Tag: PATCH

Just recently, new critical vulnerabilities were reported in Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader. While Google and Adobe managed to deliver an update to secure Chrome users, it took a few more days to put together the necessary bits for the general Flash and Reader using public. Fortunately, the work is now complete, and Adobe has posted updated downloads for both products. You should be ...

Microsoft recently delivered a patch for its malware and antivirus tools, including Security Essentials, Windows Defender, MSRT, and Forefront -- its enterprise antivirus solution. The patch addresses a flaw in Microsoft's scanning engine which could allow an attacker who had a valid username and password to gain elevated rights on a system. As is often the case with these flaws, the fact that ...

A 20-line patch looks set to cut Firefox's start-up time in half. The fix, which works by preloading Firefox's XUL library, could land in nightly builds as early as tonight. Unfortunately, the speed-up will only affect Windows users. To be honest, it's a little odd that preloading DLLs hadn't been tried before. Prior to this fix, the XUL DLL was slowly loaded in 32KB bits, which really ground ...

We reported earlier that the release of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 could be coming soon. Its impending arrival seemed to be heralded by the availability of a prerequisite installer update delivered recently via Windows Update. Now, however, there's an indication that we could be just hours away from being able to download Windows 7 SP1. A Microsoft Technet blog -- albeit a Russian one we've had ...

Microsoft has offered up the first Internet Explorer 9 patch via Windows Update. KB2448827 is all about improving reliability and stability, and you should be able to find it on your Update screen by clicking through to view optional updates (or by navigating to Control Panel\System and Security\Windows Update\Select updates to install in Explorer). It's a little odd to see Microsoft do this -- ...

Yes, Acrobat and Flash are two of the most-exploited pieces of software out there today, but Adobe has done a much better job of responding to security concerns in 2010. Patches are more frequent, and major improvements have been rolled out -- like the sandboxing which was added in Acrobat and Reader X. Still, there are always people who can't -- for one reason or another -- install an update ...

After moving quickly to plug a critical vulnerability last month, Adobe has followed up by patching another 23 holes in both Reader and Acrobat. These vulnerabilities affect all versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat for Windows and Mac, so you need to update your software immediately. Users of Acrobat and Reader 9 will have to update to version 9.4, while users of Acrobat 8 should update to ...

A few weeks ago, we told you about an exploit in the Windows version of Apple's QuickTime, based on a line of code from 2001. QuickTime 7.6.8, released Wednesday, finally fixes that vulnerability. The bug allowed the takeover of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 machines with Internet Explorer installed. The news isn't so much that Apple fixed the problem, but that they took longer to do so than ...

It's only been a few days since Firefox 3.6.4 was released, so the world was caught somewhat off-guard by news that Mozilla was pushing out Firefox 3.6.6 so quickly [what happened to 3.6.5?! -Ed]. The reason for the change: that fancy new out-of-process plugin system. While the feature is designed to keep your browser from crashing when a plugin -- like Adobe Flash Player -- becomes ...

The overlords at Google have finally deemed Google Chrome 5 ready for the Beta channel! Along with some fantastic performance boosts to the V8 JavaScript engine, there's also a load of HTML5 features and an integrated Flash plug-in to get your teeth stuck into. If you're already a member of the Beta channel, you can just restart your browser -- if not, go sign up now; it only takes a few seconds. ...

Most people running Windows 7 Home Premium probably don't need to access their system remotely via RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) -- and that's why Microsoft doesn't ship the feature on non-business versions of the OS. However, some users (like a co-worker of mine) might like the option of remoting in to manage downloads or organize files like movies and music. It's especially handy to be able ...

If you've been following the fallout from the Google versus China cyber war, you're probably aware that a weakness in Internet Explorer was exploited to hack into over 30 Silicon Valley businesses. It soon became clear that this critical weakness was exploitable in almost every version of Internet Explorer and under all recent versions of Windows. Fortunately only IE6 has actually been exploited ...

With 2010 just begun, Adobe seems primed to take yet another step in making sure Acrobat and Adobe Reader users are protected from the security exploits which plagued the apps in 2009. Currently in beta testing is the Adobe Refresh Manager which will handle automatic update duties for both products. According to Brad Arkin, Adobe's chief of security and privacy, the current system just isn't ...

There has been plenty of talk about ways to modify and hack your copy of Windows 7, but what if you're looking for more ways to make it drool-worthy? Style7 is a little app that helps make it a little easier to make custom themes for Windows. The way it works is pretty simple (or is it?) and is done with a "simple" configuration file. When you create a theme, it starts off using the default ...

Yes, the JIT security flaw that was being buzzed about two days ago has already been corrected. The bug was originally identified on July 9th. As I mentioned in the last post, the patch was going to be released at the end of the month - but Mozilla wasn't foolish enough to let the bug go unaddressed for that long. Sometimes a flood of criticism will alter timetables ever so slightly. Apart from ...