WGA - The “A” stands for Advertisments by ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes -- Just when you think that WGA can't possibly get any worse, it suddenly does.
"With the Windows Experience Blog, the idea is to showcase and talk about all the amazing experiences one can have with Windows Vista. I’m taking my lead from Nick who will continue to share news, information, and technical insight about Windows, and I’ll expand on that with the Windows Experience blog. The Windows Experience blog is focused on Windows Enthusiasts and dives deeper into the fantastic experiences within Windows. And the experiences here won’t always be experiences from myself or other folks at Microsoft. We want to highlight experiences *you* have as well! Expect to see lots of videos and lots of screenshots! Just like Nick, I plan to spend a lot of extra time beyond simply posting blog posts. I plan to continue the conversation into the comments on the blog posts as well."
Considering the history of Enigma Software as well as current events, it appears that the company selected a appropriate name."One entry found for enigma. Main Entry: enig·ma
Pronunciation: i-'nig-m&, e-
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin aenigma, from Greek ainigmat-, ainigma, from ainissesthai to speak in riddles, from ainos fable
1 : an obscure speech or writing
2 : something hard to understand or explain
3 : an inscrutable or mysterious person
synonym see MYSTERY"
Note on Enigma SpyHunter: Enigma's SpyHunter anti-spyware application was listed on this page primarily because of the company's history of employing aggressive, deceptive advertising (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). The company was also known for exploiting the name "spybot" in its domain names and online advertising. These objectionable business practices were employed primarily from late-2002 to mid-2004.What has happened since then? It appears from what I am reading, this "Enigma" is still seen in the industry as "something hard to understand or explain". Why do I say that? Following is a quote from one of the many (dare I suggest spam) press releases by Enigma Software today as a result of Symantec adding Enigma's software, SpyHunter, to detection as a "Security Risk".Sometime during summer of 2004 the company halted the most obnoxious and objectionable aspects of its online advertising. It also unloaded all the "spybot" domains (which were promptly picked up by Paretologic for its XoftSpy anti-spyware application).
While there are still unresolved allegations that SpyHunter transmits the Windows Product ID from users' PCs (1), we can no longer classify this application as "rogue/suspect." Nonetheless, SpyHunter -- at least in its current state -- cannot be recommended because of its mediocre performance as an anti-spyware scanner. Testing indicates that it does not recognize some well-known spyware installations and has difficulty removing critical spyware/adware files even from those it does recognize (1). Given the many excellent competing anti-spyware applications that are available (some for free), users would do better looking elsewhere for trustworthy anti-spyware protection. [Ed. Note: Bold added]
Domains: enigmasoftwaregroup.com, spywareremove.com, uninstallxupiter.com
[A: 6-26-04 / U: 8-22-04]
"In addition to Symantec, other competitors of Enigma, including Malwarebytes.org, SecurityCadets.com, MalwareTeks.com, and Temerc.com, have been coordinating a campaign to have SpyHunter listed as rogue software. Each of these entities is a competitor of Enigma Software Group that either has competing products or is an affiliate of competing products. Enigma is evaluating closely its legal options with respect to this anticompetitive campaign."Two amazing bits in what might be considered an "obscure speech or writing" or perhaps "something hard to understand or explain":
"Enigma wishes to engage the Internet security community at large in a neutral open discussion at a neutral forum. Executives and employees of Enigma agree to discuss technical details of Enigma's software product SpyHunter. Enigma invites security experts such as Susan Turner, Ben Edelman, Eric Howes, and other security experts to discuss SpyHunter. Enigma requests that there be no anonymous posts permitted in this discussion thread, to help ensure it will not be subverted by those who would post comments for anticompetitive purposes. Accordingly, Enigma requests that participants in this forum thread should provide their name, address, and phone number."
The first is the identification of Malwarebytes.org, SecurityCadets.com, MalwareTeks.com, and Temerc.com, security blogs and help sites as "competitors" of a software company.The Webster-Merriman Dictionary has indeed provided an excellent definition of the word "Enigma", a true mystery.
The second is that a company, reputed over the years as hiding behind false identities, expects participants in a public forum to provide their name, address and phone number. Remember, readers, this is a statement from a company reportedly dealing with privacy and security.
"I determined the rescheduling to May 18th by calling the GA-21 Criminal Clerks office in Norwich Superior Court this morning at about 11:30PM EDST. I was told by the media it was not official yet and I suspect that is why none of the media seem to have picked this up yet. None-the-less, I was told the following, "The Julie Amero sentencing hearing has been rescheduled for May 18th in Norwich Superior Court." Thus, I have no reason to doubt its accuracy."Mr. Johnston's report was confirmed later by the (IMO, biased) Norwich Bulletin.
Windows Update: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.comHotfix replacement information
Windows Download Center
Windows Media Center Extenders, such as the Microsoft Xbox 360, use network ports to communicate over the network to computers that are running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate. This cumulative update contains updates to Media Center programs that may have been previously configured as "approved" or "allowed" by a third-party firewall. If you use a third-party firewall, you may have to manually update your firewall to let the new versions of these programs access the ports. If you do not perform these firewall updates, you may experience failures when you try to connect the Windows Media Center Extender to the Media Center computer.
"Users of the Microsoft Office XP and 2003 programs Word, Excel, or PowerPoint—please install all High-Priority updates from Microsoft Update before downloading the Compatibility Pack.
By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 924074.
Note: If you use Microsoft Word 2000 or Microsoft Word 2002 to read or write documents containing complex scripts, please see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925451 for information to enable Word 2007 documents to be displayed correctly in your version of Word.
Administrators: The administrative template for the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint converters contained within the Compatibility Pack is available for download."
"For this issue, our teams are working on developing and testing 133 separate updates: one in every language for every currently supported version of Windows servers. Each of these has to be tested to ensure they effectively protect against the vulnerability. Because DNS is a critical part of the networking infrastructure, they also have to be tested to ensure that changes introduced by the updates don’t pose a greater risk than the security issue we’re addressing."That's right 133 separate updates to be tested, with new findings needing to be retested!
Bill Pytlovany announced WinPatrol 2007, Build 3 today with the following feature additions and bug fixes:"Firefox versions 1.5.0.12 and 2.0.0.4 will be published before that date, with the update from 1.5 to 2.0 being launched shortly afterwards, offering users the Major Update. From version 1.5.0.9 upwards, Firefox has included the auto update function for upgrading to a Major Release.
Since heavy loads are expected when these updates are downloaded, users are advised to perform a manual upgrade to version 2.0.0.3 now."
Platform:
- Windows XP SP2 (x86)
- Windows XP SP2 (x64)
- Windows Vista (x86)
- Windows Vista (x64)
Installation InstructionsVia Windows Vista Blog
1. Installation of the Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin may require administrative access to your PC. It is recommended that you close all other open browser windows before continuing with the installation.
2. Click the Install button to automatically download and install the Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin.
3. Depending on your security settings, you may see a Security Warning dialog box. Click Install to install the plugin.
Note: There is a known issue if you are using Firefox version 2.0.0.3 on Windows Vista with the installer failing with error code -203. To work around this simply restart Firefox (you will get a notification that Windows Vista will be changing the Firefox compatibility settings) and then install again - the second time should succeed.
"If you have Windows Vista, even the Home Basic version, you already have one of the more powerful speech recognition systems available. Microsoft has invested many millions of dollars in research regarding speech recognition over the years. Some of what they study in the R&D labs is years away from being a product, but there's a lot of new fancy speech recognition technology built right into Vista."For the complete tutorial, see ExtremeTech:
An update for Windows Defender on Windows Vista has been released. The update corrects a problem in the functionality of Windows Defender malware sample submission. This update applies only to Windows Defender version 1.1.1505.0 on Windows Vista. This problem does not occur in Windows Defender version 1.1.1592.0. This problem also does not occur in later versions of Windows Defender on Windows XP.
"If you are using Windows Vista, the Internet Explorer 7 protected mode provides additional protections against web-based attacks."In a very timely manner, Sharath Udupa, a developer on the IE team, explained how to tell if the Protected Mode feature is turned on or off for Internet Explorer in Windows Vista. (Note that the Protected Mode feature is available only in Windows Vista.) By default, Protected Mode is enabled for Internet, Intranet and Restricted zones while disabled for the Trusted Sites and Local Machine zone.
- User Account Control (UAC) is disabled – If UAC is disabled, Protected Mode is turned OFF. When UAC is disabled, some of the protections which Protected Mode depends on are not available, for example, UI Privilege Isolation (UIPI) is disabled. Hence, Protected Mode is turned off in this scenario.
- IE is running with Administrator privileges – Protected Mode is turned off when IE is launched by right clicking on the IE icon and selecting “Run as administrator” or when IE is launched with administrative privileges from another application. This generally occurs when an installer/setup program running with administrator privileges starts a new IE process.
- IE is navigated to a local HTML page – When the page being viewed is a local file, Protected Mode is turned OFF since the contents of the page are considered safe. Caveat: If the page was saved from a zone (for example Internet) which has Protected Mode enabled, then Protected Mode is turned ON.
"We noted in our original advisory that attacks against this vulnerability affect all supported versions of Windows and Windows Server, including Windows Vista, and have been web-based and e-mail based.We call these out in the Mitigating Factors section of the security bulletin MS07-017."
- If you are using Windows Vista, the Internet Explorer 7 protected mode provides additional protections against web-based attacks.
- If you’re using Outlook 2007, you’re protected against e-mail based attacks.
- Running as a standard user further protects you by limiting the attacker’s code with the same limitation on the logged-on user.
Rthdcpl.exe - Illegal System DLL Relocation
The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\Windows\System32\Hhctrl.ocx occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.
