“If the attacker can figure out a flaw in the way IE 8 is actually doing that output encoding and then create a specific string the attacker will know will be transformed into an actual attack, they could use that to input a value … that actually results in an attack firing on the page. This could be a way to introduce an attack into a page that didn’t have a vulnerability otherwise,” said Michael Coates of Aspect Security.

Source: The Register

If Automatic Update is enabled on the operating system, it will be installed automatically says Microsoft.

The ability to suppress backup warnings and waking up a Windows 7 machine at a scheduled backup time as well as instructing it to sleep after the backup finishes are two of the new features of Power Pack 3.

Source: Digital Home

2,000 Indian companies have or in the process of installing Windows 7. Infosys, Wipro, Maruti, Bangalore, and Manipal University are some of these companies.

“We also see a reasonable amount of Windows XP (which has been around for eight years) on machines. We expect the natural refresh cycle over the next 12-24 months,” says Microsoft’s corporate vice-president, OEM. Microsoft’s target is to have 7 installed on over 100 PC models.

“We have reached around 80 PC models. The target is well within our reach,” Steven Guggenheimer asserts.

Source: Business Standard

SquareTrade has surveyed 30,000 laptops. The result shows that netbooks has 20 per cent more hardware failures than laptops with a big screen. Also, one in three machines die in a matter of three years.

The failure rates according to the article at The Register are:
Acer – 23.3%
Apple – 17.4%
Dell – 18.3%
HP – 25.6%
Lenovo – 21.5%
Sony and Toshiba – between 15.6% to 17.4%

Premium machines only have an 18.1% failure rate. SquareTrade notes that Netbooks are new in the market so it will be interesting to follow how reliable they are over the years.

Source: The Register

Fix WU Utility is a small, portable and freeware tool designed to repair the Windows Update utility built into both Windows Vista and Windows 7. This utility will re-register a total of 114 .dll, ocx and .ax files that are needed for Windows Update to function properly. This application only works on Windows Vista and 7. To fix Windows Update on Windows XP, try Dial-a-Fix.
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A court has ruled that certain fonts in Microsoft’s Windows operating system infringe on an intellectual property of a Chinese firm. Therefore, the 1st Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing ordered Microsoft to stop selling XP in China.

The Chinese fonts belong to Zhongyi Electronics and Microsoft believes its license agreement with the firm covered in full their use of the fonts.

Those fonts are not included with Vista and 7.

The article at The Register includes that the source of this news is from a state television broadcaster, CCTV.

Source: The Register

Doing computer repair work on a part time basis is a great way to ease into the business. It can take many months to get your client-base up to a level where your income is similar to that of your full time job. It takes time to learn how to make money and its kind of like easing yourself into the shallow end of the pool rather than jumping into the deep-end and hope that you learn to swim really quickly.

Before you start a part time business on the side, there are a few things you need to consider first.
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Product Activation in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 can be bypassed by a hack according to an article at The Register. This means that a user can get either of the operating systems with a product activation key.

It is a similar breach in Windows Vista.

“We’re aware of this workaround and are already working to address it,” said a Microsoft spokesperson to The Register.

The hack nullifies the sppcompai.dll which bypasses product activation and licensing in three different technologies.

Source: The Register

The Chrome Browser for the Mac will be available in early December as a beta version.

Chrome 4.0 is only available at the moment as a beta for Windows users.

A new BrowserActions tool is included with the web browser and an ad broker wants many developers to experiment with it now.

Google Chrome’s product manager Nick Baum said that the wait is nearly over. “The earlier you switch [to BrowserActions], the more time you will have to polish your experience for our beta launch in early December .We realise this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have people working on that. If you prioritise the Windows and Linux versions, we’ll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!” he said.

Source: The Register

A denial of service vulnerability in Windows 7 is currently being investigated by Microsoft.

The article at The Register notes that the crash would happen without a visible indication that something is wrong with the user’s PC.

Laurent Gaffié has posted a proof of concept code. The white hat security researcher writes, “Whatever your firewall is set to, you can get remotely smashed via IE or even via some broadcasting nbns tricks, [with] no user interaction.”

He previously highlighted flaws that have a greater risk in terms of code execution two months ago.

Source: The Register