Support Wars

From Ars Technica: The Mozilla Foundation announced Friday morning that the open source Firefox Web browser has been downloaded over 1 billion times. This significant milestone, which was reached several days earlier than expected, is a clear sign of the browser’s growing mainstream popularity. Firefox has transformed the Internet by bringing innovation and a strong [...]

Following the trend of earlier EU anti-trust verdicts, Microsoft will now gives users the option to install other browsers. From Ars Technica: The devil is in the details, so Ars digs into the nitty-gritty of Microsoft’s proposed browser ballot for European Union residents. Most EU Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 users will see [...]

Storm Worm? Bah! Conficker who?  SecureWorks researcher Joe Stewart reports about a new Trojan, Clampi, that should have security professionals concerned. From Dark Reading: A security researcher has discovered a Trojan that is designed to extract account data from as many as 4,600 of the world’s most popular and wealthy businesses. In “one of the [...]

From Ars Technica: Windows 7 Ultimate has been cracked. The pirate milestone, reached almost three months before Windows 7 is set to hit General Availability on October 22, 2009, was achieved via OEM instant offline activation that passes Windows Genuine Advantage validation and keeps the operating system permanently activated. Previous cracks weren’t as solid: while they [...]

From America’s Finest News Source, The Onion: SAN FRANCISCO—In a move expected to revolutionize the mobile device industry, Apple launched its fastest and most powerful iPhone to date Tuesday, an innovative new model that can only be seen by the company’s hippest and most dedicated customers. “I am proud today to introduce to those who [...]

From Dark Reading: With rogueware more efficient and lucrative than ever before, cybercriminals are pumping out new versions in rapid-fire, according to new research that will be released today in conjunction with Black Hat USA. All told, 374,000 new versions of rogueware samples were released in this year’s second quarter — and that number is [...]

Words can’t do this justice…

From PC World: Microsoft’s decision to leave Windows XP users behind, with no easy upgrade path to Windows 7, is, possibly, the sole mistake of an otherwise pitch-perfect product development and launch campaign. Yes, I know there’s precedent for Microsoft not helping customers upgrade from multi-generations-old operating systems. When XP shipped in October of 2001, [...]

From ISC SANS: Frequent reader and contributor, Roseman, called our attention about a new update to the Sysinternals tools announced right before the weekend. The most significant piece of information is that End of Life for Filemon and Regmon is September 1, 2009. Yes, in about one month, two of the most widely used tools [...]

(Cue the black helicopters) From the LA Times: This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of congested Tysons Corner in McLean, Va., hit a fiber-optic cable no one knew was there. This part doesn’t: Within moments, three black SUVs drove up, half a dozen men [...]