One way I stay protected from bad sites is that I use a modified host file. In Vista and Windows 7 you cannot just open the file in notepad and save it anymore, you will get an error. Someone had this happen at work on Windows Server 2008 last week and just today someone asked about it in our forums here: Can't modify the host file on Windows 7

I decided to create a short little blog post explaining how you can modify this file.

If you open the host file in the following location C:\Windows\System32\d...

Microsoft just announced that Microsoft Security Essentials will be available for download tomorrow. From the press release

Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft Corp.’s new no-cost, core anti-malware service that helps protect consumers against viruses, spyware and other malicious software, will be available tomorrow, Tuesday, Sept. 29. Microsoft Security Essentials, independently certified by West Coast Labs, is backed by the company’s global security response team and is built on the same award-winning core security technology found in the company’...

Another critical Adobe Reader Vulnerability.

A vulnerability has been reported in Adobe Reader and Acrobat, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.

The vulnerability is caused due to an error in authplay.dll when processing SWF content and can be exploited to execute arbitrary code.

From Adobe's security advisory

A critical vulnerability exists in the current versions of Flash Player (v9.0.159.0 and v10.0.22.87) for Windows, Macintosh a...

Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Web Components control could allow remote code execution

Another critical problem that is currently being exploited in the wild (0 day attack). Microsoft is investigating a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Office Web Components. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. When using Internet Explorer, code execution is remote and may not require any user intervention.

We are aware of attacks attempting to exploit the vulnerability.

Below is a list of affecte...

This is a bad one if you are running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 with Internet Explorer. If you are running Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 then you are not affected

The bad part about this is that all it takes for you is to visit a bad site. If you are using Chrome (like me), FireFox or Safari then you are not affected by this. Microsoft really should redesign IE from scratch and get rid of all that ActiveX baggage/nonsense, it is not worth it, it only causes troubles. Almost every IE vulnerability is ActiveX based.

Mitigating Fa...