Although Microsoft has patched multiple DLL load hijacking vulnerabilities since last summer, Windows and Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) can still be exploited, a security company warned today.
Microsoft confirmed that it's investigating the claims by Slovenia-based Acros Security.
Researchers from Acros will demonstrate the new attacks at the Hack in the Box security conference in Amsterdam later this month.
"We'll reveal how IE8 and IE9 can be used on Windows 7, Vista and XP for attacking users without any security warnings, even in 'Protected mode,' and how to remotely make many seemingly-safe applications, for example, Word 2010 and PowerPoint 2010, vulnerable," said Acros CEO Mitja Kolsek in a Friday email.
The attack class called "DLL load hijacking" by some, but dubbed "binary planting" by Acros, jumped into public view last August when HD Moore, the creator of the Metasploit penetration hacking toolkit and chief security officer at Rapid7, found dozens of vulnerable Windows applications. Moore's report was followed by others, including several from Kolsek and Acros.
Many Windows applications don't call DLLs using a full path name, but instead use only the filename, giving hackers a way to trick an application into loading a malicious file with the same title as a required DLL. If attackers can dupe users into visiting malicious Web sites or remote shared folders, or get them to plug in a USB drive -- and in some cases con them into opening a file -- they can hijack a PC and plant malware on it.
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Showing posts with label Windows 7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windows 7. Show all posts
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Ready for Download
Bug fixes and security patches don't make for the most exciting Windows update, but they're the high points of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, now widely available for download.
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is now available from Microsoft's Website for download, or via Windows Update, and by ordering an installation DVD. Windows 7 SP1 takes roughly 30 minutes to install, and you'll have to restart the computer halfway through. System requirements and detailed installation instructions can also be found on Microsoft's Website.
Here are the most notable changes in SP1:
* A bug fix for HDMI audio devices that stopped working after restarting the computer
* Corrected behavior when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents
* Changed behavior of the "Restore previous folders at logon" functionality so that all folders are restored to their previous position, rather than in cascading order based on the most recently active folders.
The service pack also includes all previously released security, stability and performance updates for Windows 7. Like I said, not very exciting.
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Microsoft Has Sold 300 Million Windows 7 Licences
As part of its quarterly earnings call yesterday, Microsoft revealed that the company has now sold 300 million Windows 7 licenses.
“To put that in perspective, 300 million is roughly the combined number of households in North American and in Europe!” writes Brandon LeBlanc on the Windows blo. “Or, to put it another way, if you lined up 300 million Windows 7 product boxes, they would stretch nearly 1.5 times around the Earth,” he said.
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PC Won't Turn On
My Windows 7 is acting weird today, it automatically shutdown while I am watching movie and it wont turn on when I tried to turn it on.
After re-seating the RAM it worked but during start up it turned off again. I turned it on again to no avail. So I re-seated the RAM again, it turned on until I finished on movie and I decided to turn it off, however this morning it won't turn on again and I'm now feeling that this take another re-seating to fix it.
I am now checking the hardware hoping to see any visible culprit.
Will be posting here for any development.
Any suggestion is highly appreciated.
After re-seating the RAM it worked but during start up it turned off again. I turned it on again to no avail. So I re-seated the RAM again, it turned on until I finished on movie and I decided to turn it off, however this morning it won't turn on again and I'm now feeling that this take another re-seating to fix it.
I am now checking the hardware hoping to see any visible culprit.
Will be posting here for any development.
Any suggestion is highly appreciated.
Report: Dell ditches RIM for own WP7-based smartphone
IDG News Service - Dell is getting ready to move its 25,000 employees from BlackBerrys to its own Windows Phone 7-based smartphone, in preparation to the launch of its own migration service, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
Dell employees will be given the upcoming Venue Pro, and the move will start next week. The company will then begin marketing a service to its business clients within two weeks aimed at helping them make a similar switch, according to the Journal.
Dell officials were not immediately available to comment.
The Venue Pro comes with a 4.1-inch display and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
The move will save Dell about 25% in mobile communication costs, primarily by eliminating the need for BlackBerry servers, Dell told the Journal.
Dell's decision to move away from RIM's smartphones to its own products doesn't come as a surprise to Leif-Olof Wallin, research vice president at Gartner.
"It would be kind of embarrassing to have your own sales staff walking around with a product from a competitor," said Wallin.
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Dell employees will be given the upcoming Venue Pro, and the move will start next week. The company will then begin marketing a service to its business clients within two weeks aimed at helping them make a similar switch, according to the Journal.
Dell officials were not immediately available to comment.
The Venue Pro comes with a 4.1-inch display and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
The move will save Dell about 25% in mobile communication costs, primarily by eliminating the need for BlackBerry servers, Dell told the Journal.
Dell's decision to move away from RIM's smartphones to its own products doesn't come as a surprise to Leif-Olof Wallin, research vice president at Gartner.
"It would be kind of embarrassing to have your own sales staff walking around with a product from a competitor," said Wallin.
Read full story...
Windows 7 - God Mode
Yes there is a God Mode in Windows 7.When you're in this mode you, you have all your settings and configurations in one window, just like this:
Click the image to maximize.
Below is the list of settings available in this mode.
- Action Center (15 items)
- Administrative Tools (10 items)
- AutoPlay (3 items)
- Backup and Restore (2 items)
- BitLocker Drive Encryption (2 items)
- Color Management (1 item)
- Credential Manager (1 item)
- Date and Time (4 items)
- Default Programs (2 items)
- Desktop Gadgets (6 items)
- Device Driver Manager (1 item)
- Devices and Printers (9 items)
- Display (11 items)
- Ease of Access Center (26 items)
- Folder Options (5 items)
- Fonts (3 items)
- Getting Started (4 items)
- Home Group (2 items)
- Indexing Options (1 item)
- Internet Options (14 items)
- Keyboard (2 items)
- Location and Other Sentors (3 items)
- Mouse (8 items)
- Network and Sharing Center (16 items)
- Notification Area Icons (6 items)
- Parental Control (1 item)
- Performance Information and Tools (4 items)
- Personalization (10 items)
- Phone and Modem (1 item)
- Power Options (7 items)
- Programs and Features (8 items)
- Recovery (1 item)
- Regionaly and Language (10 items)
- RemoteApp and Desktop Cennections (1 item)
- Sound (4 items)
- Speech Recognition (3 items)
- Sync Center (6 items)
- System (22 items)
- Taskbar and Start Menu (10 items)
- Troubleshooting (12 items)
- User Account (13 items)
- Windows CardSpace (1 item)
- Windows Defender (1 item)
- Windows Firewall (1 item)
- Windows Update (2 item)
Windows 7 Performance Booster
One thing I like with Windows 7 is its fast processing time compared to its predecessors Windows Vista and Windows XP. Yeah! I'm pressure you'll agree with me that it also faster than XP. But the good news this operating system can get even faster with simple tricks.Learn how Windows 7 get faster.
1) Uninstall bloatware that came with your laptop or PC. Or even apps you installed but no longer want. Head to Control Panel | Programs | Uninstall a program and take the hatchet to anything, such as unwanted games or software, that you'll never need. Many programs will load processes at boot time and take up valuable RAM and CPU cycles. While you're in here, you can also click Turn Windows Features On or Off and scan the list to see if there's anything you don't use. You might also want to try out software utilities such as PCDecrapifier and Revo Uninstaller.
2) Limit start-up processes. In the Start button's search box, type MSCONFIG, then head to the Startup tab. You'll likely see a slew of apps, mostly for system support, but you'll be able to identify some that clearly aren't necessary. There's absolutely no need to have Google Update or even QuickTime running all the time, for example. Don't delete those that support your hardware or security, but anything blatantly nonproductive can go. You may have to check the program names online with a site like processlibrary.com to see what they are—they may even be malware. If you want to get more granular, run Microsoft's Autoruns utility.
3) Add more RAM. Windows 7 isn't as much of a hog as Vista, but if you're moving from XP, the memory requirements are greater.
4) Turn off search indexing. If you do a lot of searching, this won't appeal to you, as some searches will be slower. To turn off indexing, open the Indexing Options Control Panel window (if you just type "index" in the Start button search box, you'll see that choice at the top of the start menu), click Modify and remove locations being indexed and file types, too. If you want to leave search indexing on, but find that it occasionally slows you down, you can stop its process when you need extra speed. Right-click on Computer either in the Start menu or on the desktop, and choose Manage. Then double-click Services and Applications, then Services. Find Windows Search, and double-click on that. From this properties dialog, you can choose a Startup type of Manual or Disabled to have the process silent by default.
5) Defragment your hard drive. Your disk stores data in chunks wherever there's disk space, regardless of whether the space is contiguous for one file. Defragging tidies everything up and blocks a program's bits together so that the reader heads don't have to shuttle back and forth to read a whole executable or data file. Windows 7 comes with a built-in defragger that runs automatically at scheduled intervals, but if yours is set by default to run at a time when your PC is usually turned off, it won't get defragged. You can either change the scheduled time, or defrag on demand. Just type "defrag" in the Windows Start Menu search bar, and click on Disk Defragmenter. The version of the utility is improved in Windows 7, and shows more information about what's happening on your disk than Vista did.
There are 45 more tips to speed up your Windows 7 computer.
Continue reading here...
Speed Up Windows 7 - More!
Everybody may agree that windows 7 may be the fastest windows version available.BUT it can be faster! yeah!
One of the main virtues of Windows 7 is its speed—especially when compared with its predecessor, Vista. But most people haven't experienced the 15-second boot for the operating system that Microsoft engineers were shooting for. And there are certainly times when Windows you'll still see that spinning blue donut. We can always hope that the upcoming Windows 7 SP1 will include some performance tweaks, but, in the meanwhile, there are plenty of things you can do to speed up your installation of Windows 7.Read more...
The problem with most "speed-up Windows 7" stories is that they tell you to turn off some of the operating system's more charming visual features. The first nine of my dozen tips show you ways you can speed up your Windows 7 system without compromising its appearance. For those who need even more speed or don't care about eye candy, I've listed three at the end that boost system performance at the expense of some visual effects.
On personally note, I like using Ccleaner in disabling startup items and deleting unwanted registry entries made by device drivers and other installations.
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