Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta White Paper

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta White Paper.

Microsoft’s efforts to provide the best Windows experience ever in Windows Vista did not end with its launch. This white paper describes the ways Microsoft strives to continuously improve Windows Vista. It then introduces Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and describes how the service pack will fit into the ongoing improvement process.

Describing Windows Vista (Humor)

Funniest (and actually close to accurate) description of Windows Vista so far (BOFH):

“You should go to Vista.”

“So you like Vista?”

“Not really, no. I run a Vista simulator.”

“Virtual Server?” the Boss asks.

“Nah, I just turned on all the flashy crap in XP, changed the background image, took some memory out of my box and clocked down the CPU. Then broke Media player. Works like a charm.”

AV Good or Bad?

What Were They Thinking? Anti-Virus Software Gone Wrong made me wonder if it’s such a good idea to be runing anti-virus software. I’ve always used AV software in Windows and I’ve advised others to do so too but in the past (almost) 10 years all that the AV software has managed to do effectively is bug me. And I’m not talking about what it did to my 29a files or about it making a fuss about stuff like the admw0rm source code every now and then. I mean:

- they make PCs considerably more unstable – I’ve tracked back several windows crashes to AV software.
- kaspersky actually messed up my javascript the one time I used it. Who knows what else it would’ve messed up if I had continued to use it.
- norton made a reputation for itself as a major resource hog (I dunno if this has impreved in the last version of norton but I doubt it). And while others are better, the system always takes a considerable performance hit.
And as if that wasn’t enough, they also introduce more vulnerabillities. And all that for what? In the past 10 years AV software hasn’t protected my computer from a single real threat. Not one. And it offers very limited protection against new malware.
And this has nothing to do with the fact that I think current AV software is flawed by design (enumerating badness). What has AV software actually done for me? Nothing. So I’ve been introducing vulnerabillities and instability into my PC for nothing? But what about the future? What if I don’t use AV software and get infected by a virus that would’ve otherwise been detected and stopped by AV software?

I’ve decided to remove AV software from my PC. To be honest, I don’t use windows as much as I used to and that makes the decision much easier. I do encourage you to think about it – but I do not encourage anyone to remove AV software from their PC and I will continue to recommend the use of anti-virus software. I’m a very careful user, I take a lot of steps that are the reason why my PC hasn’t been infected by virus or worms.
While I was writing this post (about 3h ago) I received the following email:

From: pucik@overflow.pl

To: full-disclosure@lists.grok.org.uk, bugtraq@securityfocus.com
Subject: [Overflow.pl] Clam AntiVirus Win32-UPX Heap Overflow…

Additional Links:
How To Keep Your Computer Spyware Free – Basic Windows Security – I need to update it but it’s still ok.

Look at the pretty Anti-Spyware

How secure are the security products we use? After the witty worm a lot more people began asking that question. That there are poorly designed “security” products out there no one doubts. That some security products make a lot of ‘noise’ to ensure users know they are doing something is a well known fact (lots of IDSs for windows are way too verbose and way too in-your-face). Today I read about Ad-Aware.

Logging Game CPU utilization

I wanted to log the CPU utilization during a game (Half Life 2: Lost Coast – more on that later). I found an article entitled Troubleshooting High CPU Utilization that taught me how to do it. This seems like a great tool to figure out what the performance bottleneck of o computer is in a certain game (do i need a better CPU? More memory?…)

Windows Vista

Windows Vista (AKA Longhorn) is the only version of Microsoft Windows I have ever looked forward too. Though I have no intention of being among it’s early adopters for the obvious reason (the usual avalanche of major BUGS) it certainly has an interesting feature set and looks like a major step forward for Microsoft (unlike for example Windows NT to 2K to XP which were, arguably, minor steps forward). WinFS, MSH and the new eye candy are definetely what caught my attention.

Additional Resources:
Hands On with Windows Vista Beta 1
Windows Vista Beta 1 Overview
Wikipedia (very good starting place)
Feedster Search

SANS Webcasts

SANS Webcasts are live web broadcasts that allow you to hear a knowledgeable speaker while viewing presentation slides that you download in advance. You need either Real Audio Player or Windows Media Player (free downloads are available on the webcast access page), and a SANS Portal account. If you don’t have an account, just go to the SANS Portal page and fill in the simple registration form, it’s free. Once you have an account you can also access an archive of past webcasts.

SANS Tool Talks are special webcasts that offer an opportunity for you to hear from Information Security Vendors. At SANS we believe that you cannot accomplish Information Security tasks without tools. A surprising number of security professionals have no idea what technology is available in the marketplace. Tool Talks are designed to give you a solid understanding of a problem, and how a vendor’s commercial tool can be used to solve or mitigate that problem.

The Wait

Bored to death waiting for AS to reset I saw a few funny things around the web:
This Online Kinky Test – a vampire?!? 218 is kinda low score but i’m still young
hehehe good work guys.
And if you’re portuguese you might find this funny too.
And while we’re on the topic:

In October 2004 it was discovered by MaxPatrol team that it is possible to defeat Microsoft® Windows® XP SP2 Heap protection and Data Execution Prevention mechanism.

Haven’t read it yet tough.