TweakHound

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Security

Time To Run Windows Update

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Updates available for XP-7 and MS Office. There is also an optional update for Windows 7 that basically prepares your computer for SP1.

This update is necessary to successfully install and to remove any service packs to all versions of Windows 7 and on Windows Server 2008 R2.

FWIW, I have no clue when Windows 7 SP1 will come out. Last I heard was Q1 which means sometime before April.

Microsoft Security Essentials 2

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Download & Info

This version of Microsoft Security Essentials includes the following new features and enhancements to better help protect your computer from threats:

-Windows Firewall integration. Security Essentials setup enables you to turn on or off Windows Firewall.

-Network Inspection System. This feature enhances real-time protection by inspecting network traffic to help proactively block exploitation of known network-based vulnerabilities.

-New and improved protection engine. The updated engine offers enhanced detection and cleanup capabilities with better performance.

[Read more…] about Microsoft Security Essentials 2

New Windows 0-day vulnerability emerges, bypasses UAC

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Story found via Neowin, via Winrumors, original at Prevx. It being the Thanksgiving Holiday here in the states I assume most of the MS staff here is off and the only official statement I can find from Microsoft at the moment is from a German Microsoft TechNet blog post. Microsoft is investigating new vulnerability in Windows Kernel (translated).

Being a privilege escalation exploit, it bypasses by design even the protection given by the User Account Control and Limited User Account technology implemented in Windows Vista and Windows 7. All Windows XP/Vista/7 both 32 and 64 bit are vulnerable to this attack.

Critical vulnerability in Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6

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Critical vulnerability in Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6
10.26.10 – 02:30pm

Issue:
Mozilla is aware of a critical vulnerability affecting Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6 users. We have received reports from several security research firms that exploit code leveraging this vulnerability has been detected in the wild.

Impact to users:
Users who visited an infected site could have been affected by the malware through the vulnerability. The trojan was initially reported as live on the Nobel Peace Prize site, and that specific site is now being blocked by Firefox’s built-in malware protection. However, the exploit code could still be live on other websites.

Status:
We have diagnosed the issue and are currently developing a fix, which will be pushed out to Firefox users as soon as the fix has been properly tested.

In the meantime, users can protect themselves by doing either of the following:

* Disabling JavaScript in Firefox
* Using the NoScript Add-on