Are you seeing the fail whale — Oprah to Kill Twitter!!

I found Oprahs twitter account and this isn’t funny, every time I refresh her account it keeps getting bigger!!  I was going to search for her and I see this:

twiterfindpeople

According to people on twitter that she will talk about Twitter tomorrow, April 17, 2009.  So what does that mean there will be a whole influx of people joining Twitter and people following her so I would imagine tomorrow and the next few days, you will see the great white whale!!  Twitter will be sluggish and possible unresponsive the next few days also.

[ad#text-broadband1]

You best bet is not stress Twitter out to much but I am curious to see if this actually breaks Twitter.  Only time will tell but I am sure going to keep watch on this just because this is big news!!

*Update*
From the tweets I am seeing this all stems from:

ashtonkutcher

Just to let you know he has 977,307 as of current but that should change.  So this will be rocking Twitter tomorrow guys!!

A600 has an External RF Antenna

After someone makes a comment on disqus about there being an external antenna plug and I found it:

As you can see the External antenna connector is on the back of the a600, I have talked to someone who says he thinks he knows which ones will work but I wanted to let people know who only have a bar who wants a better connection. I will be testing out some stuff later on next week and will post about it and how much of a difference they make in long run.

If you want to see it for yourself just take the rubber piece off the back right near the Cricket name, it looks to be easily taken off and put back on. I just used my fingernails to get it off, so it should be really easy to do!!

[intlink id=”3387″ type=”post”]That little connector will help you get more signal[/intlink] out and should help improve your internet speeds with a little help from getting the right connector to attach to it. [ad#text-broadband1]

Mebroot becomes More Stealthier!!

Well Here is something we should all be on the look out for:
[ad#cricket-right-ez]

Thousands of Web sites have been rigged to deliver a powerful piece of malicious software that many security products may be unprepared to handle.

Mebroot inserts program hooks into various functions of the kernel, or the operating system’s core code. Once Mebroot has taken hold, the malware then makes it appear that the MBR hasn’t been tampered with.

[Via Pcworld Magazine]

I will be updating my [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Malware Resource[/intlink] for the Prevx Software, but this looks to be a very bad root kit.  From my understanding most of the security related software.   It seems this little program will become even harder to detect and remove.   It also looks like this is ready to start infecting people with this root kit.   You should update every part of your system from [intlink id=”3327″ type=”post”]Windows Patches[/intlink] to Browser. [intlink id=”2229″ type=”post”] Securnia once said[/intlink] that most people are not patched fully!!  Just like the [intlink id=”3301″ type=”post”]Conficker Worm[/intlink], if your not fully patched and keeping anti-virus and Firewalls on your system then you might as well be walking on nails.

Dear Friend Spam Emails from Yahoo

The email from our[intlink id=”3233″ type=”post”] old friend has come back[/intlink] into now compromising Yahoo accounts by sending out this email:

Dear friend:
What are u doing these days?I am going to recommend a Eshop to you.Yesterday I found a web of a large trading company from China,which is an agent of all the well-known digital product factories,and facing to both wholesalers, retailsalers,and personal customer all over the world. They export all kinds of digital products and offer really competitive and reasonable price and high quality goods for their clients,so i think you will make a big profit if you did business with them.And they promise they will provide the best after-sales-service.If you are interested to do business with them,in my opinion, you can make a trial order to test that.
Their Web address: www.nekcn.com

In what seems to be the way of this advertisment company, it seems they have been doing what they did with Hotmail.  Deleting your contact list and emailing your friends with this message.  Now I am thinking it is being done by them [intlink id=”2660″ type=”post”]Phishing for the password and Account name[/intlink], they probably set up an web page to look like Hotmail or Yahoo.  One thing to remember to do is check to see that you address bar looks like this:

yahoomailloginYou should make sure you see the “https”, meaning that is a encrypted login and also make sure you see either Mail.yahoo.com or Login.yahoo.com.  If you see anything else included in your the screen like maybe a .ru or .pl then you aren’t logining into the true yahoo account.  Obviously the website shouldn’t be trusted until they advertise the right way, and find ways to advertise online other than spam.  If you get an email saying you need to do something with your Hotmail account or yahoo mail account you should not click any links and go to the site manually to investigate the problem.  You should never click links in email that you don’t know where they are going.  Thanks to Jazzcorner for Alerting me that they have started to do this with yahoo.  I am betting the next one will be for Google Mail, or Gmail as some will call it. It wouldn’t hurt to have a [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]firewall and Anti-virus[/intlink] and also check your system out just to be sure.

Patch Tuesday List for April 14, 2009

So Microsoft has released the patches for April and here they are:

  1. Vulnerabilities in Windows Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (KB959454) — This security update resolves four publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerabilities could allow elevation of privilege if an attacker is allowed to log on to the system and then run a specially crafted application. The attacker must be able to run code on the local machine in order to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could take complete control over the affected system.
  2. Vulnerabilities in Windows HTTP Services Could Allow Remote Code Execution (KB960803) — This security update resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability and two privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP). The most severe vulnerability could allow remote code execution. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.
  3. [ad#cricket-right-ez]Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (KB963027) — This security update resolves four privately reported vulnerabilities and two publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer or if a user connects to an attacker’s server by way of the HTTP protocol. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.
  4. Blended Threat Vulnerability in SearchPath Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (KB959426) — This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability in the Windows SearchPath function that could allow elevation of privilege if a user downloaded a specially crafted file to a specific location, then opened an application that could load the file under certain circumstances.
  5. Vulnerabilities in Microsoft ISA Server and Forefront Threat Management Gateway (Medium Business Edition) Could Cause Denial of Service (KB961759) — This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability and a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server and Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG), Medium Business Edition (MBE). These vulnerabilities could allow denial of service if an attacker sends specially crafted network packages to the affected system, or information disclosure or spoofing if a user clicks on a malicious URL or visits a Web site that contains content controlled by the attacker.
  6. Vulnerability in Microsoft DirectShow Could Allow Remote Code Execution (KB961373) –This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft DirectX. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if user opened a specially crafted MJPEG file. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.
  7. Vulnerabilities in WordPad and Office Text Converters Could Allow Remote Code Execution (KB960477) — This security update resolves two publicly disclosed vulnerabilities and two privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft WordPad and Microsoft Office text converters. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a specially crafted file is opened in WordPad or Microsoft Office Word. Do not open Microsoft Office, RTF, Write, or WordPerfect files from untrusted sources using affected versions of WordPad or Microsoft Office Word.
  8. Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel Could Cause Remote Code Execution (968557) — This security update resolves a privately reported and a publicly disclosed vulnerability. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if the user opens a specially crafted Excel file. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

As you can see there are Eight updates and it seems Microsoft isn’t pushing anything else with this update.   We also have the Malicious Software Removal tool for this month as well as the Junk Filters.   If you want to keep your system secure I’d suggest getting a [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Free Firewall and Free Anti-virus[/intlink].   If you have a lot of systems to update, I’d also suggest what I have been calling[intlink id=”2883″ type=”post”] Clone of Autopatcher[/intlink].  This will download them onto a ISO for you to burn and use around all the systems that are offline.