Sophos has posted a blog entry a few days ago about a Halloween eCard.

The message looks like it is from Hallmark in association with MSN. It has a purple header and footer. The header includes the Hallmark logo. The message is very brief and it includes a link for users to view the supposedly eCard. The link appears to be hosted in Spain instead of ecards.msn.co.uk notes Mark Harris who is the Director of SophosLabs. A screen shot is posted with the blog entry so users could see what the spam look like.

Source: Sophos

According to an article that was posted yesterday at Computerworld, Windows Update will receive another update.

“Over the next couple of months, we’ll be rolling out another infrastructure update to the Windows Update agent (client code). This update makes it possible for users to install more than 80 updates at the same time,” said an employee on the official blog of the Window Update team.

It will be the second update to the software in three months. Last year, when Microsoft updated the WU client, users were mad because their software upgraded even though they disabled the automatic installation option.

Source: COMPUTERWORLD

A university website has posted a few keyboard shortcuts that can help anyone save their time and the techniques applies to most softwares.

The first one is selecting text using two or three keys on the keyboard. The second and third shortcuts which are switching windows/programs and tabbing and reverse tabbing through forms one uses the tab keys. The last one is Undo and Redo which can be made by pressing ctrl-z and ctrl-y respectively.

For complete details including which situations are these shortcuts most effective to use, visit the source link.

Source: Synapse

The exploit code of the serious vulnerability that was patched recently has been published according to Microsoft.

The vulnerability affects three operating systems which are Windows Server 2003, XP, and 2000.

A spokeswoman for the company declined to specify where the code was found according to the article at The New York Times.

Attacks are still limited and targeted, even with the release of this new exploit code. The malware situation remains the same, as we’ve not seen any self-replicating worms, but instead malware that would be classified as Trojans, specifically the malware we discussed when we released the security update on Thursday,” said Mike Reavey of Microsoft.

Source: New York Times

Windows 7 has been officially introduced at the Professional Developers’ Conference earlier today to more than 6,000 programmers.

“We’ve done a lot of work around how you manage the windows, how you launch programs and how you manage the windows of the programs that you’ve launched. It’s all about personalization and putting you in control of the PC, and that’s a big initiative that we’ve had,” said Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft.

“We got feedback from reviews, from the press, a few bloggers here and there, oh, and some commercials,” he added.

A web-based version of Office was also mentioned in the conference.

Source: New York Times

An article was posted earlier today at The Register about a flaw that exists on Opera 9.61.

In Opera 9.61, a cross site scripting vulnerability has been patched. That vulnerability lets an attacker view the browsing history of users.

Now, a new flaw has been detected which is even more serious but it is based on the same vulnerability. The new vulnerability exists on Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems. The flaw was discovered by two researchers named Roberto Suggi and Di Paola.

There is no information yet when version 9.62 will be released but Thomas Ford who is the spokesman for the company said, “very, very soon.”

Source: The Register

A flaw has been detected in Yahoo! that lets an attacker take control of a user’s account which includes access to his or her emails.

“I guess the beautiful bit about it from an attacker’s viewpoint is quite a lot of people would be unaware of what’s happened. Not many people will think of changing their password after that happens,” said an internet services developer for Netcraft.

The flaw existed in hotjobs.yahoo.com. It is a cross site scripting error (XSS) and attackers can take advantage of the flaw by injecting a javascript into a page which is used to authenticate Yahoo! users.

Source: The Register

The world’s major PC makers will plan to introduce a new type of computers which will have a quick-start feature.

“It’s ridiculous to ask people to wait a couple of minutes. People want instant-on,” said the executive director of marketing of DeviceVM.

Microsoft plans to make its future operating systems to boot under 15 seconds based on a company blog. The article at the New York Times website notes that Windows Vista boots in 30 seconds or less on only 35 percent of computers.

Source: New York Times

Ars Technica has posted an article about a filter that will be applied to Australian internet users.

The article mentions that there will be two tiers. The first is that the filter would block content that are illegal. The second is that the filter would block content that are inappropriate for children. However, users would be allowed to opt-out in this second tier.

In a report by the government’s own Communications and Media Authority, results show that in five out of six filters, the performance of the network decreased by over 20 percent.

Source: Ars Technica

Microsoft released today an update to fix a flaw that allows a remote attacker to take over a computer with a Windows operating system without a user’s action.

Christopher Budd of Microsoft said, “This security update resolves a vulnerability in the Server service that affects all currently supported versions of Windows. Windows XP and older versions are rated as ‘Critical’ while Windows Vista and newer versions are rated as ‘Important.’ Because the vulnerability is potentially wormable on those older versions of Windows, we’re encouraging customers to test and deploy the update as soon as possible.”

Source: Information Week