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Simply awesome Artist Rob Pettit creates his artwork out of obsolete, discarded or recycled cell phones. His instillation are painstakingly arranged flower-swirls and stacked mini-mountains, as well as paintings. Here we take a look at some of his most recent work.

In response to the Gmail outage on Tuesday, Google now has an App Status Dashboard.

ISC SANS is reporting a new patch from Microsoft for properly disabling AutoRun. Of course, that’s what Microsoft said last time too. “Disabling AutoRun on Microsoft Windows systems can help prevent the spread of malicious code. However, Microsoft’s guidelines for disabling AutoRun are not fully effective, which could be considered a vulnerability.”

Microsoft has published a new security advisory for a vulnerability in Microsoft Office Excel that could allow remote code execution. Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a vulnerability in Microsoft Office Excel that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file. At this time, we are aware only [...]

SRI Internation MTC (Malware Threat Center) has released a great analysis of Conficker. In this paper, we crack open the Conficker A and B binaries, and analyze many aspects of their internal logic. Some important aspects of this logic include its mechanisms for computing a daily list of new domains, a function that in both [...]

US-CERT reports a new variant of Conficker capable of updating itself. US-CERT is aware of public reports concerning a new variant of the Conficker/Downadup worm, named Conficker B++. This variant propagates itself via multiple methods, including exploitation of the previously patched vulnerability addressed in MS08-067, password guessing, and the infection of removable media. Most significantly, [...]

Tech Republic has now confirmed the worst-  the economy is tanking and you need to be prepared.  What a great email to start off my workweek.

SANS ISC has published an extensive list of Conficker links that cover both cleanup and information on the threat.

NY State is considering a policy which affects vendors selling software to the state government. New York will use the Common Weakness Enumeration/SANS Institute list of the Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors as a baseline for software security. Under the proposal, vendors selling software to New York state must document how their software developers [...]

Black Tuesday Overiew from SANS ISC.  All 4 patches are considered critical.