspelled versions of two popular Google services are among the Top 10 sites hosting exploits for use in drive-by malware download attacks. On the heels of two massive drive-by attacks – thousands of hijacked sites launching attacks via the browser – Google released a list showing that malicious hackers are typo-squatting on its domains.

Tech Thoughts Net News – June 5, 2009

Microsoft’s Bing Dinged for Porn Access – An Internet filtering company claims the new Microsoft search engine makes it too easy to access pornography.

Microsoft Will Offer Windows 7 Upgrade with Vista, Announces Server Launch – Microsoft emphasized locked-in release dates for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and indicated that those consumers purchasing a system with Windows Vista will have the opportunity to upgrade to Windows 7 as part of the original deal.

FTC shuts down notorious botnet ISP – The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has shut down a U.S.-based Internet Service Provider for recruiting, hosting and actively participating in the distribution of spam, child pornography, and other harmful electronic content.

Scareware Arrives on Twitter in Latest Attack – Be careful of links in Twitter. The latest malware attack on the social network links to a video hosted on a site that installs scareware as victims watch the video.

Microsoft Squashing Six Critical “June Bugs” in IE, Windows, and Office Apps – The software maker said today that it deliver a total of ten patches next week, which is about average for a Patch Tuesday. Six of the 10, however, are rated critical.

Dress rehearsal for Opera 10 beta – Opera 10 beta is the latest incarnation of a browser that currently lags in sixth place in terms of market share, according to Net Applications. With just 0.72 percent, it trails Internet Explorer (65.5 percent), Firefox (22.5 percent), Safari (8.43 percent), Chrome (1.8 percent) and Netscape (0.74 percent).

Drive-By Attacks vs. Social Engineering – Scary reports have been in the press recently of thousands of compromised web sites attacking PCs. How many? 20,000, 30,000, even 40,000 web sites have been reported as hacked for this purpose.

The HTML served by the web sites is changed by the attackers to include attack code against clients, specifically “drive-by” attack code so that they may not even notice the attack. As with most phishing sites, these web pages are legitimate web sites, innocent victims as much as the clients they attack.

Sun Delivers New Release of OpenSolaris – At its CommunityOne event, Sun Microsystems introduced a new version of its OpenSolaris operating system, the OpenSolaris 2009.06 operating system.

Attack Targets Microsoft Outlook Users – A new kind of phishing e-mail found by Trend Micro tries to trick the user into disclosing their e-mail server and account information.

AMD Introduces Phenom II, Athlon II Dual-Core Processors – To its Athlon and Phenom processor lines AMD has added the Athlon II X2, its fastest Athlon processor, and the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition, its fastest dual-core yet. Both focus on energy and pricing and offer benefits with Microsoft Windows 7, which AMD suggests puts it a step ahead of competitor Intel.

Tech Thoughts Net News – June 3, 2009

Windows 7 to launch October 22; RTM next month – In addition, Microsoft has confirmed its plans to make an upgrade option available for PC makers to offer customers who purchase a new PC with Windows Vista between the beginning of the “Tech Guarantee” period and the general-availability date.

Windows 7: The incentives are coming – Consumers aren’t going to have to wait until fall. There was a report earlier this year on the TechARP enthusiast site claiming that Microsoft and its PC partners were planning to launch an upgrade program via which customers buying new Vista PCs, as of July 1, would get coupons for a free copy of Windows 7.

Bing playing fast and loose with fair use? – Search result thumbnails should not “supplant the need for the original” or harm the market or value of the images as used on the original site. But Bing appears to go beyond that.

AppScout: Hands On with PeopleBrowsr – As you gain followers and start following more people, it can get really tough to keep track of your Twitter feed. Web service PeopleBrowsr makes it easy with a ton of features and multiple display modes designed to fit the type of user you are.

12 Free Security Apps – Just because the recession has left you penniless doesn’t mean you can’t keep your computer safe. We have a dozen great security apps that don’t cost a thing.

China blocks Twitter access – Web User: Twitter launches new homepage changes China has blocked access to social-networking services including Twitter ahead of the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square.

QuickTime, iTunes flaws fixed – iMac Security vulnerabilities in Apple’s iTunes and QuickTime software have been fixed in updates of both programs.

Simplify Your Life With Free Web Services – Dig into some great online tools: an alternative to Google Alerts, a site that tracks your favorite bands, and a service that updates all your social networks.

Tech Thoughts Net News – June 2, 2009

Are you ready to ditch XP for Windows 7? – According to NetApplications, Windows XP is still the OS of choice for users out there in ComputerLand, with some two-thirds of users still making use of the aging OS. By comparison, Vista is struggling to capture a quarter of the market share. Vista’s “WOW!” failed to capture the attention of users, as many chose to stick with their older OS.

20,000 sites hit with drive-by attack code – Hackers have broken into more than 20,000 legitimate Web sites to plant malicious code to be used in drive-by malware attacks.

Network Security & Hardware: Five Hacks That Will Challenge Obama’s Cyber-security Plans.

Bing: A First Look – Web search is dominated by Google – so much so that the verb ‘to Google’ has been included in dictionaries since 2006. Live Search had failed to make much of an impression on Google, so what chance does Bing have?

Yahoo 360° to close in July – Yahoo is telling users of the Yahoo 360° service to move their blog entries and photographs before the service is shut on July 13.

Obama’s Cyber-Security Plan: Deja Vu All Over Again – President Obama issues his long-awaited cyber-security plan to near unanimous praise from the technology industry, not unlike the industry’s cheers that greeted former President Bush’s 2003 National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, which has done little to secure the nation’s networks.

Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – June 1, 2009

Obama’s Cybersecurity Initiative Wins Praise – U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement Friday of a new cybersecurity push by the U.S. government won widespread praise from the technology industry, with many people saying his attention to the issue is a major step toward better securing the nation’s computer networks.

Microsoft sneaks in Firefox extension via Update – The good news is that Microsoft is writing extensions for Firefox. The bad news is the Redmond giant is slipping the extension onto systems without notifying users and making it difficult to get rid of the extension.

Nine worst social media fails of 2009… thus far – Social media has taken the marketing world by storm. Major agencies and internal divisions are hosting think tank sessions to try and come up with witty ideas to market their products and drive customer loyalty. Some of the ideas they come up with are great. But others, let’s face it, are serious thuds.

Microsoft: No more three-app limit in Windows 7 Starter Edition – Microsoft is eliminating one of the biggest sticking points for Windows 7 Starter Edition – the three-application-concurrency limitation.

Gwabbit for BlackBerry: – Gwabbit is a Microsoft Outlook add-on, and now a BlackBerry application, that helps business professionals who get the names, numbers, and e-mail addresses from a contact’s e-mail into their address book without all the tedious typing.

Mozilla testing near-final – Firefox 3.5 RC1 is expected in a few weeks, spokeswoman Melissa Shapiro said Friday, though one developer told CNET News he hoped it would arrive in less than two.

Tech Thoughts Daily Security Alerts – May 30, 2009

Panda Security launches the new Beta of Panda Global Protection 2010, its most complete security solution – Panda Security, The Cloud Security Company, has released a beta version of Panda Global Protection 2010, it’s most complete anti-malware suite for home users. This beta version is available here.

Obama Moves Cybersecurity into the White House – President Obama today unveiled a broad-ranging plan to shore up the nation’s digital infrastructure, pledging to elevate cybersecurity on the national security agenda and establish an office in the White House to coordinate efforts across the various agencies.

Microsoft Warns of DirectShow Vulnerability – Microsoft is reporting that a vulnerability in DirectShow, a framework for playing various media types, is being exploited in the wild in some versions of Windows.

Stupid way to end piracy – The file itself comes with a Winamp icon on it, so it looks like a regular mp3 file to the user. When the file is clicked it modifies some registry entries related to WinLogon ….

Panda Security’s weekly report on viruses and intruders – Real-time information and resources to stay safe from virus attacks.

Tech Thoughts Daily Security Alerts – May 29, 2009

Microsoft to patch new DirectX hole – Microsoft on Thursday said it is working on a security patch for a vulnerability in its DirectX streaming media technology in Windows that could allow someone to take complete control of a computer using a maliciously crafted QuickTime file.

McAfee Airs First Episode Of Cybercrime Series – The Business of Hacking You” exposes techniques used by international cybercriminals.

IM account info found online – Crime Security firm Symantec has warned that information relating to instant-messaging accounts such as email addresses and passwords can be easily found online.

Bing search engine launched – Bing is promising to give relevant information with features including Best Match, which identifies the best result for popular queries and Instant Answers, which provides quick results in the body of the first search results page.

Tech Insight: How To Protect Your Organization From Malicious Insiders – New report offers insights on how to keep the bad apples from spoiling your company’s whole barrel of data.

90 percent of e-mail is spam, Symantec says – Spammers seem to be working a little bit harder these days, according to Symantec, which reported Tuesday that unsolicited e-mail made up 90.4 percent of messages on corporate networks last month.