Steady Income - Working as a freelance computer technician has its peak times where you have many computers to fix in one day, and its low times where you don’t get anything to fix all day. The computer business is generally considered an unsteady stream of income because clients will usually only call you when something goes wrong. The Computer Business Kit has a Maintenance Contract that allows you to make your income more steady by doing maintenance tasks for your clients (typically monthly), such as updating virus software, windows updates, cleaning temp folders and removing dust. Its steady and usually easy work, the Computer Business Kit even helps you get them with its sales letter you can send out to local businesses.
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The Register has reported that there were new vulnerabilities on both Yahoo and AOL’s instant messengers.

The AOL vulnerability can only be exploited if the user accepts arbitrary messages or if the hacker is already on his friends list.

However, the Yahoo flaw is more vulnerable since the code was already disclosed on a mailing list. The code may run on the user’s machine but it depends on his or her security settings in Internet Explorer.

The article notes that this is the fifth time in less than three months that Yahoo Messenger has been reported that it has a critical security vulnerability. It is the ninth zero-day threat this year for this instant messenger.

Source: The Register

A security researcher has located a flaw in Adobe’s PDF file format.

The flaw affects users who use them on Windows XP operating systems but other operating systems may also be vulnerable to the flaw.

“Adobe Acrobat/Reader PDF documents can be used to compromise your Windows box. Completely!!! Invisibly and unwillingly!!! All it takes is to open a PDF document or stumble across a page which embeds one,” wrote Petko Petkov in a blog.

He already sent software developers a fix for the bug. This flaw affects all versions of PDF files.

Source: PC World

Susan Harkins of techrepublic.com has posted an article about tips on making a user’s Outlook data secure.

Here are the titles of the ten tips.

1. Protect private items.
2. Secure personal folders.
3. Change logon security
4. Make passwords strong
5. Protect against infection
6. Suspect attachments
7. Encrypt sensitive data
8. Purchase a handy-dandy decoder ring
9. Defensive zones
10. Download patches and updates.

Some of the tips only applies to users who use the Exchange client software. For a detailed explanation about these tips, click the link below. A link to a pdf version of the tips is also available on the article.

Source: TechRepublic

Its the end of the week and for some self employed techies it may have been a hard one. I am usually the first person to tell someone to follow their dreams however some people need a reality check. Working for yourself is much harder than most nine-to-five workers think.
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Techspot has reported a new flaw that affects Windows XP operating systems. The vulnerability causes a buffer overflow which means that code execution is possible.

It is only moderately critical according to the rating by Secunia.

There is a list of software which are affected by this flaw and it includes HP’s Photo & Imaging Gallery software and their All-In-One Web Release software.

The article notes that this bug was reported to Microsoft but they did not give a reply other than saying that this is not an important issue.

Source: Techspot

Various tech websites have reported that Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox which includes a fix to a critical bug that exists in the previous versions. The latest version is 2.0.0.7.

According to Mozilla’s security bulletin, this bug “could be used to install malware, steal local data, or otherwise corrupt the victim’s computer.” This bug is about how Mozilla’s Firefox internet browser interacts with Apple’s Quicktime multimedia viewer.

The flaw was patched two months ago by Mozilla but a person has found a way to get around the patch so it needed a new fix.

Source: Tgdaily

Nearly every business owner knows that they need to get their advertising out there in the public, but what many of them overlook is advertising inside their own shops. I am often amazed how many businesses poorly advertise themselves on their own premises. If you have paid to get them in your shop with outside sources of advertising such as letterbox drops and newspapers, don’t lose them by not advertising inside your shop.
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This one isn’t a software utility, this is is an actual physical tool. I wouldn’t usually have a physical product for the Repair Tool of the Week, but this tool is just so useful. It is a device with a SATA and IDE connector (both 3.5″ and 2.5″) on 1 end and USB on the other essentially turning any hard drive into an external USB hard drive.
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A woman named Joanna Rutkowska told delegates in a conference which took place in London that malware protection needs to be built into operating systems.

“Third party prevention uses tricks and hacks. And that’s no good,” she said in the conference.

“Detection technologies are currently immature and even as the approach develops it will not replace prevention technologies, which are far more mature, despite their shortcomings. Detection can never replace prevention. It’s too late to do anything if, for example, you detect that your data has been stolen. You can’t do anything to make an attacker forget what he has discovered,” she added.

Source: The Register