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Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to visit Egypt on Tuesday, 23 January, to join his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in laying the foundation of El-Dabaa, Egypt's first-ever nuclear power plant (NPP). Both Putin and Sisi will take part in an official ceremony of the final stage of pouring the concrete of the fourth reactor of Dabaa developed by the Russian state atomic energy corporation ROSATOM in Dabaa city, located in the Mediterranean Marsa Matrouh province, about 320 kilometres northwest of the capital Cairo, Egyptian news outlets reported. The long-awaited NPP, which will operate with a 120-megawatt capacity for...

I bought an HP Probook 4525s from Newegg for $399 a couple of weeks ago. It's a lot of bang for the buck, and you can call HP to get the restore disks for 32- and 64-bit Windows 7 Pro. I bought 4GB of RAM, but the first step in taking the thing apart is to remove the mylar covers over some screws in the back. I can do this, but the only way I see to remove the mylar covers is to destroy them. Should I just destroy them? I hate boogering up a brand new computer.

Researchers have identified a kernel-level vulnerability in Windows that allows attackers to gain escalated privileges and may also allow them to remotely execute malicious code. All versions of the Microsoft OS are affected, including the heavily fortified Windows 7. The buffer overflow, which was originally reported here, can be exploited to escalate privileges or crash vulnerable machines, IT research company Vupen said. The flaw may also allow attackers to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. The bug resides in the “CreateDIBPalette()” function of a device driver known as “Win32k.sys.” It is exploited by pasting a large number of color values...

Microsoft has released a stopgap fix to help Windows users protect themselves against threats that may try to target a newly discovered, critical security hole that is present in every supported version of Windows.Last week, KrebsOnSecurity.com reported that security researchers in Belarus had found a sophisticated strain of malware that was exploiting a previously unknown flaw in the way Windows handles shortcut files. Experts determined that the malware exploiting the vulnerability was being used to attack computers that interact with networks responsible for controlling the operations of large, distributed and very sensitive systems, such as manufacturing and power plants.When Microsoft...

When my computer attempts updates, I get the Error Code 8000FFFF. It means that registry values are blocking all updates. There is a Fix It link for this but I am so skeptical because I do not understand how to correct such problems. If you have had this problem and have downloaded the fix for this, can you let me know if it fixes this on its own?

From somewhere, this horrible rogue "antivirus" software called XP Smart Security is managing to install itself. It completely takes over my system and won't let me do anything while constantly displaying messages that I should purchase their scam product to clean up my computer. The only way I can get rid of it is to completely wipe out my hard drive and then reinstall the operating system. However, even after I do this, I can't access the "add or remove programs" section in the control panel. And a few days later, this scam software shows up again and I have...

A public exploit for the new security hole in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 has now become available – as a module for the Metasploit exploit framework. Since it's likely that other websites will soon begin to actively exploit the hole, this will probably force Microsoft to promptly release a patch. Microsoft had previously only registered a few targeted attacks exploiting the hole in the iepeers.dll component to infect systems. Microsoft said therefore that it would continue to monitor the situation and recommended that users switch to Internet Explorer 8, which is not vulnerable. At the recent RSA conference, the creator of Metasploit, H.D....

A top Microsoft executive on Tuesday suggested a broad Internet tax to help defray the costs associated with computer security breaches and vast Internet attacks, according to reports. Speaking at a security conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney pitched the Web usage fee as one way to subsidize efforts to combat emerging cyber threats -- a costly venture, he said, but one that had vast community benefits. "You could say it's a public safety issue and do it with general taxation," Charney noted. Ultimately, Charney was only offering one suggestion during the RSA security...

The presence of a hard-to-detect rootkit may have caused Windows XP machines to freeze up after applying a patch from Microsoft last week, according to preliminary analysis of the problem from Microsoft's security team. Microsoft's users forums filled up with reports of Windows XP users experiencing the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) after applying the 13 patches released by Redmond last week. The problem was later linked to one specific update - MS10-015 - a patch for an "important" kernel flaw - and it was discovered that uninstalling this package unfroze affected machines. The Blue Screen problem affected a...

"Tuesday's security updates from Microsoft have crippled Windows XP PCs with the notorious Blue Screen of Death, users have reported on the company's support forum. Complaints began early yesterday, and gained momentum throughout the day. 'I updated 11 Windows XP updates today and restarted my PC like it asked me to,' said a user identified as 'tansenroy' who kicked off a growing support thread: 'From then on, Windows cannot restart again! It is stopping at the blue screen with the following message: 'A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer.' Others joined...

Applying the latest patches from Microsoft can cause Windows XP machines to crash with the infamous blue screen of death. Updating systems with the MS10-015 bulletin, which addresses "important" vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel, can cause machines to lock up when restarted before falling into a never-ending reboot loop. The problem is far from isolated, judging by a growing thread on the topic on an official Windows support forum here - though it's fortunately not commonplace either. Restarting affected systems in Safe Mode reportedly doesn't seem to help. Suggested fixes for the problem involve booting from a Windows CD or DVD...

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it is investigating another flaw in Internet Explorer, this time a vulnerability that could result in an unauthorized disclosure of information for users running its browser on older operating systems. The software maker said in a security advisory that, although it knows of no attacks based on the flaw, the vulnerability could lead to a Web-based attack from either a Web site designed to take advantage of the flaw or from a site that becomes compromised via user-generated text or a malicious ad. Either way, a user would have to actively go to the compromised...

One of the reasons I've never liked Windows is that it was never made to deal with the security problems of working in a networked, multi-user world. As a direct result, Windows has been fundamentally insecure for more than a decade. Even so, I was surprised to find that there's a 17-year old security hole that's been in Windows since NT and it's still present today in Windows 7. Wow. Even I'm shocked by this latest example of just how rotten Windows security is. It just reminds me again though that while Microsoft keeps adding features and attempting to patch...

Just in from our computer tech. Last night/early this morning. MS forced an update patch on all Windows users. We know it affected all running XP. It may have hit Vista and 7 as well. Many users had a forced Windows reboot/restart this morning. Seems the patch is causing havoc in email systems nationwide. Our computer guy normally gets 8-20 trouble calls a day. So far today, it's more than 250. His affiliates across the country report the same. Our internet access is fine (as others seems to be to) but emails are very slow (3 to 5 minutes from...

Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography. Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses — the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it's your reputation that's stolen. Pedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they'll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal Web sites. Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on...

AV-Comparative.org recently released the results of a malware removal tests with which they evaluated 16 anti-virus software solutions: Avast Professional Edition 4.8AVG Anti-Virus 8.5AVIRA AntiVir Premium 9.0BitDefender Anti-Virus 2010eScan Anti-Virus 10.0ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4.0F-Secure AntiVirus 2010G DATA AntiVirus 2010Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010Kingsoft AntiVirus 9McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0Norman Antivirus & Anti-Spyware 7.10Sophos Anti-Virus 7.6Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 2010Trustport Antivirus 2009.The test focused only on the malware removal/cleaning capabilities, therefore all used samples were samples that the tested antivirus products were able to detect. The main question was if the products are able to successfully remove malware from an already infected/compromised...

Now that we in the northern hemisphere have had some time to digest the Windows 7 hype and settle in for the coming winter, we thought we would get some more hard data regarding Windows 7 security. On October 22nd, we settled in at SophosLabs and loaded a full release copy of Windows 7 on a clean machine. We configured it to follow the system defaults for User Account Control (UAC) and did not load any anti-virus software.We grabbed the next 10 unique samples that arrived in the SophosLabs feed to see how well the newer, more secure version of...

Personal computers are about to get a makeover with the launch of the latest Windows operating system.**************************************************************** The BBC's Jason Palmer investigates Windows 7's pros and cons***************************************************** Microsoft is hoping the successor to Vista will be more of a hit with users when it launches on 22 October. Many of the features take into account multimedia applications and the fact that users are beginning to store their data on the internet. In the UK some computer stores are due to open at midnight so keen PC users can get their hands on the software.

Some scareware scammers building botnets, too (USA Today can only be linked to) Previous article: New twist on scareware locks up your PC

Add-ons blocked because of serious security vulnerability for Firefox users. A war has been raging between different web browsers for a long time now. The two main combatants in the battle are Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Firefox from Mozilla. Microsoft is still in the lead in marketshare with IE, but Firefox is grabbing up a large portion of the market for itself. Firefox hit the one billion download mark in August and has 32% of the browser market while IE holds about 60% of the market. Mozilla and Microsoft are working together on a security flaw in some Microsoft add-ons...