Microsoft and Gemalto has just announced that the upcoming .Net security devices of Gemalto will be supported by Windows Vista.

Employees of enterprises who will use the devices will have the capability of changing their username and password options through their Gemalto smart cards.

Some features of the devices include cryptograhic capabilites and two-factor authentication.

Enterprises also have the capability on installing security applications on the devices. Document signature and physical access control are some of the applications that enterprises could install on the devices.

Vista will be launched in January and the Gemalto .Net devices will also be released during that time.

Symantec has identified that the bot program, W32.Spybot.ACYR, exploits five patched Microsoft vulnerabilities and an old flaw in Symantec’s anti-virus.

The bot has compromised many universities including University of Arkansas and University of New South Wales in Australia. Previously, the most famous case happened in April 2004 because of a worm called Witty.

Symantec’s Norton-branded softwares are not affected by the flaw. However, they advised that those that use their Client Security and Antivirus Corporate Edition to update to the latest version.

Microsoft has made an update on many of their operating systems and programs to provide users with Western Australia’s Daylight Savings.

The affected operating systems includes Windows XP and Vista. Some of the programs that are affected are Outlook 2003 and SharePoint Services. Outlook 2003 must be updated manually since an automatic update is not available for this particualar program.

The users of these programs and operating systems that lives in WA has to apply the patches starting from the beginning of daylight savings for 2006 which is December 3.

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A group of Microsoft-sponsored researchers called 3Sharp has rated McAfee’s SiteAdvisor 3 out of a possible 200 points in their test of anti-phishing toolbars.

McAfee has responded to the test results. They claim that the test was unfair and that SiteAdvisor was misinterpreted for its function.

SiteAdvisor was tested against six other toolbars including Mozilla and Google.

Recently, McAfee has released their new software called SiteAdvisor Plus. This software has not been tested yet.

Sophos Anti-Virus For Vista

A new anti-virus version will be released by a company called Sophos. The newest version of Sophos Anti-Virus will fully support Microsoft’s newest operating system.

Some of the features are:

-Behavioral Genotype Protection which is designed to protect users against unknown threats.
-Capable of providing automatic updates every 10 minutes.
-Protection against PUAs which stands for Potentially Unwanted Applications.

Those that are using Windows 2000, XP, or 2003 versions can have the updated version so they would not have to do anything once they install Vista.

In our last episode on Optical drives and firmware flashing, we discussed ways to upgrade your optical drive’s speed and features. While it’s a great finishing touch for both your own and your clients’ computers, it’s not exactly a common thing you’d be called up for. One of the most hazardous, annoying, and generally panic-inducing failures that happen on any computer are hard-drive failures. While they can be moderately to extremely hard to fix, diagnosing them comes first, so you could be able to determine just how much damage the disk sustained and can sustain before it finally dies.

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There has been news reports that Microsoft’s Windows Vista Home Basic and Premium editions are not allowed to run under virtual machines. The limitation is found under the end-user license agreement of the software.

Those who download the softare from MSDN do not have this limitation. It only applies to those that will buy the software in retail stores and for OEM licenses.

One of the reasons why Microsoft has included the limitation may be that they want users to buy the other, more expesive editions of Vista.

Windows Vista, the new operating system of Microsoft, will include a control panel for parental controls. Using these controls, parents can limit their child’s online activities, the types of games that their child can play, and more.

Vista also has the capablity to track the sites that the child visited online. Parents can set a control by age group or categories such as tobacco and alcohol. It also tracks other online activies which includes tracking who the child has emailed.

Parents can also program what kind of things a child can download.

There is a flaw in the internet browser Firefox version 2.0. The flaw is called Reverse-Cross Site Request which let attackers see the saved passwords in the firefox program.

The Password Manager does not properly check the URL before filling in saved info of the users into forms.

Other versions may also be affected. Therefore, the wise thing to do is to go into Tools – Options – Privacy. Then click on the passwords tab. Check off “Remember passwords” if it has a check on it.

Mozilla is currently finding a way to fix the problem.