An article has been posted at The Register which compares the security response of Apple against Microsoft. The study was made at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology by two people named Stefan Frei and Bernard Tellenback.

The results showed them that while Apple is getting worse in this issue, Microsoft is improving.

“While I think that there are quite a few reasons why this is probably so, I’d be inclined to say that Apple’s biggest problem appears to be that they treat every new vulnerability as a potential PR disaster rather than an opportunity to visibly reinforce their work in securing their customers,” writes a man from IBM’s X-Force.

Source: The Register

If you are working as a Computer Technician, chances are you have been asked “do you build new computers?”. In most cases when the client asks this, they are just shopping around considering their options.

When I am asked this, I try sway them from just considering me as “another option” to the person they actually buy the new computer from. Here is what I say:
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PC World has posted an article that corporate users of OS X 10.5, Leopard, has a higher level of satisfaction using the operating system than Windws Vista users. This is based on the study that was conducted by ChangeWave Research.

7% of the respondents said that their company would purchase Apple computers in the next 90 days. “Apple held at 7%, the same as November,” said Paul Carton who is the director of research.

He also said that, “Apple continues to set the standard for corporate customer satisfaction.” The research also found that fewer companies will purchase Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba notebooks.

Source: PC World

Various tech sites have reported that Nvidia drivers are the main reason why the Windows Vista operating systems crashes.

The second place goes to Microsoft drivers followed by ATI which is another graphic card vendor. Intel is fourth on the list.

”Microsoft takes exhaustive steps in testing hardware compatibility internally, as well as by working directly with our partners, to address compatibility long before customers experience an issue. However, testing can only be conducted under so many different circumstances, particularly with such an exceptionally complex code that graphic drivers have,” stated by Microsoft representatives.

Source: eFluxMedia

In my last post about the coming recession, I talked about how the recession doesn’t appear to be effecting computer technicians as much. In fact, most computer technicians I have talked to are seeing increased earnings over the last few months. I looked further into why this was happening and found some interesting information.
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The beta version of Microsoft’s Windows Search 4.0 software is now available. It is a tool that can help users to find audio, image, text, and other type of files on their computers. It was previously known as MSN Desktop Search and Windows Desktop Search.

Techtree has two links that are included on their article about this news. One is a location where users can download it and the second is a link where users can find out more details about it.

It is faster than the search tool in Vista according to Microsoft. This is due to the bugs that they have fixed.

Source: Techtree

Only a few webmasters have removed buggy flash files on their website/servers according too a security expert from Google.

“I doubt many apps have been cleaned up at all. It’s a pain in the ass to fix these,” said Rich Cannings. He estimates that at least 10,000 websites have these Flash content that has serious vulnerabilities.

“A lot of other companies feel the kind of pain we feel. I had a few major banks email me and say, ‘Oh my God. This is a really big problem.’” he added.

A Google search revealed over 500,000 buggy applets last December.

Source: The Register

Two security vulnerabilities have been located by an Argentinian researcher on Apple’s web browser, Safari.

One of the flaws let a website fake their web address and enter a different content or an alternate web page.

The second is about a situation where a user downloads a file with a very long filename. If this occur, then the browser would cause a buffer overflow and an execution of an arbitrary code may happen.

Secunia, a security firm, notes that these two are “highly critical” flaws. Apple has not made a comment yet on this issue according to The Inquirer’s article.

Source: The Inquirer

Check Flash (aka ChkFlsh) is a small, stand alone, portable utility designed to check the health of flash drives. The most useful part of Check Flash is that it can run a read and write test on the drive. During the read and write test it fills the flash drive up with a temporary file to make sure the flash drive is the size that it says it is. This is an issue as many fake flash drives like the cheap ones available on eBay are hacked to report to Windows that they are 8GB or so, but are really only 64mb.
Check Flash also has a “drive map” section which will show you any bad sectors on your flash drive.

Check Flash can also run a readability test on the drive and save/load an image of the files on the drive for backup purposes.
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F-Secure has posted a blog entry about a malware that they have received via email. They included many screen shots of the spam and explain thoroughly what the email is all about.

There is a PDF attachment and they noted that it is not a normal PDF document. The file takes advantage of an Adobe Acrobat exploit.

They explained that the exploit drops a program called winkey.exe in a user’s C:\Program Files\Update\ directory and that this software collects whatever a user types on his or her keyboard to a server that is running at a .org domain.

Source: F-Secure