Dream Machine

[PowerPole]

New Worm to be aware of...

Plus...I don't know if my favorite Window's Newletter has ever been brought to this boards attention...I think it's Great, and it's also Free! It also has product reviews, and a lot of other interesting things...I highly recommend it...

http://www.windowssecrets.com/info/

Here's the information on the New Worm, and a link to this complete Newsletter: http://www.WindowsSecrets.com/comp/051013.


"Something wormy this way comes...

Our team of Windows experts predicts that a serious worm attack will blaze across the Internet soon. This is due to a security hole that Microsoft announced on Oct. 11.

The remedy is a patch called MS05-051. It's one of 8 the Redmond company released on its regular Patch Tuesday schedule. All of these patches may be significant to you. But it's particularly important that Windows XP users upgrade to Service Pack 2 (if you already haven't) and that users of Windows 2000, XP, and other versions install MS05-051 to protect against the oncoming malware.

This hole is so easy to exploit that those in the know are moving quickly. Third-party security-software updates have already been released by McAfee and Internet Security Systems, and other vendors will soon bring out their own updates, if they haven't already.

To make matters worse, a hacked .avi media file can also silently infect Windows users who play it, even users of XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003. MS05-050 fixes this.

For this topic, I've commissioned a special patch analysis (below) by Ryan Russell, a recognized authority. Ryan is a white-hat hacker who's authored several books and now helps corporations keep their systems protected.

This worrisome situation has spawned a debate among our contributing editors. On the one hand, Microsoft's patches sometimes have negative side-effects. On the other hand, waiting weeks to see whether a patch has a bug can expose you to a devastating Internet intrusion.

We decided early this year to publish on a new schedule to solve this dilemma. Our twice-monthly newsletter now comes out a mere two days after every Patch Tuesday, and two weeks after that. Our contributors stay up past midnight on Patch Tuesday researching any reported patch issues. You can then read the newsletter on Thursday and learn how to avoid any problems we find. That should give you the confidence to install the latest patches on Friday or Saturday, before hackers can (so far) code and launch a worm.

This week's articles by Chris Mosby, Susan Bradley, and Woody Leonhard appear in the paid version of the newsletter. Ryan Russell's insight into the new threat and Microsoft's updates is included in the free version this week but will move to the paid version in future issues.

If you're receiving only the free newsletter, you can access all old and new paid content by making a voluntary financial contribution of any amount.

Someday, Microsoft will release software that doesn't need monthly patches. Until then, we'll keep our eyes peeled and produce the best information we can to help you. —Brian Livingston, Editor"