Countdown to Conficker

Hopefully, many of you know already about the Conficker worm which has been in the news as of late. There are many millions of infected machines out there today, and the clock is ticking on an April 1st deadline. What happens on April 1st 2009 is anybodys guess, but it more than likely won’t be a visible change, some even say that nothing will happen.  I’ll do my part to sound the alarm as well, even if its just going to fizzle out next week.

This is an interesting little worm we’ve got on our hands, it has the ability to attack on multiple fronts and mutate from different vectors.   Go out and make sure your machines are up to date with the latest patches people, this one is based on a vulnerability discovered in September 20008 affecting all Windows products from 2000 on up.  Security blogger Byron Acohido has a great write up on how to see if your machine is infected and what to do about it.  So if you can’t seem to get to websites such as Microsoft.com, Symantec.com, or McAfee.com you most likely could have the infection. Not to worry, there are plenty of free tools out there that remove the worm.

More information about this worm can be found here, here and here.

Microsoft’s Next Operating System will be called..7?

Yep, you heard that right. Just announced yesterday the folks in Redmond are steaming full ahead for the next iteration of Windows which will simply be called..Windows 7. After all these crazy naming schemes, could they not have done this since the beginning (kinda like the Mac OS series names)? I have a feeling this move has something to do with getting away from the Windows Vista name as quickly as possible, as they seem to not be able to get out from the constant negative attention this OS is getting. Although from leaked screen shots this looks a lot like Vista, the code base will be the same with some tweaks. I’ll bet the marketing team will be ramping up the idea that this isn’t even related to its predecessor and is a completely new OS, although under the hood it isn’t.

Other sites are also reporting that this may be released even sooner than 2010, which is only speculation at this point on that date,  possibly even in June 2009. Yeah right, thats a good one. Since when has Microsoft been on time for any major release?  The betas for Windows 7 will be released shortly during some upcoming developer conferences so I’m curious to see what things have changed.  Call me skeptical unless I’m convinced otherwise. I knew there was a reason to wait just a little while longer with Windows XP!

Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment

Microsoft has finally come around to the idea that it needs to do something about the poor perceptions in the marketplace about the crappiness of Vista. Sure, the original release was plagued with stability issues and other annoyances which were mostly fixed with the release of Service Pack 1. But that didn’t seem to change peoples minds about it. As a result Apple has taken advantage of this with the Mac Vs. PC ad campaign which has been making a mockery of Microsoft for quite some time now.

Redmond’s first volley back is the “Mojave Experiment“.  Basically they played the Folgers Crystals card and took a bunch of people in a room, with low perceptions of Vista, were told to rate a new operating system code named ‘Mojave’. The after a wiz bang demonstration impressing the hell out of them, and having them answer a bunch of leading questions they are told that it was Vista the entire time! Shock and amazement! Wow! I had no idea! The hidden cameras of course have recorded everything and now its been neatly packaged into a nice infomercial.

Whose idea was this? Mircosoft you think showing a bunch of people (and not actually using it by the way) a demonstration of the OS will change people’s minds? People don’t use the OS they use the applications that run on top of it! A plain jane fresh install is not a real life experience with this thing. How about letting them take it home, using it with actual applications for a month then come back and rate the experience. I would bet the results would be different then.

I am all for Windows Vista, I think it has some great new features but the negatives still out weigh the positives. Heck, I just had to remove it from my father in laws computer and put XP back on just so he can use some music software he is using in class.  I’d like to root for you Microsoft really I do, but this is just too damn embarassing. Its bad enough out there already and this is the crap you come up with? Good luck with this one guys.

Microsoft Security Updates for March

Its getting to be that time of the month again, and as usual there are a whole bunch of updates coming out for March. As posted on CERT, MS will have patches for a whole range of products including ones for Office which will patch some serious holes, ones that will plug a remote code execution type of threat. More info here. Go get those patches!