Repost: More Articles, part two
Jun 4, 2008 20:10:06 GMT
Post by CharlieChomper on Jun 4, 2008 20:10:06 GMT
Disclaimer: As the title suggests, this is a reposting of an earlier thread. The information is still relevant as is the article and was important enough to where I've chosen to repost it here.
I'll start off by saying that this is going to be quite a few articles to go through, I'll admit, but as they are mostly related to one-another (with one obvious exception), I felt it was probably best if I grouped them all together. I still have more articles to share after this, but again, it will have to wait until I can go through them all to post and I'll likewise try and group them by subject.
Also, in the spirit of "fairness" and for anyone interested, I felt I'd post some recent articles that involve Apple for a change (and I haven't forgotten about that PM
) as well as (and not entirely related to) security-type of issues, with some partly being a "follow-up" to a previous post I had made and the article that doesn't quite "fit in" (which has nothing to do with either, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to put this) involves hardware that's relevant regardless of what platform a person is using.
The first article involves another recent lawsuit which Apple was involved with regarding false advertising involving iMacs (this is the second recent suit I'm aware of to be brought forth over this, with the other most recent one involving the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air). The article actually comes from a website for Mac news, run by a Mac user. There's also a follow-up article regarding the other, earlier lawsuit I had mentioned involving the MacBook Pro and Air.
The follow-up I'm posting to regarding a previous thread is specifically with regards to Safari for Windows. When it was first released as a "extra item" to those downloading iTunes, there was a problem for Windows users with the licensing terms which you can read about here. As the issue became widely-publicized and discussed on a number of very high-profile and heavily trafficked tech sites, Apple made changes to their EULA, which you can read about here.
However, the main follow-up I wanted to mention with regards to this involves a very serious problem with Safari (which strangely Konqueror--the open source browser "engine" that Safari was built upon--doesn't suffer from). This isn't just a problem that affects Windows users, however--it also affects all Mac users who choose to use it as well. The article I'm posting a link to is a major security site who rates and tracks various threats and exploits in existence. This particular mention is for the Windows version, but there currently exists a very similar and just as severe problem with the Mac version (so much so that Paypal issued a statement not too long ago requesting Mac users to go with a different browser, along with an explanation of why).
On that note, there's been another issue that Windows users have had to contend with regarding Safari involving crashing-related problems (the headlines mention XP, but Vista users have similarly been dealing with issues involving it).
The next series of articles are more security-related and involve a bit of a "blend" of platforms where security are concerned--specifically what are known as "zero/0 day exploits" which tend to unpatched security vulnerabilities that are sometimes released into the knowledge of malware writes (who use them as a means to spread spyware, virii/worms/"trojans" and other nasty, sometimes malicious, and unwanted "surprises") as well as the sorts of people who like to break into computers. The first article actually is more of a comparison between Microsoft versus Apple in terms of their past and recent history of releasing patches for such problems. The study that was conducted and is being referenced was done so independently (if there was some doubt about it, I would not have posted the link as I personally don't take too much stock in biased or suspiciously-funded studies (of which there have been far too many of in this industry).
Related to that are a few articles involving a recent, annual competition that's held to specifically break into specific types of operating systems (on specific computers within the competition) with the goal to check the security and look for any problems that might require addressing--it's a similar premise to a game publisher having held a competition for a day at a convention to look for bugs and other potential issues with their games (as well as possible fixes), so they knew what needed to be addressed and fixed. It is not held to "encourage" people taking advantage of a problem nor breaking into other people's computers without permission. In this situation, the computers were running either Windows Vista, Mac OS X (on a MacBook Air), and Ubuntu (a very popular/common Linux distribution) and the prizes during this competition were the computers running one of the three operating systems, themselves. The first article comes from Yahoo and goes into an overall discussion as to the situation and which of the three systems was "cracked" first and may be more "accessible" where the second article goes into the situation a bit more detail. The third article actually is the blog (for the last day) of the competition and goes into it more (including what the competition is all about) as well as providing a breakdown of which system was broken into when and how (without naming the precise method involved for obvious reasons).
Last, but not least, the article that doesn't quite fit in with this involves hard drive failure--something that I'm sure all of us have dealt with at one point or another.
Also, before I forget, if anyone here is using Firefox and hasn't done so, I can't emphasize enough to please upgrade to the latest build (2.0.13). There was a serious problem with the previous build (2.0.12) involving memory usage that has been fixed in the current "build".
<Same thread, different post>
Sorry to add this as a new post, but given the length of the original thread, I thought it might be better to post this separately and as part three mainly deals with Windows and Microsoft, I felt this also would be a more appropriate topic to mention this.
This is more information regarding Paypal with regards to both Safari (which you can read about here) and any other web browser which may contain serious security-related issues (in the case of Safari, there's a vulnerability related to phishing) and their change in policy regarding browsers which you can read about here.
I'll start off by saying that this is going to be quite a few articles to go through, I'll admit, but as they are mostly related to one-another (with one obvious exception), I felt it was probably best if I grouped them all together. I still have more articles to share after this, but again, it will have to wait until I can go through them all to post and I'll likewise try and group them by subject.
Also, in the spirit of "fairness" and for anyone interested, I felt I'd post some recent articles that involve Apple for a change (and I haven't forgotten about that PM
) as well as (and not entirely related to) security-type of issues, with some partly being a "follow-up" to a previous post I had made and the article that doesn't quite "fit in" (which has nothing to do with either, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to put this) involves hardware that's relevant regardless of what platform a person is using. The first article involves another recent lawsuit which Apple was involved with regarding false advertising involving iMacs (this is the second recent suit I'm aware of to be brought forth over this, with the other most recent one involving the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air). The article actually comes from a website for Mac news, run by a Mac user. There's also a follow-up article regarding the other, earlier lawsuit I had mentioned involving the MacBook Pro and Air.
The follow-up I'm posting to regarding a previous thread is specifically with regards to Safari for Windows. When it was first released as a "extra item" to those downloading iTunes, there was a problem for Windows users with the licensing terms which you can read about here. As the issue became widely-publicized and discussed on a number of very high-profile and heavily trafficked tech sites, Apple made changes to their EULA, which you can read about here.
However, the main follow-up I wanted to mention with regards to this involves a very serious problem with Safari (which strangely Konqueror--the open source browser "engine" that Safari was built upon--doesn't suffer from). This isn't just a problem that affects Windows users, however--it also affects all Mac users who choose to use it as well. The article I'm posting a link to is a major security site who rates and tracks various threats and exploits in existence. This particular mention is for the Windows version, but there currently exists a very similar and just as severe problem with the Mac version (so much so that Paypal issued a statement not too long ago requesting Mac users to go with a different browser, along with an explanation of why).
On that note, there's been another issue that Windows users have had to contend with regarding Safari involving crashing-related problems (the headlines mention XP, but Vista users have similarly been dealing with issues involving it).
The next series of articles are more security-related and involve a bit of a "blend" of platforms where security are concerned--specifically what are known as "zero/0 day exploits" which tend to unpatched security vulnerabilities that are sometimes released into the knowledge of malware writes (who use them as a means to spread spyware, virii/worms/"trojans" and other nasty, sometimes malicious, and unwanted "surprises") as well as the sorts of people who like to break into computers. The first article actually is more of a comparison between Microsoft versus Apple in terms of their past and recent history of releasing patches for such problems. The study that was conducted and is being referenced was done so independently (if there was some doubt about it, I would not have posted the link as I personally don't take too much stock in biased or suspiciously-funded studies (of which there have been far too many of in this industry).
Related to that are a few articles involving a recent, annual competition that's held to specifically break into specific types of operating systems (on specific computers within the competition) with the goal to check the security and look for any problems that might require addressing--it's a similar premise to a game publisher having held a competition for a day at a convention to look for bugs and other potential issues with their games (as well as possible fixes), so they knew what needed to be addressed and fixed. It is not held to "encourage" people taking advantage of a problem nor breaking into other people's computers without permission. In this situation, the computers were running either Windows Vista, Mac OS X (on a MacBook Air), and Ubuntu (a very popular/common Linux distribution) and the prizes during this competition were the computers running one of the three operating systems, themselves. The first article comes from Yahoo and goes into an overall discussion as to the situation and which of the three systems was "cracked" first and may be more "accessible" where the second article goes into the situation a bit more detail. The third article actually is the blog (for the last day) of the competition and goes into it more (including what the competition is all about) as well as providing a breakdown of which system was broken into when and how (without naming the precise method involved for obvious reasons).
Last, but not least, the article that doesn't quite fit in with this involves hard drive failure--something that I'm sure all of us have dealt with at one point or another.
Also, before I forget, if anyone here is using Firefox and hasn't done so, I can't emphasize enough to please upgrade to the latest build (2.0.13). There was a serious problem with the previous build (2.0.12) involving memory usage that has been fixed in the current "build".
<Same thread, different post>
Sorry to add this as a new post, but given the length of the original thread, I thought it might be better to post this separately and as part three mainly deals with Windows and Microsoft, I felt this also would be a more appropriate topic to mention this.
This is more information regarding Paypal with regards to both Safari (which you can read about here) and any other web browser which may contain serious security-related issues (in the case of Safari, there's a vulnerability related to phishing) and their change in policy regarding browsers which you can read about here.
