Leopard's Firewall is Vulnerable

After releasing its latest operating system named Leopard, Apple is suffering from a very bad security vulnerability. This is about the type of firewall used in Leopard. There were reports that this firewall doesn’t blocks all the programs which are marked under block category. Infact, it doesn’t work even if it is set to block all incoming connections. If you are new to Apple’s range of operating systems, please do not get confused by these names. Tiger was the name of previous version of Mac OS X and Leopard is the one which was released last month ie. Oct 26th. Tiger was named as Mac OS X 10.4 and Leopard as Mac OS X10.5 and here we are talking about Leopard.

There are speculations that the firewall program automatically turns off while installing this operating system or while upgrading from the previous version. The major flaw is that, even if the user selects the option to block all incoming connections, an attacker can enter the computer easily just by injecting a small code via worm. This will lead to giving full control of your PC to the attacker. However if you have the extra security built into your router or you are using your Mac in an organization which has a hard core firewall solution, then you don’t have to worry at all.


Rich Mogull a security analyst’s research about the firewall revealed the following outcomes. According to him, Leopard firewall has 3 options, one to block all incoming connections, second to allow all incoming connections and final to allow users to select the application level blocking facility. Another facility allows user to enable stealth mode, in which the system will be on high security area wherein, the attacker cannot even see the machine when he/she scans the internet for a victim. But Mogull’s study revealed that none of these settings behave in their normal fashion. Even the high secure stealth mode works partially and if the user sets the application level settings, the applications starts behaving abnormally. Some of which are Skype service which gets killed automatically. Some games are not running as they do on other operating systems, Adobe creative suite users have also complained about the performance issue. The Photoshop issue which is not running properly or crashing at the time of launch. Some wireless network problems the bandwidth getting chocked while browsing.


So, don’t be in a confusion that your Leopard’s new sandboxing feature will protect your PC. I am sure Apple must be more worried than us, and very soon you will see a security patch to overcome this hurdle.

AMD’s High Performance Microprocessor

This is not a new name as last year AMD has announced to introduce its new graphical card under the banner “FireStream”. But the GUI was released with some other name. And now its back again, the brand is in with all its Fireworks. After the success of its First 64 bit processor and ATI Radeon H 2600, AMD is in and this time with a FireStream.






AMD has unveiled its fastest microprocessor yesterday. This is AMD FireStream 9170, which can perform 500 billion floating-point operations per second. This kind of high performance operations were earlier used in GUI processors where it was a parallel performance of graphical chip on your computer. I believe after taking over ATI last year, AMD has reviewed its GUI processors to produce this brand new fastest processor. This is more advanced than the processor of that of ATI. FireStream 9170 comes with 2GB GDDR3 memory when compared with 512MB in ATI graphical processor and the power consumption is less than 150 Watts. It also comes with a PCI Express 2.0 interface.Apart from this, AMD has also released its Software Development Kit which will enable developers to write related drivers for this processor.


This processor is expected to be in market from early next year at an estimated cost of $1,999. However the company is looking forward for a formal demonstration next week in SC07 supercomputing show. So looking into this innovative idea of AMD, other chip makers has also started entering the era of using GUI processors in mainstream computing apart from gamming and supercomputing operations. The best thing which I liked about this processor is that, AMD has given provision to edit the code to get more out of this processor. This is definitely a big go go for developers who are familiar with High Level Language. AMD is also rolling out a programming language named Brook+ which is a set of C extensions based on Stream Computing.


So in future we could see more and more processors built on Stream computing technology.


The Upcomming releases from AMD are Sapphires board, a brand new mother board under AM2+ technology. AMD has also unveiled the AM3 technology.

Real Player Security Vulnerability

In its recent study, Symantec stated that the present versions of the most popular media player “The Real Player” is vulnerable to attackers. According to them, the attackers can write a simple Active X code to modify the source of Intel’s CPU, as a result, taking total control of your machine. This code is injected into your computer when you visit a web site which contains malicious codes. This vulnerability was also noticed in the latest Beta version of Real player which is Real Player 11.

Soon after getting to know about this vulnerability, Real Networks released a latest patch to fix this. According to them, this new patch released on October 19th is set to fix this vulnerability with its Player. Real Networks also stated that, Real player 8 is not effected with this vulnerability and also there is a news that this vulnerability is only with Real Player running on Windows platform and not on Mac and linux operating systems. So go ahead and install this update from Real Networks Customer Support SiteRead in detail about this news on Symantec's Security Blog.

The Microsoft Talk

At last I found some time from my busy schedule this month to write a post on my blog. Now I came to know How busy is a work of System Administrator. When there is work it is loads of work and when there is no work it is Nil work. In this post, I featured some of the latest from Microsoft. As the name indicates, the Microsoft talk. So, Lets know about some of the new releases and latest happennings in Microsoft.


Office 2008 for Apple Macintosh Computers

Microsoft has announced the date of its much awaited release of Office suite for Macintosh users. Office 2008 for Mac will be launched in mid Jan for US users and will be released in other markets during the first quarter.

This will be available at an estimated cost of $500 to $150 which includes the basic edition for $400 and the students or home edition for $150. The users who are presently using office 2004 can upgrade to 2008 with some extras.



Vista SP1 released

Finally Microsoft has released the first service pack of its new operating system i.e.. Windows Vista. However this service pack is in its beta phase and released last Monday to some of the private users and testers. The service pack is set to be officially released in the first quarter of next year. There are many of bugs which have been fixed with this service pack. Read more about this news at Brandon LeBlanc’s blog









The XP Factor


Microsoft has further increased the date to end the selling of Windows XP operating system. XP has stood on its way back of becoming the most successful operating system which Microsoft has ever manufactured after 98. Earlier in August, Microsoft announced a 2C release of its operating system XP. Nothing is new in this release except the new product key so that the company can keep selling the OS to its business partners till early 2009. A final decision will be taken in 2009 on the future of XP. There are no plans by Microsoft in near future to end this 6 year old operating system.

IPhone Price cut

As the holiday shopping season coming in, Apple has cut the price of its most hyped gadget of the year IPhone, which was launched 2 months back.

Is it Price Cut???

Yes, you read it right!!!!!

Now you will get an 8GB IPhone at $399 instead of $599. But this is was not all, Apple had to face the heat of this price cut from the early buyers of its most hyped IPhone. Soon after this news was announced, Apple’s shares went down by 5 percent, but slowly bounced up by the end of the day.


Jobs’ Say on Price Cut

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at his company’s website that Apple disappointed some of its customers by cutting the price of IPhone 8GB model. He apologized to all his customers and announced to offered a credit of $100 to all those loyal customers. Many customers took IPhone price cut as an opportunity and rushed to their local stores. However Ryan Roth who bought IPhone at $599 on Friday chalked up his purchase,“the worst timing ever”. He has been waiting to purchase a cell phone from last four years and after researching, he purchased IPhone, but he get some relief when Apple’s spokeswoman Natalie Kerris announced that the customers who has purchased IPhone within last 14days and have a receipt can get a full refund under Apple’s return policy. Provided they haven’t opened the product, if they have opened it, then also they would get the refund but with some price difference.

Latest from Apple

The 4GB model has been discontinued, Apple also launched a bunch of IPods last Wednesday which includes a 16GB IPod at an estimated cost of $399 using which, user will be able to connect to web wirelessly and purchase songs on the go at Starbucks from early October starting with NY city. As per this partnership, the coffee chain’s icon will light up on the touch whenever a user is near a shop that has Wi-Fi access. The new IPod also incorporates a touch screen which IPhone presently has, it also has an added advantage of downloading songs from ITunes and Wi-Fi stores. Apple also announced that they are on track of selling 1 million IPhone in United States by the end of September.
Rumors

There are speculations in consumer electronics market that this price cut is probably due to a newer versions of Apple’s IPhone to be launched later this year. The new IPhone would have all the fixes to the bugs which exist in the present model. It would come with a removable battery, as it is difficult to remove the battery in the present model. It would also have an improved screen. Seeing this, Microsoft cut the price of its Zune digital music player by $50 to $199. However this was not officially announced by Microsoft, as it was written on Zune insider blog run by one of its employee’s. The software giant met its target of selling more than 1 million units before the end of June.


With Apple II in 1970 and after reinventing the personal computer in 1980 named Macintosh. Apple is a leader in consumer electronics market. The innovative products such as IPod, now the mobile product such as IPhone, the award winning computers, OS X operating systems and other professional applications has already proved Apple’s ability in today’s competing market. Apple has managed to sell more than 110 million IPods since they debuted in 2001.