September 2015

The Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, short EMET, is an optional download for all supported client and server versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system that adds exploit mitigation to the system's defenses.

Basically, it has been designed to prevent attacks from being carried out successfully if they have breached system defenses such as antivirus solutions already.

Yesterday's update of the encryption software VeraCyrpt fixed two vulnerabilities that security researcher James Forshaw discovered in TrueCrypt's source code.

TrueCrypt, which has been abandoned by its developers, is still widely used. This can be attributed largely to convenience and that the software's security audit did not turn up major critical vulnerabilities in the program.

D-Link Corporation disclosed four digital certificates recently inadvertently that attackers could use to spoof content.

While the certificates cannot be used to issue others or impersonate domains, they can be used to sign code which attackers could use to (better) disguise malware as legitimate software.

After Google failed to acquire the streaming service Twitch it began to implement, update and release streaming features on the company's own YouTube video platform.

While YouTube is not there yet when it comes to streaming offers, the move while not completely unexpected should have raised concern at Twitch headquarters considering that Google runs some of the most popular Internet services and rarely fails to miss options to cross-promote its services.

Firefox updates work like most other software update systems out there currently. The browser communicates with a server to find out if an update is available, and if it is, starts to download and install it based on the user's preferences (some prefer to only be notified, others only to download, while the majority probably has updates downloaded and installed for them automatically).

If you are using the default start menu of Windows 10 you may have noticed that ads may be displayed in it from time to time.

The ads are displayed in the same location that recently added apps are shown in (if there are any) and highlight Windows Store apps for now.

Microsoft calls them suggestions but that seems to be just a friendly word for advertisement these days.

For the past ten years or so I have used headphones to listen to audio and do other audio-related things on PCs.

Recently, I bought a pair of audio speakers from Creative instead as I found headphones to be a nuisance at times. Among the many reasons where battery issues of my (second) Logitech G930 wireless headset and the fact that I did not want to buy another one of those devices only to have them stop working after a couple of months because of it.

Piriform, the makers of popular applications such as CCleaner and Recuva have released a cloud-based version of CCleaner recently called CCleaner Cloud.

Most Internet users know that they are tracked when they are online. Common forms include scripts that run on sites, social buttons, or analytic software.

Users interested in tracking, for instance to protect themselves better, know of other tracking methods such as fingerprinting.

While those tracking methods are still widely used, research has been underway for a long time to find other means of tracking users, and research in behavioral profiling brought forth numerous new tracking methods that no one thought of several years ago.

A recent security patch released this month, MS15-097 Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Graphics Component Could Allow Remote Code Execution, breaks computer games that rely on the DRM system Safedisc on Microsoft's Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating system.