In this article, I would like to share with you a series of business and life lessons that I have learned over the years that I believe have helped me become successful in this business.
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It injects a dll component into a running process of Skype. The Trojan can extract and save the video and audio data.

If a user’s machine is secured but the one whom he or she is talking to is not secured, then the Trojan can still steal the data of the conversation.

Based on the samples that Sophos has collected, both the executable and the injected dll component are detected as Troj/Skytap-Gen.

Source: Sophos

Sophos has posted a blog entry about malicious documents that exploit the MS06-028 vulnerability. The vulnerability was patched three years ago.

If a user’s machine has been patched, he or she will get a warning that says that “Powerpoint was unable to display some of the text, images…” when he or she tries to open the file.

A brief flicker will occur on-screen before the first slide of the presentation shows up. The malicious documents are detected as Troj/ExpPPT-G.

Source: Sophos

An Apple-specific DNS changer Trojan has been detected by Trend-Micro. It is named JAHLAV-K and it comes in a mountable Disk Image File (.dmg).

If users get infected with this file, their browsers would redirect to phishing sites and some of them would also redirect to sites that offer fake anti-virus programs.

Sophos warns that the pirated version of “Foxit Reader for Mac” comes with this trojan. “While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, we are not happy about the recent malware attacks masquerading as our Foxit Reader,” said the vice president of sales and marketing at Foxit Corporation.

Source: The Register

The Family Pack of Windows 7 is now available to be pre-ordered. Stores such as eCOST.com and Provantage are offering discount prices. eCost.com is listing it for US$146.99 while Provantage is offering it for $140.31. The regular price for this operating system is $149.99.

Previously, Microsoft announced that people can pre-order it starting on October 18. That date is still the official date of pre-ordering the Family Pack.

The Family Pack lets a user install Windows Home Premium Upgrade version on up to three computers.

Source: PCWorld

Microsoft has provided details on what is changed on the build 14.0.8089.0726 of Windows Live Mail.

According to the lead program manager, “Windows Live Mail can now properly import Outlook Express mail account settings that were transferred from a Windows XP to a new Vista or Windows 7 system using the Windows Easy Transfer wizard. Some users had problems launching Windows Live Mail and we have addressed this. In some cases, after you closed Windows Live Mail, the application would appear to close, but the wlmail.exe process would continue to run in the background.”

Source: Softpedia

Microsoft began to push version 8 of Internet Explorer to enterprises. The software can be downloaded through Windows Server Update Services.

“Even if Auto-Approve for the ‘Update Rollup’ category is on, Internet Explorer 8 will not automatically be deployed. You must approve the Internet Explorer 8 EULA before Internet Explorer 8 is deployed to your downstream clients,” said Eric Hebenstreit of Microsoft in a blog post. He is a lead program manager on the IE team.

All supported languages are available for Windows Vista, Sever 2003, and Server 2008 users.

Source: COMPUTERWORLD

The scam contains four sentences that invites the reader to test new mounts. Confidential information will be stolen if the reader falls for this trick since he or she would type in his or her account name and password on a fake site.

Sophos notes that the fradulent site looks exactly like the main login page for the real site which is WorldofWarcraft.com.

The site also prompts the user about his or her email address and his or her secret answer and question.

Source: Sophos

Sophos has posted a blog entry about a cross side-scripting worm that is targeting a facebook-type Chinese website, renren.com. It is detected as W32/PinkRen-A.

The worm exploits an XSS hole in the website, one with the AllowScriptAccess=”always” flash component attribute. This allows “non-malicious” javascript to spread the worm.

It poses as a video of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here music. The first line of the worm is, “/ I’m not a malicious worm.^^;”.

The Okurt worm used the same technique two years ago.

Source: Sophos

Linx is a small, free and portable application designed to benchmark an Intel CPU in GFlops and to test the stability of a CPU.
Linx supports both 32 and 64 bit operating systems and Single, Dual & Quad Core CPUs. While I was reviewing this application to see if its worthy of becoming the repair tool of the week, it happily maxed out all 4 cores of my QuadCore system at 100% to the point where everything loaded very slowly, but my OS remained stable.
There has even been a well known member on our forums writing a few posts (1, 2) about how this application saved him in a few hard-to-diagnose situations.

This application is a great way to really stress test a CPU so it is defnitely worth adding to your toolkit.
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