Sophos antivirus classifies its own update kit as malware

Sophos users woke up to mayhem on Thursday after the business-focussed antivirus firm released an update that classified itself and any other update utility as a virus.
As a result enterprise PCs running the application went haywire, generating false positives reporting SSH/Updater-B malware. Sysadmins were bombarded with automated alerts by email about the bogus problem. The issue was resolved with a functional update, issued on Wednesday evening.

More here !

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/20/sophos_auto_immune_update_chaos/

 

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Google's Android celebrates fourth birthday

Android will be four years old on Sunday, September 23.
Google launched the first public version of the mobile OS, in the form of the Android 1.0, on 23 September 2008, though its origins go back years before that.

More here  --- http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/20/google_android_is_four_years_old/

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First Irish-speaking virus holds bloke's computer to ransom

Crooks have created what's reckoned to be the first computer virus featuring the Irish language.
The malware – dubbed Gaeilge – is a strain of ransomware that locks up an infected computer and attempts to extort €100 from the user for an unlock code. The demand for cash reportedly appeared in poorly written Gaelic, and the software nastie was spotted on a computer in County Donegal, Ireland.

The victim wisely took his compromised machine for repairs rather than handing over money to the crooks. The virus claimed the lock-down was a result of the Irish government detecting that the user had accessed online pornography.

More here ! - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/07/irish_language_virus/

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Windows 7 passes XP, Mac OS X passes Vista

Two aging Windows operating systems slipped a ranking each in the market share race this August, with Windows 7 overtaking Windows XP as the world's most popular desktop operating system, and Apple's OS X overtaking the late, lamented Windows Vista.
This news comes to us from Net Applications' monthly Net Market Share survey, which released its Desktop Operating System Market Share rankings on Monday. Caveat emptor: these statistics are based not by counting actual installation numbers – a prohibitively difficult task – but by extrapolating from internet usage as reported by 40,000 websites worldwide. Not a perfect methodology, to be sure, but one that provides a more than merely acceptable estimation.

More here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/03/netapplications_stats/

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Password hints easily snaffled from Windows PCs

Punters' password hints are easily extracted from the latest Microsoft Windows machines, security researchers have discovered.
TrustWave SpiderLabs uncovered a key called "UserPasswordHint" during wider research into how the Redmond operating system stores password hashes. Subsequent studies showed it was easy to extract and decode password hints from the registry on both Windows 7 and Windows 8 machines. The value stored is obscured with the addition of zeros but not encrypted.

More here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/23/password_hint/

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It's not just crap PC sales: Dell's storage revs are also slipping down

Has the spark has gone out? Despite acquisitions Dell's storage revenues have been declining for over a year. The effort to develop synergies between the products hasn't delivered the sales goods yet. Is it time for a re-think?

Dell has just announced second fiscal 2013 quarterly results with revenues 8 per cent down year-on-year. The overall quarterly revenue picture is of a company flat-lining at the $15bn/quarter level, as the chart shows:

See more here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/22/dell_quarterly_storage_revenues/

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Office 2013 to eat own file-format dog food

With the upcoming release of Office 2013, Microsoft is finally offering full support for the Open XML document standard, a format that Redmond itself created and has been promoting for nearly seven years.
"Microsoft continues to lead in giving customers choice and flexibility in file format standards and interoperability," writes Redmond's Jim Thatcher in a blog post announcing the change – although the actual history has been somewhat different.

More here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/15/office_2013_strict_open_xml/

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