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Well it looks like there is a new serious vulnerability out in the woods children, and this one is bad to the bones. Based off the vulnerability announced by Microsoft. Browsing the web was not safe anymore, regardless of the browser. Microsoft will certainly come up with a thouroughly tested fix for it in the future, but meanwhile developers have come up with their own patch.

The first thing you’ll want to do is disable the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. To do this follow these steps:
1) Click Start, click Run, type
“regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll”
(without the quotation marks), and then click OK.
2) A dialog box appears to confirm that the un-registration process has succeeded. Click OK to close the dialog box.

Outcome: The Windows Picture and Fax Viewer will no longer be started when users click on a link to an image type that is associated with the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.

To Restart the service: re-register Shimgvw.dll by following the above steps.
Replace the text in Step 1 with
“regsvr32 %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll”
(without the quotation marks).

The next step you can take is to add the following IPs to your block list in your router as outlined by the SANS Internet Storm Center
InterCage Inc.: 69.50.160.0/19 (69.50.160.0 – 69.50.191.255)
Inhoster: 85.255.112.0/20 (85.255.112.0 – 85.255.127.255)

Finally you’ll want to get the non-microsoft patch for this and again that can be found at the SANS Internet Storm Center. Give this artile a read to see what went into the making of this patch.
And get the patch here.

Hope this helps everyone out.

kungfuice Computers, Technology

I’ve been noticing some interesting behaviours in my favourite programs as of late. First let’s start with iTunes, with each subsequent version of iTunes I have noticed an increase in memory usage, and generally the application has become bloated in my eyes. As of right now just starting iTunes and playing music nothing else the application uses roughly 60-70 mbs of ram.

I can’t believe that an application that used to be a simple mp3 player has turned into such a memory hog. Unfortunately there are not many other alternatives that offer the type of interface that I so thoroughly enjoy in iTunes, and Windows Media Player which I used previously is really no better.

Another application I’ve noticed that’s started to suck up more memory is Firefox. With version 1.5 I’ve noticed that if I leave it opened with multiple tabs open memory usage slowly increases with it usually peaking around 120-130mbs of ram.

Although this is not really a scientific manner of detailing memory usage of applications it is just something I have started to take note of and it makes me wonder, is the proliferation of large memory machines causing us to be become more lax with our memory management?

My box currently has 1gig of very fast dual channel 2-2-2-2 timed OCZ ram. Most basic machines now days come with at least 512mbs of ram, with most mid-level computers coming with 1gb. With machines containing more and more memory it is a lot easier to get away with a couple of applications leaking memory and not even notice a hit in performance.

The problem starts when many applications start to adopt this lax memory management technique and soon enough your 1gb of ram is completely inadequate, and for the wrong reasons.

Going through school I have even noticed a lot of teachers taking a more lax approach to penalizing students for memory leaks in their program. In a couple of my classes a couple of teachers addressed memory management as a thing of the past. A favourite quote was “With 512mbs of memory you don’t need to worry about it”.

So you may ask yourself what’s the point of this? It’s been talked about to death, well this is true but to be honest I have never really been bothered by it because I’ve always managed to stay a head of the hardware curve. I’m finding that incredibly more difficult now with these types of applications.

The sad part is I’m finding most of the problems coming from non-Microsoft based applications, and although I know they have an insider advantage when it comes to memory management on their own operating system, I hardly think it is to the level where their applications can use up to 3/4 less ram then open source competitors.

I think the first step in addressing this problem is to let the developers of these applications know that their applications are sucking our valuable memory up, and to let them know that is is unacceptable, so that they pickup their socks and get this stuff right.

kungfuice Computers, Technology