October 29, 2008

Facebook Worm Fakes Out Google Reader

According to ZDNet, a Facebook worm that appears to be sending messages from you to your friends is also faking out the Google Reader, making it look like faked video downloads are actually hosted on Google. Read more about it here.

October 28, 2008

Creative Suite Seems To Slow Down Your Mac

When you first install Adobe Creative Suite 4 on an Apple Mac computer, it may cause the computer to run sluggishly. Adobe says to reboot the system, and your speed will come back.

Software Update for New MacBooks

If you have one of the new aluminum uni-body MacBooks or MacBook Pros (not one of the old cheap plastic ones like I have) there is a system software update for you. It fixes some bugs that cause problems with external displays, as well as some other unspecified bugs. Get it here.

October 23, 2008

Microsoft's Emergency Patch is for a Windows XP/Vista Worm

It's an extremely critical patch for Windows XP, merely important for Vista and Server 2008. It's a remotely exploitable wormhole in the Server Service. Read more about it at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx, where you can also get the patch if you don't do Automatic Updates.

Critical Patch from Microsoft on 10/23

Microsoft is releasing a critical security patch today - October 23 - at 1:00 ET/10:00am PT. Since they are doing it outside of their normal "Patch Tuesday" release cycle (the second Tuesday of the month) this is probably going to fix a major security problem. Find out more when it is released at the Microsoft Security Response Center. The BugBlog will have more later.

October 20, 2008

Delay Built in to Vista 802.1X Authentication

Better get it right the first time. When running Windows Vista or Server 2008, if 802.1X authentication is enabled for network connections, there is a built-in pause of 20 minutes before the computer will respond to any other authentication requests. This is a safeguard against brute-force hacking attacks, but it may be a major inconvenience if you had a legitimate log-in that failed through some "transient error". Microsoft has a hotfix that will let you set a shorter time-out period. Get the details here.

October 19, 2008

Adobe Likes Internet Explorer Better

If you do a Search for Help in Adobe Creative Suite 4, the search will launch in Microsoft Internet Explorer even if you have Mozilla Firefox set as your default browser. As of now, there is no workaround.

Don't Distill First in Adobe Creative Suite

After you install the Adobe Creative Suite 4, don't choose Acrobat Distiller as the first application to run. If you do, you may get this error message:
"Adobe Acrobat Distiller was unable to install and must quit"
Just make sure to choose any of the other applications first (which I think most people will do anyway.)

Remote Session Confuses NumLock Key

In Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, if you are doing a Remote Desktop session the NumLock key may go out of sync - showing that NumLock is on when it isn't, or vice versa. Microsoft says this is rare, and is more likely to happen  when connected to a virtual machine, or with a slow connection. Microsoft has some workarounds here.

An Adobe Website Hacked

A website owned by an Adobe subsidiary, seriousmagic.com , has been infected by  the Asprox botnet via an SQL injection. Because of that, visitors were being redirected to sites that are known to be malware sites. ZDnet has the full story here - I wouldn't go to seriousmagic.com until the "All Clear" is given.