Computer Security Weekly, November 8, 1999


RealNetworks is watching you. Or was. The popular media player, RealJukeBox, was sending information about your CDs, number of songs on your hard drive, preferred formats, and so forth, to the company every time you played a song. In the ensuing storm of outrage, RealNetworks has promised to change its ways.
Service Pack 6 for NT is hardly settled on the Web page, and the first bug is already out. Apprently, when you install SP6 the "save password" setting gets reset to the default, which is "yes." From the initial report, it is not clear whether only the setting is reconfigured, or if there is something wrong with the function itself in SP6.
Microsoft is making antiviral software available on its Web site. Sort of. In some weird tie-in with Y2K (that only a marketeer could understand), 90 day trial versions of a number of existing antiviral software packages are being posted for download. This doesn't seem to be particularly exciting, but the popular press are going wild over it. You can check it out for yourself at http://www.microsoft.com/y2k.
And, just so the Mac-ists don't feel left out, there is a bug in MacOS 9. The new OS is supposed to have new security features, but these aren't fully mature yet. The new password screensaver feature has two options: you can enter the password, or you can elect to shut down the machine. However, if applications are running, they may alert the user to unsaved data, and ask if they want to save the information. Select cancel from that dialogue box, and the shutdown function appears to cancel as well, leaving the user with full access to the machine.
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mailto:p1@canada.com Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses, 0-387-94663-2, (800-SPRINGER)
The copyright of the article Computer Security Weekly, November 8, 1999 in Computer Security is owned by Robert Slade. Permission to republish Computer Security Weekly, November 8, 1999 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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