Member Avatar for kc0arf

The Washington Post, among other news agencies is reporting a "severe" security flaw that affects Microsoft Windows 98 - XP. According to the article, the flaw allows computer virus and spyware manufacturers to disribute malicious programs designd to take control of affected computers.

Macintosh and Linux users are immune to the problem, even those computers that operate Microsoft Software. The issue is a core Windows problem that has not been addressed since Windows 98.

Feel free to read the article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901456.html

Unfortunately, due to limited time, your author (me) has not had the chance to track down and determine what the "official" name of the flaw is, nor been able to nail down Microsoft's response to the problem. I encourage readers to post via comments the latest information on the situation, to help those affected survive the situation.

Christian

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Member Avatar for kub365

yea it is; there are simple things you can do to dimish the risk of you installing it till they release the patch. One is disable the image viewer, second is disable downloads (set security settings to high), third you can switch to firefox for the time being.

Member Avatar for DaveSW

This vulnerability apparently affects the way windows itself handles wmf files, so using firefox doesn't protect you.

Member Avatar for kub365

thanks for the headsup on FF; my anti-virus software avast now catches any of those wmf downloads :-).

Member Avatar for DaveSW

I just can't believe they've ignored it right from day dot...
Says a lot about them as a company.

Member Avatar for kub365

Yay, Just ran the update.

I am happy that they addressed the problem and provided a fix for it. Kudos to them.

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