Thank God for the weekend. I get tired of writing bad news sometimes. I may not even look at any tech news till next week.
I keep forgetting to mention my experiences with Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper. I wrote about it a week ago and promised to tell you how it works. I ran it over the weekend on all three of my computer systems, including external drives. It found no rootkits, which is what I worried about the most. And two computers had no problems at all. But one computer’s external hard drive had some bad guys on it…two in fact. They were quickly crushed into oblivion. Thankfully, they were part of some software that I never had used, but had backed up.
I heartily recommend everyone download this great new software from Microsoft. After downloading, it will automatically create a bootable CD or USB thumb drive. To run it, you just tell your computer to boot from it, rather than your hard drive. It will independently scan your computers and all attached drives so that if you have malware or rootkits, they cannot hide and will be detected and eliminated. A marvelous idea from Microsoft. It can take a few hours to scan, so perhaps run it overnight.
Here’s hoping you have a great weekend. - JRC
Attacks on Sony, others show it's open hacking season
There seems to be a groundswell of hacking activity recently. From the Epsilon breach that touched dozens of major U.S. companies and their millions of customers, and RSA replacing its customers' SecurID tokens after attacks on several defense contractors to Sony sites getting pummeled by hackers on a regular basis--all within the last few months. What's going on?
Patch Tuesday heads-up: Critical holes in Windows, IE, MS Office
This months’ batch of security patches from Microsoft will be a huge one: 16 bulletins covering a wide range of security holes in the Windows operating system. Nine of the 16 bulletins are rated “critical” because of the risk of remote code execution attack. So make sure your system is set up to get these important updates.
What you need to know now about Windows 8
One thing’s for sure: Windows 8, as we know it now, represents a huge departure for Microsoft — a rethinking of the way people interact with their machines. Some of it’s familiar; some of it’s scary. A whole lot of it is very new. Like it or not, Win8 will likely change the way we work through our PCs.
Google Releases Chrome 12, Adds Security and 3D
Google has released an update for its Chrome browser, bringing security and 3D improvements. As with previous updates to Chrome, the biggest boasts of version 12 relate to security. The Safe Browsing behind-the-scenes protection has been extended to warn users against downloading dangerous files, although right now this only applies to Windows .exe files. Mac and Linux users will have to wait a little longer, which might be galling for Mac users hit by the recent MacDefender drive-by download attack.
The 10 Best Free Hard Drive Utilities
Here are our ten favorite free utilities for partitioning, monitoring, and optimizing hard drives (as well as a few inexpensive for-pay alternatives). Despite offering some high-end features, these downloadable programs won't bust your budget.
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