Last week, there was a news about Windows Home Server which says that it corrupts files if users are putting it under extreme loads. Now, Microsoft has confirmed and reproduced the glitch and they noted that this bug occurs under these conditions:

1. A home server is under an extreme load. For example, lots of files are being copied to the home server
2. At the same time, a user is editing files that are already saved in a shared folder on the home server.
3. The program that the user is using to edit these files is one of the programs that are listed in this article.

Source: The Register

Gamershell.com has reported that if NVIDIA has released a new set of drivers which fixes some experience issues for the first-person shooting game, Unreal Tournament 3. They note that users only need to download and install the drivers if they are experiencing any problems for that game.

It is available for the 32-bit version of Windows XP and both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista.

These three versions can downloaded on their website too.

Source: Gamers Hell

A few days ago, F-Secure posted an article on their weblog about a Christmas malware which features a website with women who are wearing a Santa Claus outfit.

The spam messages redirects the users to merrychristmasdude.com and the site has a new version of the Storm Worm. F-Secure detected this as Email-Worm.Win32.Zhelatin.pd.

They were released on Christmas Eve according to the blog and two screen shots were included in it. The first one shows what the site looks like and the second one shows a console with a directory and IP addresses.

Source: F-Secure

Secunia APS has reported that over 20% of applications which run on Windows are missing security patches.

Jakob Balle who is the manager of Secunia’s development said, “More than 20% of all applications installed on users’ PCs have known security flaws, but the users have yet to install the patch provided by the vendor of [the] product.” This figure was based on 4,200 different programs.

The ratio was an improvement compared to a previous report that Secunia PSI scanned.

PSI runs on four different operating systems which are Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Server 2003.

Source: COMPUTERWORLD

F-Secure has posted an article in their weblog about a spam that they discovered which is about a greeting card for the New Year.

The card redirects the email recipients to uhavepostcard.com and F-Secure has a screenshot on their website about the spam.

They also have two updates about this particular spam. First, they saw a new domain called happycards2008.com and the filename of the virus is happy-2008.exe. The second update is similar to the first. The changes were the domain and the filename. The new domain is called newyearcards2008.com and the revised filename is happynewyear2008.exe.

Source: F-SECURE

Computerworld has released an article about a problem in Windows Home Server.

Microsoft has posted a support document which says, “When you use certain programs to edit files on a home computer that uses Windows Home Server, the files may become corrupted when you save them to the home server.”

These programs include Vista Photo Gallery, OneNote and Outlook from the Office suite, and Quiken and Quickbooks software.

“Until an update for Windows Home Server is available, we recommend that [you] do not use the programs that are listed to save or to edit program-specific files that are stored on a Windows Home Server-based system,” the document added.

Source: COMPUTERWORLD

CPU-Z is a great application, but it doesnt show the temperature of a CPU. GPU-Z is also a great application, but it doesnt show the temperature of the GPU. Core-Temp will show the temperatures of each computer core, but not much else.

So, the creators of CPU-Z have just released a new application called CPU-ID Hardware Monitor which seems to fill the holes that the above programs missed. CPU-ID Hardware Monitor is a stand alone, freeware utility which shows the voltages of the system on each rail, the system temperature (in total and on each core), the fan speeds and the temperature of the GPU. It will even show you the temperatures of each hard drive.
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A new update has been released by Apple a few days after releasing the 2007-009 security update. It is the version 1.1 of the update.

It is available for both Leopard and Tiger. If a user is using Leopard, then the download size is 35.6 MB. If he or she uses Tiger, then he or she can get download either the PowerPC version which is 15.9 MB or the Universal Binary version which is more than 11 MB larger.

The only difference between this and the first version is that it resolves an issue with the Safari internet browser.

Source: AppleInsider

I love my job. I really do, and I think of myself lucky to be as fortunate in business as I have been. However, there has been many times were I have really wanted to say something to a client but didn’t, because it would be unprofessional. This post is intended as a joke. However, all of these have really happened to me during my time as an onsite computer technician.
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A new flaw has been discovered by a security firm and researchers from Google that exists in contents of Adobe Flash files. They are the files that end with .swf.

They can be attacked by injecting malicious strings through cross-side scripting.

“Lots of people are vulnerable, and right now there are no protections available other than to remove those SWFs and wait for the authoring tools and/or Flash player to be updated,” says one fo the authors of the book, Hacking Exposed Web 2.0: Web 2.0 Security Secrets and Solutions.

Over 500,000 applets are affected according to a web search which return results from media, government, and corporate sites.

Source: The Register