February 2005 - Posts

Follow-up on NNNNnnnooooo....!
25 February 05 12:49 PM

I just stepped out to Building 40 to grab some lunch, (it's better than the cafeteria in Building 26, and they do better coffee too) and I bumped into Dennis Morgan, he was the lead guy on the firewall in XPSP2. I asked him what the perf impact was on Read More...

Postedby michael_HOWARD | 8 Comments    

Filed under: Security

NNNNNOOOOooooo......!
23 February 05 09:28 PM

From "Making Windows XP Start Faster" at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1768883,00.asp Two of the services listed under "Stopping Unneeded Startup Services" Automatic Updates: This service enables Windows XP to check the Web automatically for updates. Read More...

Postedby michael_HOWARD | 36 Comments    

Filed under: Security, Rant

RootkitRevealer from SysInternals
23 February 05 11:26 AM

I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but the good folks at sysinternals have released a tool named RootkitRevealer. It looks like it works by comparing two scans, one very low-level and one high-level which will include the bogus results intercepted Read More...

Postedby michael_HOWARD | 0 Comments    

Filed under: Security

Security Education - Yay, again!
17 February 05 01:21 PM

Interesting read based on my last little rant about the lack of security (as-in-threats) education in school. Software firms fault colleges' security education http://news.com.com/Software+firms+fault+colleges+security+education/2100-1002_3-5579014.html?tag=nl Read More...

Postedby michael_HOWARD | 2 Comments    

Filed under: Security

Update to Microsoft AntiSpyware beta now available
17 February 05 09:35 AM

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=321CD7A2-6A57-4C57-A8BD-DBF62EDA9671&displaylang=en Read More...

Postedby michael_HOWARD | 2 Comments    

Filed under: Security

MSRC @ RSA
15 February 05 12:27 PM

A good chunk of the the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) staff are at the RSA Conference this week, keep an eye on announcements from RSA through the eyes of these folks at http://spaces.msn.com/members/msrc/ . Of course, I'm not, someone has Read More...

Postedby michael_HOWARD | 0 Comments    

Filed under: Security

Security Education in School - Yay!
08 February 05 11:03 AM

From the Seattle P/I this morning ( http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/211103_tbrf08.html ) Microsoft awards grants to professors Microsoft Research's University Relations Group has awarded 10 grants of $50,000 each to help university professors across Read More...

Postedby michael_HOWARD | 1 Comments    

Filed under: Security

Security Stuff in Whidbey - More Secure Buffer Function Calls: AUTOMATICALLY!
03 February 05 02:12 PM

In my previous blog I very briefly touched on the new C runtime library added to Whidbey. Take a look at the following simple code: int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { char t[10]; ... if (2==argc) strcpy(t,argv[1]); ... return 0; } As you can see there Read More...

Postedby michael_HOWARD | 16 Comments    

Filed under: Security

Security Stuff in Whidbey - The Safer CRT
01 February 05 01:24 PM

There has always been a very strong relationship with our team and the developer division (aka DevDiv), in part because they take some of our ideas and turn them into solutions that can be used by our developer customers. And I want to take an opportunity Read More...

Postedby michael_HOWARD | 10 Comments    

Filed under: Security