Here’s an interesting article that Bill Gates wrote for the BBC News web site, that talks about the skills one needs to succeed in any career.
Category: News
Visual Studio Team System 2008 now available
For MSDN subscribers, you can now download VS Team System 2008 RTM on the MSDN site (x86 and x64 WoW – DVD).
Have fun!
Seagate hard drives ship with virus
Interesting…an undisclosed number of Seagate’s Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 units have shipped with a virus that steals passwords to online games, such as World of Warcraft. Identified as Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah by Kaspersky Labs, the virus also deletes similar viruses and can disable virus detection software as well.
The virus, which was loaded onto the Maxtor units at a sub-contract manufacturer’s location in China, is sending stolen passwords back to a server that’s also located in China.
Not good. Read more at eWeek.
OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan Horse
A company named Intego apparently found a malicious Trojan Horse that actually is harmful (OS X attacks and exploits were previously developed that lacked malicious power). According to Intego the Trojan Horse:
…disguises itself as a video codec that offers access to a pornographic video…and users attempting to install the codec receive a piece of malware classified as a ‘DNS Changer’ which modifies the way OS X handles the DNS requests used to link numerical IP addresses to web URLs.
The tool allows the attackers to redirect web traffic. Users attempting to visit PayPal, eBay or certain banking sites, for instance, will be directed to a phishing website instead.
You will see something like:
Quicktime Player is unable to play movie file.
Please click here to download new version of codec.
Read more about OSX.RSPlug.A. And just keep in mind that “a spokesperson for Symantec suggested that Intego “has a tendency to over-hype things.”
ICANN tweaks root DNS server
I read about it via The Register…ICANN set up a new IP address for one of the “root name servers,” and is retiring the old address, i.e., from 198.32.64.12 to 199.7.83.42. They’re apparently doing it for two reasons: For one, the old IP address wasn’t officially under ICANN’s control. But (two) more importantly, the organization wanted to make the switch to “any casting,” a way of streamlining DNS queries.
Take note that each “root name server” is actually a collection of several physical servers, and with anycasting, ICANN can spread its machines across multiple geographical locations.
Read more via The Register.