Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Off topic

Microsoft just issued it's biggest ever security fix today. If you're a Windows user, make sure Automatic Updates is turned on or do an update yourself.

If you're a Mac or Linux user, you're already secure.

5 comments:

  1. I DON'T USE ANYTHING MADE BY MICROSOFT!!!!!

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  2. Sucks, I woke up this morning to seeing all the stuff I had open from lastnight gone. My computer must have auto updated and just rebooted, killing everything I was working on.

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  3. Anonymous said...

    "Sucks, I woke up this morning to seeing all the stuff I had open from lastnight gone. My computer must have auto updated and just rebooted, killing everything I was working on."

    Sorry for the loss of your documents. I suggest you get yourself a good Apple computer. I recommend the Mac Pro Quad. Here is the link: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro?mco=MTg5MTY5NDQ

    Good Luck, Bill

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  4. I'd bet the Mac has to occasionally reboot after doing an update too.

    The real solution to losing your work is to open the "Automatic Updates" control panel in Windows and select the second radio button labeled "Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them." Then when you see the yellow automatic updates icon in your system tray, make sure to install the update when it's convenient for you.

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  5. The majority of infections that most people get are from drive-by downloads, served via "malvertisement". These usually exploit Acrobat Reader, Flash, and Java JRE. These are non-Microsoft apps. Make sure you keep these things up to date in addition to your Microsoft patches.

    Secunia PSI is a great free tool to monitor your patch levels, including third party applications.

    Linux and Mac are just as vulnerable, but the userbase is relatively small, so malware authors don't bother spending much time on developing and serving up those exploits.

    The fact that Linux and Mac default mode of operation requires the use of a non-privileged accounts helps considerably, but this is not a panacea and Windows UAC is a good step in this direction.

    Not a Windows fanboy at all, but I think that saying Mac and Linux users are secure by default is an oversimplification.

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