Microsoft late Wednesday confirmed a denial-of-service flaw in its implementation of the RPC (Remote Procedure Call) protocol and warned users that a working exploit is already publicly available. Microsoft Corp. countered the public disclosure of the vulnerability with an advisory that clarify the scope of the impact and to provide pre-patch workaround for Windows users.

Microsoft advisory comes a few days after the proof-of-concept exploit code appeared on several security Web sites, including SecuriTeam.com, FrSIRT.com and Virus.org. Microsoft acknowledged the bug affected its Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 and Windows XP Service Pack 1 operating systems. “This vulnerability could allow an attacker to levy a denial of service attack of limited duration,” the company’s advisory warned.

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Source: eWeek

Google Web Accelerator is an application that uses the power of Google’s global computer network to make web pages load faster. Google Web Accelerator is easy to use; all you have to do is download and install it, and from then on many web pages will automatically load faster than before.

Download: Google Web Accelerator 0.2.62.80 (Freeware)
View: Google Web Accelerator Homepage

The initial WGA 1.0 program downloaded an ActiveX control to check the authenticity of your Windows software. Since it was an ActiveX control, only Internet Explorer (IE) users could use it.

But the recent growth of Firefox has forced Microsoft to rethink their strategy. Microsoft Genuine Windows Validation process now works in Firefox and other Mozilla browsers. Firefox users can download and install the Windows Genuine Advantage validation Firefox plug-in – WGAPluginInstall.exe available on Microsoft’s website to complete the Windows validation process.

Download: WGA Plugin for Firefox
Source: MSFN

Microsoft Corp. today announced the technical beta release of the new Office system, code-named Office “12″. The technical beta is available only to nominated customers and partners worldwide and is an important step toward general availability scheduled for the second half of 2006.

Microsoft® Office “12″ is designed to help improve information workers’ productivity through a new results-oriented user interface, powerful graphics and diagramming engines, and advanced task and information management tools. In addition, through broader investments in enhancing business intelligence, collaboration and enterprise content management capabilities within Office “12″, there are new solutions to help customers control content, streamline business processes, collaborate across organizational boundaries and make more-informed decisions.

View: Release Notes
Source: MSFN

Ambitious goals or did they bite off too big a challenge when it comes to Windows Vista?

Microsoft is desperate to get the next Windows Operating System out into the hands of consumers by Christmas of 2006 – a year later than their original target.

Now even after Microsoft axed the vast majority of the major new features, the beta dates are slipping further and further away…

As betas go, Beta 1 is usually 67-75% feature complete. Beta 2 is usually 90% complete and from then on until the date a software release is called complete, final, RTM, gold, or one many other such adjectives, it is only usually polishing and bug fixing between those two milestones. Not so with Windows Vista…

Beta 1 was released almost 5 years into its development cycle (by which time most other releases have already hit store shelves) and was called, almost miserably, only 33% feature complete.

For those brave or foolish enough to install it, many a hard drive was corrupted – yet in Beta 1 there were glimpses of just what Microsoft is preparing to release to the world next Christmas.

If you have a high definition screen, prepare to enjoy the eye candy! If you don’t, you can add one to next year’s Christmas gift list – it’s very much worth it. Graphics have been significantly enhanced, but for the most part, not a lot more is visible to the vast majority of those who will use it.
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If you thought the current MSN Messenger 7.5.0311 was the final version of MSN Messenger *ever*, you’re probably wrong. We heard through the grapevine that sometime late November or early December a QFE patch will be tested and released, fixing mainly sign in issues (QFE stands for Quick Fix Engineering, which means upgrading through a small patch instead of a 10mb setup file). This is good news for the unlucky ones recently experiencing sudden connection losses and ongoing log on failures.

Source: Mess with MSN Messenger

There is an epidemic of the Sober worms being found, according to security outfit Kapersky Lab The company has spotted three new versions of the Sober worm which it has labeled Sober.u, Sober.v, and Sober.w.

Large numbers of emails infected with the worm have been distributed by spammers and in recent months it has been delivering far right propaganda.

The attachments are called Exceltab-packed_List.exe, Liste.zip and Reg-List-Dat_Packer2.exe., reg_text.zip Word-Text.zip, Word-Text_packedList.exe and Word-Text_packedList.zip.

It is a bit odd that Sober, which disables anti-virus software, still catches people out. It has been in the wild since 2003 and requires people to click on an attachment to work.

Once launched, the worm causes a false error message, “WinZip Self-Extractor. WinZip_Data_Module is missing ~Error”, to be displayed on screen.

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Source: The Inquirer

COLOUR electronic paper from Fujitsu should be on the market in 18 months, it announced last week at the opening of the Asia-Pacific Digital Media Centre of Excellence in Melbourne.

Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand chief executive Rod Vawdrey said the next major wave in technology would be the proliferation of digital media.

“If you stretch your mind far enough you can get to the theory that in the future the newspapers will have moving pictures, and electronic paper certainly has the potential to enable that,” he said.

Mr Vawdrey said Fujitsu had some prototypes of its electronic paper, which would become commercially available in 2007.

Pilot projects would be conducted and then it would come out “in various forms, maybe A4 signage or large poster-wall or even wall displays”.

The price would eventually fall so it could replace “practically any form of signage or paper-based documents, even potentially shelf labels”, he said.

The new centre displays emerging digital media systems, from digital kiosks and dynamic point-of-sale displays to transport information systems and corporate communications systems.
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HOLLYWOOD studio Warner Brothers said it plans to put thousands of episodes of old television classics online for free under a groundbreaking deal with America Online.

The two companies, part of the Time Warner group, said they would team up to launch a new broadband network in January called In2TV, allowing users to stream thousands of old episodes for free on AOL.com.

Billing the new service as the “world’s first internet-based TV archive,” they said In2TV would blaze a trail for TV over broadband, which is now available in more than half of all US households.

Along with Lynda Carter’s star-spangled corset-wearing “Wonder Woman” from the 1970s, other blasts from the past on In2TV will include “Falcon Crest”, “La Femme Nikita”, “Lois and Clark,” “Growing Pains” and John Travolta’s TV debut, “Welcome Back Kotter”.

In its first year the service will offer around 3,400 hours of programming from 4,800 episodes – or 300 episodes a month – taken from some 100 series of popular Warner Bros shows from the past, AOL spokeswoman Ruth Sarfaty AFP.

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Source: AustralianIT

Facing further pressure from unhappy consumers and now artists who are upset that their music has been tarnished by the invasive copy-protection added to certain CDs, Sony BMG now says it will pull the albums off store shelves entirely. The record label is also offering to exchange the CDs for non-DRM versions.

The news follows an announcement last week in which Sony said it would suspend the manufacture of CDs with the software rootkit, known as XCP. “Sony BMG deeply regrets any inconvenience to our customers and remains committed to providing an enjoyable and safe music experience,” the company said in a follow-up statement.

Source: BetaNews