Top 5 Optimizers technical rumors

Adobe Systems has released an update for its PDF creation and viewing software Adobe Acrobat Professional, Acrobat Pro Extended, Acrobat Standard. There is also an update for Acrobat 3D. These updates close vulnerability in system security that could cause emergency system shutdowns and possible access hackers trying to get access to the vulnerable system. The versions 8 and 9 have all been updated to8.2 and 9.3 accordingly.

A recent problem that some Windows 7 users expirienced was having completely black screen after logging on got lot of attention after report by BBC on Tuesday. British software security firm Prevx claimed that most likely cause of the error were changes to Microsoft’s operating system’s registry, however Microsoft denied that. As Microsoft stated, the software giant had all the reports that its November security updates made changes to permissions in the registry that are resulting in system issues for some customers invastigated and claims that all of these reports were inaccurate and can’t be connected to the recently released security updates. They also claim that Microsoft support team hasn’t seentthis issue as big for users.

A Panda Virus that has caused widespread damage at a time when public knowledge about online security was low and caused first arrests for virus-writing in 2007 in China is now back. China’s national virus response center warned about apdated worn earlier this week, but they have only now made the connection between the new release and the old Panda Virus. The worm that is now spreading through the internet infecting html and executable files, disables users form deleteing infected files, turns off available antivirus protection and redirects webbrowser to certain website, downloading Trojan horses and other malware. It acts differently from 2006, but basics are the same, however McAfee Labs researchers say that the new variant adds a malicious component meant to make infection harder to detect. To sum it up: we advice you to keep your antivirus protection at highest levels for awhile at least, and don’t forget to update virus databases.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer security bug that was disclosed last week yet again takes our attention – this time developers of the open-source Metasploit penetration testing toolkit have released code that can compromise IE browser, however the code cannot be called reliable. As the developers said tehmselves – the bug is unreliable, you can’t be sure that you will be able to compromise one’s browser. As stated by Microsoft – there hasn’t yet been any attacks using this exploit in the wild. As stated by the software giant, only IE versions 6 and 7 may be effected and Microsoft has already released a Security Advisory that offers workarounds to guard against the flaw.

After it became known that automatically installed Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation Plug-in for a popular webbrowser Firefox opened a major security hole, Mozilla decided to block this plug-in completely, even though Microsoft released a patch to fix the problem. It is said that Microsoft agreed with this move. At the same time Mozilla let out a Plugin Check page designed to find outdated and vulerable plug-ins, it currently picks up only a few but will be constantly updated by Mozilla. If you are using Mozilla Firefox webbrowser you might also want to grab the 3.0.15 or 3.5.5 updates, which close some holes in security and enhance privacy protection.

Windows 7, being the newest operating system that Microsoft released to the world, survived its first few weeks on the market without needing any security fixes or updates. Microsoft plugged several security holes with recent fixes, but none were aimed at Windows 7, as expected as attackers will need more time to figure out how to get into this new system. Among the problems that have been fixed with this patch was a flaw that allowed an attacker to infect all computers in the local network after getting access to just one (not all of the school or office computer users can avoid clicking on suspicious links), some Word and Excel flaws that would give the attacker access to whole PC through some spreadsheet or document, and some problems with early versions of XP and Vista.

Kaspersky Lab, the software development company and authors of one of the most popular antivirus software, presented it’s two TOP 20 list s harmful programs and codes. The first list was dedicated to the programs that were found and deleted on users computers, and the first place went to Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.ir, which confirms that infections from media storage devices are still one of the main cause of getting viruses. The second list is dedicated to the harmful programs found on the Internet, and includes a number of JavaScript harmful codes divided in smaller pieces which makes it more difficult to detect and cure, including the recent popular download utility Gumblar.

Software makers arounf the world are scrambling to fix a certain and very serious bug in the technology that is used to securily transfer the information on the internet. The problem lies in Security sockets Layer protocol used for safe browsing, and altough the flaw can only be exploited under certain circumstances, it could be used to hack into filesharing servers, mail servers, databases and many other secure applications. As it is so widely used, the SSL protocol is under very close watch by security specialist and researchers. We should expect a number of patches to be available soon to fix the problem, as the bug was the main theme for discussions lately.

In Netherland a hacker took advantage of the SST protocols the mobile service of T-mobile Netherlands was using to provide the connection between iPhones and some terminal comands. People who used this service sometimes forgot to change the root password, which is basically same as leaving your car open on the street with keys inside. The hacker changed the wallpaper on all hacked iPhones to show the following text:”Your iPhone has been hacked as it was absolutely unprotected! Please visit link to ensure it’s safety right now!”. On the website the hacker offered the owners of hacked iPhones to pay a €5 fee to get instructions on setting security to optional level. He also stated:”I don’t really care if you pay, just remember that there might be thousands of others who might use your iPhones to send messages and make calls from your phone number after hacking.

A report was released by Microsoft yesterday stating that Windows Vista greatly outperforms XP when it comes to security. The number of infections that Vista computers got was far less then XP users have faced. Still, whatever operating system you use it is always necessary to update to the latest service pack available, as it is this service packs that contain most major security modifications. That is another reason behind Vista supremacy – Vista SP completely outbeat XP SP in the subject of security configurations. For obvious reasons we can’t have any information of this kind on Windows 7, however it has been stated that Windows 7 contains a number of new important security enhancements.