Author Archive
One aspect of the stock market crash
A post at the New York Times Bits blog points out one of the anomalies of the stock market’s waterfall in values. Sun Microsystems has the same amount of cash on hand as its entire market value. In other words, the company could buy all its outstanding shares with its own cash reserves. In [...]
More about clickjacking and NoScript
As mentioned below, the Firefox extension NoScript has been updated to help deal with the clickjacking exploit. Gregg Keizer discusses how the extension works and its pros and cons.
Financial management software
It may be that with the financial system collapsing around our ears, you are not interested in looking at software for managing your finances. But then again maybe you are. In any event, if you are tired of having to buy new upgrades of Quicken, you might take a look at Tech Support Alert’s list [...]
Sandbox security
For several years I have been writing about the inadequacy of traditional security measures that use reactive methods. (For example, See this page). One of the newer proactive defenses is sandboxing, where the browser or other program is isolated from the rest of the system so that malware infections cannot spread. In a PC World [...]
Clickjacking info
For the more technically minded, here is a link with some details about what clickjacking involves.
“Clickjacking” exploit
Word has been going around for some time about a security problem with Web sites known as “clickjacking”. There is a fundamental flaw in HTML that affects all browsers. As far as I have seen there are no widespread exploits taking advantage of the security hole but if readers know of any, please let [...]
Social media everywhere
I have not personally been attracted to the social media phenomenon but it is a major component of the Web for many people. Search Engine Land discusses how the interactive social media sites have grown and are even invading traditional media:
Over the last few years we have seen a real explosion of social media sites [...]
How do I get this thing open?
Sometimes the most difficult part of using a new piece of gear or new software is getting the package open. The Windows Vista packaging baffled so many people that Microsoft created a video showing how to get the box open. Also, the sealed plastic packages that now encapsulate so many things are not only hard [...]
Will Windows 7 be called something else?
During development, Microsoft programs are given a code name, which generally does not become the name of the finished product. For example during development, Vista had several names, including “Longhorn”. So far the next version of Windows has been referred to by the rather prosaic moniker “Windows 7″. Now Ed Bott is speculating that the [...]
A history of bugs in Windows
Over at InfoWorld, there is an article Worst Windows flaws of the past decade. It’s a good reminder of why it is important to apply security patches as soon as they are available. The article recaps how malware writers exploited the security holes in Windows over the past ten years.