01.01.09
Gemini version available ♊︎Cybercrime Rises and Vista 7 is Already Open to Hijackers
No fixes available
AN INTERESTING YEAR — not in the good sense by any means — lies ahead of many. As more people are under financial pressure, crime is likely to soar and it already does, according to news reports. The BBC warns about the effects of the recession/depression on cybercrime.
With the economic downturn affecting every corner of the globe, it is perhaps no surprise that it is likely to affect hi-tech criminals over the next 12 months.
Now more than ever it is crucial to ensure that systems are highly secure. Break-in attempts will most likely rise, so defenses must too (or else).
As we mentioned back in October, Vista 7 [sic] was given to particular people with critical flaws in it. It was inherently hijack-capable (or hijack-ready) and there were no patches available to fix this. Here is a new short report about the very same problem, which relates to the latest build.
Leaked Windows 7 Beta Includes Free Security Holes
[...]
Turns out that it’s impossible to apply security updates to the bootleg version, including the recent “out of band” update for a seriously critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer.
It’s worth emphasising that Microsoft has said absolutely nothing about security improvements in Vista 7, despite the fact that Windows Vista is a security failure and all Microsoft can do is bother journalists over their exposure of this problem. Since Vista 7 is just Vista with a mild facelift, it will be as insecure as Vista. █
“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”
–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive
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Diamond Wakizashi said,
January 1, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I wish Microshit and it’s bitch Novell a horrible new year!
David Gerard said,
January 2, 2009 at 10:47 am
It is true that Vista is better than XP. But that’s saying so little …
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 2, 2009 at 10:48 am
In terms of security?
Roy Bixler said,
January 2, 2009 at 11:02 am
My understanding is that it’s a mixed bag and that there are a significant number of users that have problems with Vista and prefer to use XP instead. Admittedly, I’m not a Windows user but an anecdote I’ve heard recently from my brother-in-law who is a Windows user is that he has a friend who recently bought a laptop which runs Vista. It has 3 Gig. RAM and still skips when playing videos. He is not keen to “upgrade” to Vista and instead considers that it may be time to buy a Mac.
David Gerard said,
January 3, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Vista is fat as hell. Mind you, KDE4 is also fat as hell – I’ve been experimenting with XP in a VirtualBox lately, and was somewhat disconcerted to find that Firefox 3 in XP in a VM assigned 384MB was more responsive than Firefox 3 in the native Kubuntu installation using the 1GB installed …
I have nothing against using lots of memory and CPU to give people a good user experience – KDE4 is fat, Mac OS X is fat, GNOME is fat, for this reason. I do have something against using lots of memory and CPU to fail to inflict DRM on everyone …
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 3, 2009 at 3:42 pm
That may be true, but you can get Linux 2.6.27 without all that ‘fat’ (lightweight distros are on ‘the menu’). You can hardly achieve this with other operating systems that adhere to the one-size-fits-all approach.
David Gerard said,
January 3, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Oh yeah. If I wanted responsiveness I’d go back to KDE 3.59. But KDE 4.1 is so niiiiiice.
Here’s to software freedom!
Roy Schestowitz said,
January 3, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Have a look at LXDE.