beforeyoukillyourcomputer.com

Microsoft fixed 26 vulnerabilities in 13 security bulletins as part of its Patch Tuesday, including critical ones for Windows that could be exploited to take control of a computer and one that has resided in the 32-bit Windows kernel since its release 17 years ago.

The top priorities for deployment are bulletins plugging holes in the SMB (Server Message Block) Protocol, Windows Shell Handler, ActiveX via Internet Explorer, DirectShow, and the 32-bit version of Windows, Jerry Bryant, a lead senior security communications manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post.

The DirectShow bulletin should be at the top of the list, according to Bryant. It is critical for all supported versions of Windows except Itanium-based server products. To exploit the hole, an attacker could host a malicious AVI (Audio Video Interleave) file on a Web site, and lure a user to visit the site or send the file via e-mail so the user could open it.

In the SMB bulletin, critical for all versions of Windows except Vista and Server 2008, an attacker would need to host a malicious server and convince a client system to connect to it, or an attacker could try to perform a man-in-the-middle attack by responding to SMB requests from clients, Bryant said.

In the critical Windows Shell Handler vulnerability, which affects Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003, an attack could come via a specially crafted link that appears to be valid to the ShellExecute API (application programming interface).

The cumulative update for ActiveX Killbits is critical, but a Killbit does not address the underlying vulnerability. It is a registry setting that keeps the vulnerable ActiveX control from running in IE.

Full Story ~ cnet news

OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

OpenOffice.org 3 is easy to learn, and if you’re already using another office software package, you’ll take to OpenOffice.org 3 straight away. Our world-wide native-language community means that OpenOffice.org 3 is probably available and supported in your own language. And if you already have files from another office package – OpenOffice.org 3 will probably read them with no difficulty.

Download OpenOffice.org 3.2.0

This week brought a major update to Microsoft Office 2007 — Service Pack 2, a free download that fixes bugs, improves performance and adds a few new features in the company’s bundle of productivity applications (see my review).

This update should arrive automatically if you use Windows’ Microsoft Update option, or you can download the 290-megabyte file yourself.

The headline attraction of Office 2007 SP2 is the support it adds for some important, non-Microsoft file formats. It can read and write Open Document Format files, which may help Office users share files with people running the sometimes-unimpressive, but always free and open-source OpenOffice.org suite. Office 2007 SP2 also lets users save a copy of their work as a Portable Document Format file — a helpful feature that Microsoft had unwisely required people to install an optional add-on to use before.

Full Story/Source

OpenOffice.org 3.01 is released. OpenOffice is and has been a great free alternative for opening and creating office documents, and with the 3.x series, works with Microsoft Office 2007 document types. With the 3.01 release, OpenOffice has two new features of interest (1) an integrated grammar checker and (2) an OOo file locking mechanism for alien formats.

and more…
- user dictionaries can now handle up to 30,000 entries instead of the original 2,000
- Antialiased drawings
- Solid dragging
- increase/decrease font size buttons
- sorting improvements

OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 Release Notes

Download OpenOffice.org 3.0.1