Alexander’s Blog

Another day, another Macintosh security scare. Or so it seems. In the past week, users of Apple’s Mac computers - rarely touched by viruses, worms and other nasty stuff - have been warned of at least three security threats. This week, security experts detected a flaw in the way Apple software handles downloaded files. The flaw could give attackers back-door access to Macs if their owners open malicious files from bogus Web sites and e-mail.

Windows-based PCs have felt the brunt of attacks for years because those machines command more than 95% of the worldwide market. Macs mostly have escaped the attention of hackers, until now.

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Steve Gibson’s Version
Steve Gibson was curious about why Microsoft was not releasing a patch for the earlier versions of Windows to remedy the WMF vulnerability. Microsoft had stated in their Technical Bulletin that they saw no need to patch the older Windows operating system because the WMF “vulnerability” didn’t affect those OS’s. Here’s what Steve Gibson concluded on his Web site grc.com.

“The only conclusion that can reasonably be drawn is that this was a deliberate backdoor put into all of Microsoft’s recent editions of Windows. WHY it was put in and WHO knew about it, and WHAT they were expected to use it for … we’ll never know.”

Microsoft’s Version
Microsoft has directly responded to accusations by security researcher Steve Gibson who claimed the company intentionally left the Windows Meta File vulnerability open as some kind of “backdoor.” The company says the function in question exists due to legacy code, not some nefarious intent.

Microsoft security program manager Stephen Toulouse responds to Steve Gibson’s claims in Microsoft Security Response Center Blog.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Tuesday laid out a comprehensive security Relevant Products/Services from strategy designed to highlight improvements in the forthcoming Windows Vista operating system.

He also spoke about other technologies that are becoming integral components of Microsoft’s software and services as the company attempts to stay one step ahead of those attacking its technology seemingly from all sides. Gates also discussed the company’s commitment to simplifying identity and access management in the enterprise. Beginning with the release of Longhorn — the next version of Windows Server — Microsoft will expand the role of Active Directory to include rights-management services, certificate services, metadirectory services, and federation services.

He issued an industry-wide call for engineering security in all stages of technology development, encouraging software developers to think of security not as an afterthought but as a “guiding principle.”

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To start off, this is NOT a list of overall popularity. If we did that, Microsoft’s MCP would win every year. Instead, we’re looking for the certifications that we think will be the most influential in 2006, the ones that will grow the fastest, the ones that we think will show the true future of IT certification. As a simple analogy, think of it more as a Billboard Hot 100 singles list — instead of the most popular songs, we’re looking for the ones that will rise the fastest.

Also realize that we do base it on some actual research. We start with our annual reader survey, on which we present more than 70 certifications and ask you to tell us which ones you hold and which ones you plan to get within the next 12 months. Positive differences are then converted to a 1 to 20 scale (20 being best), resulting in a “reader interest” score.

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If you’ve run into a situation where client computers do not report back to the Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server and the following error messages are logged to the Windowsupdate.log file on the client computers:

DateTime
WARNING: Failed to upload events to the server with hr = 80244008.

DateTime
WARNING: ReportEventBatch failure, error = 0×80244008, soap client error = 8, soap error code = 0, HTTP status code = 200

This problem occurs because of an indexing issue in the WSUS database. This indexing issue causes a time-out error before client computers can report back to the WSUS server. There is a hotfix available from Microsoft. Check out the KB article 910847. You do not have to restart the computer after you apply this hotfix.