Jay Munro

When Microsoft released Office XP, users were suddenly faced with having to “activate” the product in addition to entering a valid product key. That proprietary activation scheme helped Microsoft cut down on piracy, but it raised privacy concerns among users. Much of the fervor eventually died down, however, until late 2002 when Intuit shipped its […]

The big news this week is the huge release of patches from Microsoft. On the heels of last months ground-shaking JPEG vulnerability, Microsoft announced nine security updates, MS04-029 through MS04-038. Of the group, six have a critical severity rating. Collectively, the nine updates fix over 20 specific problems. Within the critical updates, such as MS04-032, […]

The Watch The end of summer lull for viruses and worms continues. Were still seeing new versions of RBots, and a new Bagle, but nothing with teeth. The big news appears to be the anticipation of a viral exploit of the JPEG vulnerability that Microsoft patched earlier this month. Within days of the release of […]

The Watch The end of summer lull for viruses and worms continues. Were still seeing new versions of RBots, and a new Bagle, but nothing with teeth. The big news appears to be the anticipation of a viral exploit of the JPEG vulnerability that Microsoft patched earlier this month. Within days of the release of […]

The Watch Last week, Microsoft released a security bulletin reporting vulnerability in the graphics subsystem in Windows and a wide range of Microsoft products. This week, Netcraft, the UK Web monitoring company, is reporting that exploit code for the flaw is available on the Web. In a Sept. 17 article, Netcraft notes that the proof […]

Like Bagle.AQ infected messages of two weeks ago, a flood of infected e-mails started hitting users mailboxes Tuesday bearing the subject line “foto”, and an unencrypted zip file “foto.zip”. However, it doesnt seem to be able to get much farther than the initial spam. The zip file contains an HTML file that when executed drops […]

Windows XP Service Pack 2 promises to raise the security bar for the sometimes beleaguered operating system. Unfortunately, one of the new features could be spoofed so that it reports misleading information about system security, or worse, lets a malicious program watch for an opportunity to do damage without being detected. The feature is the […]

Microsoft on Aug. 25 is rolling out the Windows XP Service Pack 2 to the new Windows Update site so the public can update automatically. For the majority of home users, its a case of “just do it.” Meanwhile, MyDoom is back with a new variation that downloads a particularly nasty Trojan called Backdoor.Ratos.A. The […]

On June 28 Merijn Bellekom, the prolific programmer and spyware crusader, announced the final update of CWShredder, the standard for removing the infamous CoolWebSearch (CWS). CoolWebSearch is the name of a variety of different browser hijackers, all of which redirect users to coolwebsearch.com and other sites affiliated with its operators. Merijn, a graduate student at […]

What started as a dribble early on Monday became a fusillade of e-mail messages from countless senders, but all bearing Zip files containing the potentially malicious Bagle.AQmm (aka Bagle.AC) virus. While still only a medium alert on most virus watch sites, the speed with which the virus has spread and the amount of spam mail […]