Although flowers, candy and clothing are favorites for most grown children to buy their mothers, for most mothers simply visiting with her is the best present of all &151 besides taking your mother out to eat (I’m not kidding! Don’t make her cook!). Here are some little things that you can do to make her online life easier.
It’s emerged that two vulnerabilities were patched in the last monthly Microsoft Update without being publicly revealed. That’s prompted complaints that system administrators won’t have had the detail needed to make an informed decision whether to install patches.
Sean Sullivan, a security advisor with Finnish antivirus vendor F-Secure’s North American operation, says that adding a PDF viewer to Windows and Vista would make them more secure. Adobe’s free PDF viewer has too many features that hackers can use for malicious attacks on computers.
Microsoft cleaned malware from more than 40 million computers in the second half of 2010. It says China and Brazil have benefited significantly from the release of Microsoft Security Essentials last September.
McAfee says it will compensate customers affected by last week’s anti-virus update which unintentionally left some XP machines useless. The compensation will go beyond refunds and may cover some of the resulting repair or replacement costs.
McAfee and customers alike are dealing with the fallout of a major error with an antivirus update which has left some XP computers stuck in an endless reboot cycle. Here’s all the latest details on the situation and the aftermath.
It’s now become clear why Microsoft released so many updates in an emergency patch at the end of March. This month’s scheduled update covers all versions of Windows and totals 25 fixes.
Microsoft is to release an emergency patch for a recently uncovered security flaw in Internet Explorer 6 and 7. It’s also taking the opportunity to fix a few problems which also affect IE8.
Yet another security vulnerability was discovered in these older browsers and Microsoft is working hard to fix the vulnerability. An Israeli security researcher discovered the problem and posted exploit code that would allow others to essentially take over computers running IE6 and IE7. As with the recent batch of security vulnerabilities, IE8 is not affected.
On Tuesday Microsoft will be releasing two bulletins. The bulletins address eight vulnerabilities in both Windows and Office. Bulletin 1 will be fixing problems with Microsoft Windows while Bulletin 2 will address issues with Microsoft Office.
The very Hollywood-sounding Botnet Task Force, ably led by Microsoft, has dealt a serious blow to the people behind the Waledac botnet. But it did require assistance from the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia to do so.
When an outdated piece of software finally disappears, few people mourn it. But while Internet Explorer 6 may no longer have much popularity, it really is getting a send-off.
The next few weeks are going to be interesting ones for Microsoft and its Internet Explorer Web browser. With the browser ballot screen hitting Europe, we’ll finally get to see how many Windows users only use Internet Explorer out of habit and laziness. There’s just one problem, however, that this provides a perfect opportunity for hackers to exploit naive computer users. The Web browser choice screen is set to be tested out on some users in Belgium, France, and the U.K. next week, and then rolled out to every Windows user in Europe on March 1. This browser ballot is the result of a long-running antitrust investigation by the European Union as to whether Microsoft is unfairly hogging the browser market by bundling Internet Explorer in with every copy of the Windows operating system. This should provide for an interesting spectacle. Will the market shares of Chrome and Firefox rise by a massive amount in Europe as people are prompted to choose their browser? And will the forced install of IE8 for those sticking with Internet Explorer cause mass confusion and angst? According to InfoZine, while IT security and data protection firm Sophos is as interested as the rest of us as to how this pans out, it’s also concerned that hackers and cyber-criminals will seek to exploit the situation. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said:
Microsoft says Windows XP computers crashing after last week’s security update may be down to a well-concealed piece of malware. Though they haven’t given many details, it has been linked it to a notorious rootkit named Tdss.
It took Microsoft 17 years to discover and patch a security loophole which first debuted in Windows 3.1. Unfortunately that patch has now had to be withdrawn after it caused some computers to display another vintage classic: the blue screen of death.
Technology News Mac news iPhone & Touch Mobile technology Green tech Buying guides Gaming news Photography tech
