Archive for April, 2010

McAfee has offered to pay for the PC repairs of consumers affected by last week’s faulty antivirus update.

The problematic patch falsely identified the SVCHOST.EXE Windows file as a virus, causing PCs running Windows XP SP3 to crash or enter endless reboot cycles. Among those affected were US police forces and Intel.

If you have already incurred costs to repair your PC as a result of this issue, we’re committed to reimbursing reasonable expenses

In a blog post addressed to "Home or Home Office Consumers", the company offered to reimburse PC repair expenses, though there was a notable caveat.

"If you have already incurred costs to repair your PC as a result of this issue, we’re committed to reimbursing reasonable expenses," the company said.

We’ve contacted McAfee to clarify what it means by "reasonable expenses" and whether a similar programme will be extended to business customers. We were awaiting a response at the time of writing.

In a canny bid to stop customers deserting the software en masse after the problems McAfee’s also offering "a two year extension of your existing McAfee subscription free of charge."

There’s still no word from the company on how such a serious fault managed to slip through its quality control process.

Sony is to discontinue production of 3.5in floppy disks, as the ageing technology slides towards its inevitable demise.

The company called time on floppy disks outside of Japan back in March, and now a "lack of demand" has prompted Sony to claim it will cease production within its home market in 2011.

Given that Sony is the last major manufacturer of floppy disks, it seems the final days are dawning for the storage technology.

The 3.5in format arrived as a successor to the 5.25in floppy disk back in 1981, and swiftly became the most popular way of transferring files between computers.

However, as Zip drives, CDs, DVDs and USB sticks offered increased storage capacity at lower prices – not to mention the transfer of files over the internet – the floppy market quickly diminished. According to Sony, it shipped more than 47 million disks within Japan in 2000, compared to 8.5 million by 2009.

Apple dropped the floppy disk as early as 1998, when it released the first edition of the iMac, followed by Dell in 2003.

(taken from PC Pro – 26/04/2010 by Stuart Turton)

Modern cars are incredibly difficult to break in to and steal, so much so that thieves often find it easier to break in to a house and steal the car keys to make off with it. Hackers targeting your website are faced with a similar problem when it comes to getting access to your website.

Few hackers target the web host directly, with all the money large web hosts such as ourselves spend on security and monitoring it is simply too difficult to gain access. Instead they go directly after the webmaster by downloading a virus on to their PC and getting the FTP log in details so often stored as an unprotected flat text file within software such as Filezilla.

What do they do with the information?
Once they have direct access to your website’s files they are any number of actions they can take:
- Insert links in to your site & create link farms
- Capture your member’s information
- Links to malware
- Spread viruses
- Destroy your site

How do you stop them?
Because they are targeting your PC make sure your virus protection up to date. Don’t put off the updates until ‘next week’ or when you can be bothered, get in to a routine of installing the latest patches e.g. on a Sunday afternoon whilst you are out or at night when you are asleep.

The easiest way to prevent access is to not have the information to be found in the first place. Don’t store log in details on your local PC unprotected e.g. in the FTP software’s auto login. Having to manually log in will literally add 10 seconds to your day and when you think of it like that its time well spent if it means your site in not compromised.

Regularly change your FTP password with a strong, and ideally random, password using capitals, numbers and extra characters. As well as a strong password, rather than have FTP access permanently enabled disable FTP access when you don’t need it.

As mentioned above, hackers will identify the vulnerabilities found within popular 3rd party software such as WordPress. If you use any CMS that allows plug-ins to be installed make sure you only get them from trusted sources and research them fully online (i.e. don’t do it blindly). This is also true of any 3rd party scripts you choose to use from sites such as hotscripts.com.

How to monitor if your site has been hacked?
One of the most popular reasons hackers go after sites is to essentially create a massive link farm to boost the search ranking of another site they own which is the money maker. A good example of this in action is the recent Haiti disaster which was targeted by fraudsters capturing bank details of people wanting to donate money to the relief programs. Many started by searching for charities through Google and clicking on the highest ranked sites, some of which were fraudsters boosted by their hacked site links. Monitor your website’s outbound links by checking Google webmaster tools or using a tool like http://validator.w3.org/checklink. It is also worth checking your directory in an FTP client on regular basis to spot any irregularities or any files/ folders that you didn’t create.

What to do about it if you have been hacked?
If you find out your site has been hacked the first step is to turn off FTP access to prevent them gaining further access. Once you have done that change your FTP log in details and run a full virus scan on your PC.

To remove any changes they may have made, rather than manually editing your files and risk missing anything, restore the website using the version you have backed up. Backing up your website is really quick and easy and completely free through your SureHOST control panel. To make sure you always have the latest version of your site we strongly recommend you back up your website using this facility whenever you make a change to your website.

Microsoft’s Touch Pack for Windows 7 is now available for download to any compatible computer.

It was originally released in May 2009, but was only available to OEMs to preinstall on touchscreen devices. The suite can now be downloaded onto any PC with a multitouch screen.

The pack consists of a series of programs and games created to use the features of a touchscreen.

Microsoft Windows 7

The complete guide

“If you have a Windows 7 PC or a multitouch monitor that supports Windows Touch in Windows 7, the Touch Pack for Windows 7 is a good way for you to be able to truly test the multitouch investments we’ve made in Windows 7,” Microsoft Windows Communications Manager Brandon LeBlanc said in a post on the Windows blog.

The available programs include Microsoft Surface Globe, which allows users to explore the earth as a "multitouch 3D experience", and Microsoft Surface Collage, a touch program for interacting with photos. Games include the Microsoft Blackboard and the Japanese-themed Garden Pond.

McAfee has apologised to its customers after a routine security update crippled Windows XP PCs.

The update falsely identified the SVCHOST.EXE Windows file as a virus, effectively prompting the McAfee software to attack core operating system files. This causes affected PCs to crash or enter endless reboot cycles.

The problem appears only to have affected McAfee customers running Windows XP SP3, but it has reportedly downed tens of thousands of PCs across the world, including those of Intel, US police departments and universities.

Today we released a update file that clearly did more harm than good

McAfee claims businesses are worse hit than consumers, although it’s playing down the impact of the false positive. "We believe that this incident has impacted less than one half of one percent of our enterprise accounts globally and a fraction of that within the consumer base – home users of products such as McAfee VirusScan Plus, McAfee Internet Security Suite and McAfee Total Protection," writes Barry McPherson, the company’s executive vice president for customer service on the McAfee blog. "That said, if you’re one of those impacted, this is a significant event for you and we understand that."

McAfee has halted distribution of the flawed update an issued a fix for the problem.

In a follow-up blog post, McPherson admitted the company had let its customers down. "In our ongoing efforts to protect our customers from a seemingly endlessly multiplying variety and volume of attacks, today we released a update file that clearly did more harm than good," he said. "There was a legitimate threat and we wanted to protect our customers, as we have done successfully thousands and thousands of times before. But in trying to do so, we created negative and unintended consequences for some very important people. Many of you."

"Mistakes happen. No excuses," McPherson added. "The nearly 7,000 employees of McAfee are focused right now on two things, in this order. First, help our customers who have been affected by this issue get back to business as usual. And second, once that is done, make sure we put the processes in place so this never happens again."

Microsoft Office 2010 has been "released to manufacturing", the last major milestone before release.

RTM occurs when Microsoft officially signs off the code, and the company will now allow Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 to be installed on new machines by PC makers, burnt to CDs and uploaded to Microsoft’s servers ready for download.

"RTM is the final engineering milestone of a product release and our engineering team has poured their heart and soul into reaching this milestone," said Microsoft’s corporate vice president Takeshi Numoto in a blog.

Complete guide to Office 2010

Discover what works, what fails and whether you should upgrade to Office 2010

"Since the start of our public beta in November 2009, we’ve had more than 7.5 million people download the beta version – that’s more than three times the number of 2007 beta downloads," he added.

The software giant plans to release Office 2010 in stages, beginning with volume licence customers – representing 250 or more PCs – with Software Assurance who will be able to download the suite on 27 April.

Volume customers without Software Assurance will be able to get the products on 1 May, followed by business customers on 12 May. Office 2010 will be offered at retail in June.

Perhaps the most significant new feature of Office 2010 is Web Apps, separate browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Businesses looking to make use of Web Apps will need to host the software on a SharePoint server, while consumers will be able to access the suite through Windows Live.