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Baystar exec says MSFT behind high-burn-rate funding of SCO

By on October 10, 2006 in Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

OSNews is pointing to the story that Microsoft's SCO Involvement Revealed. “A declaration by SCO's backer, BayStar has revealed that the software Giant Microsoft had more links to the anti-Linux bad-boy. The declaration made by from BayStar general partner Larry Goldfarb has turned up as part of IBM's evidence to the court. Goldfarb says that Baystar had been chucking USD 50 million at SCO despite concerns that it had a high cash burn rate. He also claims that former Microsoft senior VP for corporate development and strategy Richard Emerson discussed “a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would 'backstop', or guarantee in some way, BayStar's investment”.

I don't think it's really a surprise that MSFT and SUN are behind the funding of SCO to take a poke at IBM and slow the adoption of Linux through FUD. If you'd like to learn more about this incredibly complex case, GrokLaw is the place to visit. But be warned: it's easy to be dragged into all the fascinating nooks and crannies of the case.

The real question for me is whether MSFT and SUN succeeded in their ventures. SUN has done a turn-around and is re-inventing themselves as the green company with better price/power/performance for the internet. MSFT has… almost shipped Vista. Linux, meanwhile, has moved, up, out and around, scaling to greater multi-CPU architectures, developing a better virtualization story, making huge progress in hardware compatibility, and fielding several worthy desktop competitors. LAMP is not a risky choice for IT; it's a question of which commercially-supported distributions and stacks to choose and ensuring the eager technicians in house get the training they need. If the SCO case cooled enthusiasm and take-up any, it gave FOSS advocates time to get their act together and pay a little closer attention to governance and provenance and licensing terms, cleaning up their houses and getting their story straight. Meanwhile, Microsoft… almost shipped Vista.

If SCO/Baystar/Microsoft/SUN thought that IBM would roll over and settle out of court, they badly miscalculated.

MS6-053 an Internet Explorer Cross-Site Scripting exploit?

By on October 5, 2006 in Microsoft, Security

Swa Frantzen is manning the SANS Internet Storm Center, InfoCON: green desk today, and struggles to work out the exploit Microsoft documents without admitting in MS06-053 revisited ?, (Thu, Oct 5th). “When we first read MS06-053 we ended up discussing and not fully understanding what Microsoft was…” (more)… The article explores what appears to be an IE cross-site scripting exploit but with the character set UTF-7 (yes, seven! – who knew!) and some advice to webmasters to help avoid spreading the problem by echoing a bad URL back to the user.

DLSLUG, October 5th, 7 PM: Protecting a Windows Server with a $50 Linux Box from Staples

By on October 3, 2006 in Linux, Microsoft, OpenSource, Security

Bill McGonigle announces Thursday's Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Linux User Group: “Protecting a Windows Server with a $50 Linux Box from Staples” presented by Lloyd Kvam:

“Lloyd will talk about OpenWRT, the open source linux distribution that targets small routers such as the Linksys WRT45GL. He recently used one to make a bridging firewall, where a Windows computer needed protection, but there was no access to the router.”

“Lloyd will talk about hardware organization, installing packages, the layout of the default configuration, and how to customize the routing and firewall operations… Lloyd works at software development, preferably in Python.”

Should be a fun meeting. Hope to see you there!

Yet another ActiveX control exploit for IE

By on September 30, 2006 in Microsoft, Security

SANS Internet Storm Center weekend monitor is reporting “WebViewFolderIcon ActiveX control exploit(s) in the wild, (Sat, Sep 30th). Rise and shine. This vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild …” (more)

If you must run IE, restrict ActiveX controls to the highest level possible. And use a safer browser, like FireFox or SeaMonkey or Opera or Konqueror or Camino or Safari for all those web sites that don't require you to use IE.

Exploits, exploits and exploits!

By on September 28, 2006 in Microsoft, Security

I don't intend this blog to be a security blog; that's a full time job better served by others. However, you ought to be alert to what's going on out there:

MS “re-released” MS06-049 as version 2.0 (new and improved!) to patch NTFS file compression on Windows 2000 SP4.

The Internet Storm Center is reporting yet another Internet Explorer exploit, taking advantage of a bug in an ActiveX control.

The ISC is also pointing to reports of an exploit packaged in a PowerPoint file. I may have mentioned it before: Do not open attachments from untrusted sources and… there are no trusted sources. I wouldn't advise anyone to open a PowerPoint until they are sure their anti-virus scanners have been updated and clear the file. Better yet, open it in OpenOffice.org. Better yet… imagine a day with no PowerPoint. Wow.

Microsoft issues patch for Zero-Day VML exploit on Day Eight

By on September 27, 2006 in Microsoft, Security

Slashdot is noting that Microsoft Patches VML Vulnerability. “Microsoft has quietly released an official patch for the zero-day VML vulnerability. The patch was publicly available yesterday, But Microsoft has just added it to the Security Bulletin Index.” Eight days from time of first report to patch is pretty fast for Microsoft, and is almost two weeks ahead of their normal patch schedule. This security flaw was being aggressively exploited out in the wild.”

For Microsoft to break their usual once-a-month patch cycle is pretty unusual, so I'd consider this patch sooner rather than later. Get patching!

Python Reads SourceSafe

By on September 13, 2006 in Home Page, Python, SourceSafe

Picking up an example presented in 1998 for using COM Automation on SourceSafe from Visual FoxPro, I created the same example in Python with just as little code. Using Mark Hammond's Win32All to supply the Win32 and COM support, the following code will list all the files in a particular SourceSafe project and their version numbers.


import win32com.client

SSafe=win32com.client.Dispatch("SourceSafe")
SSafe.Open("c:\Projects\VSSPath\srcsafe.ini","troche","secret")

Root=SSafe.VSSItem("$/MyClient/MyProject")
VSSItems=Root.Items

print VSSItems.Count
for loNode in VSSItems:
	print loNode.Name, loNode.VersionNumber
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