Vista to Aibo = DO NOT COMPUTE

In 2005, Sony had announced a drastic restructuring plan to stop losing money. That meant Aibo was going out the window, as well as the GPS for car unit and the Qualia luxury brand.

Following suite, Sony announced today they will not develop a driver or any software compatible with Vista for Aibo...

Vista has speech recognition hole

Microsoft has admitted that speech recognition features in Vista could be hijacked so that a PC tells itself to delete files or folders.

Vista can respond to vocal commands and concern has been raised about malicious audio on websites or sent via e-mail.

In one scenario outlined by users an MP3 file of voice instructions was used to tell the PC to delete documents.

Microsoft said the exploit was "technically possible" but there was no need to worry.

The firm has pointed out that in order for the flaw to be exploited the speech recognition feature would need to be activated and configured and both microphone and speakers would have to be switched on.

"There are also additional barriers that would make an attack difficult
Microsoft security researcher"

"The exploit scenario would involve the speech recognition feature picking up commands through the microphone such as 'copy', 'delete', 'shutdown', etc. and acting on them," a Microsoft security researcher wrote on the team's official blog.

Some Vista users have already tested the exploit and were able to delete files and empty the trash can so that the documents were not retrievable.

Microsoft has said that even if the machine was primed to accept voice commands it would be unlikely the user would not be in the room to hear the file with malicious instructions being played.

The firm also said that voice commands could not be used for privileged functions such as creating a new user or formatting a drive.

"There are also additional barriers that would make an attack difficult including speaker and microphone placement, microphone feedback, and the clarity of the dictation," wrote the Microsoft researcher.

While speech recognition was a feature of Windows XP, in Vista the use has been widened.

"While we are taking the reports seriously and investigating them accordingly I am confident in saying that there is little if any need to worry about the effects of this issue on your new Windows Vista installation," said the researcher.

Vista security claim challenged

Security experts have thrown doubt on Bill Gates' claim that Vista is "more secure" than other operating systems.

It may be more secure than other versions of Windows, they said, but there are older operating systems that are still safer.

Others said that its security rested on how people use the new system rather than on any individual technology.

There is also evidence that malicious hackers are refining attacks to cope with the changes Vista makes.

Old iron

Mr Gates made the claim that Vista was "dramatically more secure" during an interview with BBC News. He said the improved security in Vista was a reason all by itself to upgrade from Windows XP.

Microsoft has spent more than five years developing Vista and some of the delays to its launch have occurred as developers struggle to make it more secure.

Malicious hackers are already known to be targeting Vista and carrying out research to expose its weaknesses.

"For sure, people are hammering away on it," Jeff Moss, the organiser of the Defcon hacking convention, told Reuters.
"If you are a bad guy and you find a problem, you have a way to spread your malware and spyware," he said.

Vista exploits and vulnerabilities are starting to turn up on discussion boards where such things are traded and developed. So far most have been only experimental and none seem to have been tried in the wild.

Academics are also publishing papers on weaknesses in the security technologies inside Vista.

Testing times

Vista comes with many built-in security features in a bid to make the system safe from the moment it is switched on. These include anti-spyware software and a system that aims to stop malicious programs installing themselves by stealth.

But whether these changes made it more secure than other operating systems generated debate among security experts.

"It's dramatically more secure than, say, Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure.

"However, it's fundamentally not more secure than operating systems like FreeBSD, QNX, AS/400 etc," he said.

"I would claim it's not even as secure as another operating system from Microsoft; namely the operating system inside the Xbox 360."

David Emm, senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Labs, said that with Vista Microsoft was treading a fine line between making the software safe and easy to use.

"The more useable and convenient you make it, especially for non-technical people, the more risk there is that there is a chink in the armour," he said.

"In a sense people are the weakest link here," said Mr Emm.

For instance, he said, the User Account Control system in Vista which aims to stop malicious programs installing themselves invisibly may not prove as effective as Microsoft believes.

This system ask users to give permission for programs, browser extensions and many other things to be installed. The sheer number of times that people are asked may make them click past the warning without realising what they were doing, said Mr Emm.

His fears were echoed by Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee, who said the lack of context in the warnings could lead people to make dangerous choices. "It passes the emphasis on to the user to decide."

"Because it is Microsoft its always going to have a very big target on it," he added.

There is also evidence that the malicious hacking community is starting to change its tactics to cope with the kind of security technologies seen in Vista and which are also starting to be used in older operating systems such as XP.

Surveys of the sorts of malicious software seen in 2006 reveal a significant fall in what is known as "replicating code". These are the familiar viruses that travel by e-mail and which try to trick people into opening an infected attachment so they can find more victims to attack.

Instead more and more attacks are becoming targeted at very small populations of users or groups of PCs via a specific exploit or crafted junk mail campaign.


(Taken from:BBC)

Security bug found in PDF reader

Web users are being urged to upgrade their Adobe reader software as a security flaw is found in older versions of the program.

Millions of people use the reader software to view documents prepared in the popular PDF format.

Security researchers said malicious hackers exploiting the flaw could view victim's hard drives or use it to make phishing scams look more plausible.

So far there is no evidence that the bug is being exploited in the wild.

The flaw is found in the web browser plug-in of the Adobe Reader software. Ordinarily this allows PDF documents to be viewed in a browser window.

But by exploiting the flaw hi-tech criminals could use links to PDF files stored on any website to attack vulnerable Windows PCs.

Information about the flaw in the Adobe reader software was first revealed at the annual conference of the Chaos Computer Club - a venerable German hacker group.

Since then security researchers have investigated and found that it could also be used to view files on the hard drive of a vulnerable PC.

Writing about the flaw Symantec security researcher Hon Lau said: "The ease [with] which this weakness can be exploited is breathtaking."

So far no cyber criminals are thought to be actively exploiting the Adobe Reader flaw but code to do so has been produced.

Initially it was thought that only users of the Firefox web browser were at risk but now it is known that Internet Explorer users are vulnerable too.

Upgrading to version 8 of the Adobe Reader software removes the risk of falling victim to the flaw.

Awesome Freebie: Driver Collector

Faithful readers, today I'm bringing you not one, not two, but three amazing, free, and Null-certified tools for your PC-lovin' pleasure.

First up is Driver Collector, which is so insanely handy I barely know where to start in singing its praises. Built for Windows XP, Driver Collector does one thing and one thing only: It scours your system for hardware you have installed, then finds the drivers for that hardware, and lets you back them up. You can then copy all those drivers to a CD or a thumbdrive.

Why would you want to do this? Many reasons, but the most useful is for when you are reinstalling Windows on your computer. Nothing is more frustrating than finishing up a Windows installation, only to find that Windows couldn't find a driver for your video card (and has stuck you with the heinous 800 x 600 default resolution)...nor has it found the drivers for any of your networking components, so you can't just hop online to download the video driver.

With Driver Collector, you can just back all those drivers up and install them immediately without having to go web hunting on a second PC. It's only a few hundred kilobytes and runs without having to be installed.

Curiously, Driver Collector is several years old and was created by an individual who seems to have vanished from the planet. The link I've provided is to the site where I found it, not the official site, which no longer seems to exist.

Windows Vista Goes for Arty Start-up Music

In an attempt to give Windows Vista some aura of cool, Microsoft recently announced that guitarist-musician Robert Fripp, the only member to play in the many versions of '70s-era art-rock band King Crimson, has composed the four-second start-up theme for the new OS.

Like legendary producer-musician Brian Eno, who composed the theme you heard when you turned on Windows 95, Robert Fripp is a gutsy, artsy choice for Microsoft—a gift to the billions of Windows users around the world who have never heard of King Crimson, and probably never will. As this informative article points out, Fripp's music beat out more generic and perky start-up themes.

Alas, despite the fine pedigree of its start-up music composer, Windows 95 never managed to be cooler than the Mac operating systems. I doubt that Fripp's theme will achieve a different result, but the desktop world is certainly a better place for it.

Fripp joins other '70s and '80s music icons who have crossed over to the gadget-world—Thomas "She Blinded Me With Science" Dolby was an early pioneer in the ringtone business and is responsible for the Chopin-esque piano theme you hear on Nokia phones, while Ryuichi "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" Sakamoto wrote a series of catchy, exclusive ringtones for Nokia's stainless-steel 8801 phone last year.

If you could choose any musician to create music for Vista or some other iconic software or gadget, who would it be?