You have to be joking microsoft has done it again

MS06-002 Vulnerability in Embedded Web Fonts Colour Allow Remote Code Execution (908519)

i mean really you have to wonder how they manage to "accidently" leave in so many vunerabilities ..... i mean really viewing a special font on a website should NOT be a security hazard.

if an engineer builds a building and it falls down causing lots of damage the engineer gets sued yet microsoft comprehmises countless computers resulting in data theft and general computer vandelism yet somehow they arnt held responsible? sure some genius kid who manages to come up with some uber complicated obscure exploit fine thats one of those things u cant prevent but fonts!!!!! wtf

dodgy microsoft, lol, once i found a website that linked apple mac to some satanist cult. (think about it, their logo is an apple with a bite taken out of it!?!)

Open Letter:

Dear Mr. Gates!

Your company is known for its friendly and generous image. You have, through the years, profiled yourselves as a customer-friendly and service-minded company. With that as background, I ask you for help with one of my projects.

I have - for lack of other occupation this afternoon - decided to take over Earth. Such a takeover would, among a few other things, comprise complete control over all the world's countries and companies - including, as I'm sure you'll realize, yours.

Unfortunately, I lack the resources for carrying out my plans and am therefore completely at the mercy of the benevolence and compassion of others. I ask you to help me in my endeavour by voluntarily surrendering control of your company to me; this would help me considerably in my efforts. This need not mean any major changes for you - you may, by and large, continue as before, as long as you give me, say, 10% of every year's proceeds. I am open to suggestions.

I hope that you'll take my (unconventional, I admit) suggestion under serious consideration, and write a reply even if it were not possible for you to surrender control in the way that is delineated above.

Sincerely

>Your company is known for its friendly and generous image.

In what world?

In the marketing world

The friendly and generous image of destroying netscape, acting like a bullying power giant attempting to create a monopoly and stealing any good ideas anybody else has without bothering to ask, pay or acknowledge that they did.

Just what I would love my neighbours to do!

So i guess that the fact every piece of software they've ever written is a bug riddled pile of Rhino droppings is Karmas way of getting them back.
Shame its the users that end up paying the price. Just damn Gald I'm not one of them....

<Shakes head> I thought the jpeg s'ploit was dire but a font one,, jesus....

Stop whinging about Windows and get the X86 build of Mac OSX 10.4.4. Now that Apple have gone over to Intel there shouldn't be too much trouble getting it to run on a biege box. It'll give you all a chance to learn how a proper OS works and not one that was stolen from Apple in the 80s!

Linux is also a set of proper OS's.

now



admittedly a new Apple OS (X or higher) is going to be a better place for most people who can afford it. Plus it runs photoshop. But if you're poor...

Or Just go to the fountain of fun itself and use a mac

But then i am slightly biased as I'm a Mac engineer anyhow lol.

But yes,, there are quite a few copies of the X86 build floating about if you know where to look,, and say goodbye to spyware and virus's for a good long while,, we'll get some one day I'm sure as the free ride of the last 5 years can't last forever. But Til then you can just giggle when you hear of the latest lumps of fun that gets slung at the windows world. heheh

Not wanting to geek out too much, but I can see how the fonts would cause a hole. anything that uses the object tag can do it, adn i guess the fonts do in some way.

Anyway, it's only with IE, and who uses that any more? Really, just use firefox, safari, or anything else. Flock is really nice, even though it's in beta.

There's a version on Bittorrent. I'll put a link up if i can remember where i found it.

couldn't it be the same hack as the WMF one? Maybe for windows a ttf is a form of WMF and can therefore be rebranded as one.

The WMF exploit brightens up my day every time I think of it... It occassionally makes me laugh out loud when walking down the street. I love it.

Call me a complete wierdo, but I've never had any problems with Windows, IE or any other Microsoft product... we went from 98 to XP smooth as anything, and ZoneAlarm and Norton keeps me safe.

Only problem I have at the moment is chatting to Kyri, because her computer seems to think I go offline whenever I minimize the conversation window...

Remember... Microsoft gave us Age Of Empires...

Same here Sethis, no problems with IE. I even installed and ran firefox for a couple of months, didn't see any advantage, then deleted it.

I used to have Norton, but my ISP gave me an antispyware and antivirus package that they insisted was as good as Norton plus it was free. So far (about a year) no problems with either viruses, or spam. I also said goodbye to ZoneAlarm as that too was described as redundant.

And yet, Linux doesn't have norton anti-virus or macafee or zone-alarm versions. I've never installed any anti-virus / malware / malicious activity software on linux ever. Do you know why? Because Linux is very secure! and windows is [censored]! Simple really!

You know what happened to linux when they find insecurities in it? They fix them. Do you know what happens on windows? You have to install a virus checker and check all your incoming files. ????

Do you know what happens when I download a strange file and then run it?
a) Nothing, because most viruses are written for windows.
b) nothing, because any virus written for windows won't infect a linux computer.
c) nothing, because my operating system won't automatically run a file for no reason, I actually have to tell it what to do.
d) nothing, because any viruses written for linux are written by people who know what they're doing, and not hopeless script kiddies, so it won't infect my computer with malware, because I've never heard of any mal-ware for linux, (see above points) and the hackers goals will probably be loftier than that, it'll probably just quietly realise my type of computer isn't the big honcho of the internet it was hopeing to infect and the hacker will go off in search of new targets. Any future problems will be solved by a regular security update from a bunch of cool geeks I've never heard of, for free.

best thing about firefox: Tabbed Browsing...

never any viruses for macs either. hahah

When this computer dies, I'll seriously consider getting a mac, but for now I guess windows just doesn't piss me off enough. I hear and read all these horror stories but so far, nothing's happened yet. I get the odd need to reboot, and sometimes notice programs doing strange things, nothing serious.

I've never lost files before, I could just be lucky

The security package I got is really low mainteinance (anti spyware is really adaware in drag )

I know this guy, who knows this guy,,,,who runs linux. I'll try and invite myself over to his place and ask him to show me what it's all about.

etc

In the UK, apparently MS supply schools with free computers- I'm sure I don't need to tell you that there's a string attached

MS is the most widely used system- blantently this is not because its the best; many Microsoft programs are relativley shoddy, and, in my view, when it comes to security issues involving adware/spyware/virii/privacy issues etc; MS have facilitated that every bit as much as the hackers that put the stuff out.

I'm all for choice, but wary when choice is distorted by manipulation and sabotage.

When MS the only viable choice for schools, then another generation is educated into regarding MS as standard, and are unlikely to be able to explore alternatives (eg linux based) without a fair bit of committment and effort.

For example, I would like to try a linux-based OS, but there's no way I'm going to do an install on my pc, as I know these things are rarely as straightforward as they seem to be.

I did go to the effort of getting a 'live CD' version- 'Knoppix', which is basically a bootable CD based operating system: so I could try it and see if it was worth changing to a linux OS.

However, it freezes up during boot- possibly something to do with not being able to deal with a particular piece of hardware.

And this is why I'm wary of doing an install.

I think linux, and other alternatives, should be represented in schools- until then, to say-

"The difference is that people do not have to use MS"

IMO, needs a bit of qualification.

People don't have to use MS; in much the same way that alcoholics don't have to drink.

That's really odd, knoppix usually works really well for me.

Indeed installing linux (at least the non-uber-user-friendly versions) usually takes a bit of knowledge about the computer you have. Installing a dual boot windows and linux machine is also a fun task.

Yes it's a shame that windows does dominate the OS market, but it means that linux keeps getting nicer and nicer GUI's to help people with the transition.

Don't get me wrong, i totally love the idea of open source software and the linux system, but Microsoft is always going to have the upperhand because of it's evil money grabbing business mindset. Linux is too nice in that sense. It needs a bunch of people who are going to elbow their way in and convince the manufacturers to build their machines that way and then to offer the continuing support to millions of people who know absolutely NOTHING about computers and if they absolutely must have one, it just better work right now please and do the things i want. That's where Microsoft has the advantage, it comes preinstalled on most shop bought machines, and the majority of people are never going to change that, yes it might go wrong but without any understanding of why it goes wrong, they're just going take it to be repaired by someone else or just chuck it out and get a new one. These are the people that give microsoft their billions, and the majority aren't going to notice a bug in the software or really care much about it, instead they will go out and buy another piece of corporate software from a business that chooses to cash in on plugging that hole. If you want to really give people the choice of Operating Systems, the school curriculums would have to include compulsory computer engineering from the age of 7... then at least they can make an informed choice when they come to an age where they might need a computer for some purpose...

just a thought, coming from a person who just wanted the damn things to work until fairly recently when she decided to do web design, and my understanding of all sorts of development has quadrupled, neverthless, i couldn't build a computer, or write software, or contribute to writing software, and i absolutely terrified of changing my very happily working version of XP to Linux in case it all blows up in my face... (which could mean literally, as it is a sony laptop )

Cole, I used to think that too, but then I read about a SxSW talk given by some GUI deisngers from both Apple and Microsoft. I don't have the full text, but this says quite a bit:

http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?306

.... Photobucket, I am NOT impressed with your resizing of images...

cheers sym, that's very interesting reading.

still, statements like:

"When Apple’s Expose shipped, Microsoft had prototypes of very similar functionality at that time. Similar technology advances drove designers to the same conclusions."

are misleading in terms of innovation and risks in unleashing new ways of wo.rking on the users of new operating systems

apple were at end of their process and ms were still well in the design stage.

i would imagine ms had many proposed solutions at the time os x shipped but the point is, apple are way ahead of them and ms undoubtedly use the industry and public reation to os x's new features as a deciding factor in what features they are going to develop further and in which direction.

as for media centre (and obviously frontrow) hinting at the future of os design, i'm personally very skeptical of the depth to which these approaches are useful in terms of serving the needs of all possible users.


cole. x