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WServerNews (formerly W2Knews)
Vol. 12, #27 - Jul 16, 2007 - Issue #633
W2K8 To Launch in Feb 08

  1. Editor's Corner
    • Ballmer: Tomorrow You'll Buy Services In The Cloud
    • Celebrate International Sysadmin Day - July 27th
    • W2K8 To Launch in Feb 08
    • Quotes of the Week
  2. Admin Toolbox
    • Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without
  3. Tech Briefing
    • Lasers Could Make Disk Drives A Hundred Times Faster
    • Average Zero-Day Bug Has 348-Day Lifespan, Exec Says
    • Old Trick Back In Vista - Remember CTRL-C?
    • Easy Vista CPU Performance Tweak
    • Free Upcoming Seminar: Optimizing Exchange Performance
    • Diskpart Technical Guide
    • One Patch For Active Directory Is A Doozy
  4. Windows Server News
    • Some Comments About The Recent Patches
    • Windows Vista SP1 Gets Fast-Tracked
    • Microsoft Customers Sour On Software Assurance
    • A Revised Vulnerability Rating System Gains Steam
    • Grumble: You Can't Virtualize Some Vista Flavors
  5. WServer Third Party News
    • New Ninja Vesion With New Features
    • Radmin V3.01 Released
    • It's Like Swiss Cheese, These Networks
  6. WServerNews Fave Links
    • This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.
  7. WServerNews - Product of the Week
    • Ninja Disclaimers for Exchange: Only $99.95 Per Year
"If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It"... But Is It Always True?

If you run AV / Antispam from one of the big players on your Exchange
server, you have probably noticed that image spam is getting through,
tech support is crappy, and your yearly renewal fees are in the 40%
range. Isn't that really BROKE? Kick them off your Exchange server
and replace them with Ninja Email Security. A third-gen product that
-really- helps you fight malware, now with a new dedicated image-spam
engine and URL blocklist. We will give you a competitive upgrade
offer you can't refuse. Download the 30-day trial and ask your Rep
about that special offer:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Ninja-Email-Security

Editor's Corner

Ballmer: Tomorrow You'll Buy Services In The Cloud

Microsoft wants your yearly subscription. Has been wanting this for a while actually. This week Ballmer acknowledged that it will still be years before that will actually happen. Lots of us are not willing to give up control of our networks, and Linux provides a counterweight too. But Ballmer states we are going to be "troglodytes" compared with those who have moved to the new world of server farms. He said:

"Services will be delivered from server farms that are managed on a huge global scale with the ability to move capacity up and down on-demand with a new management model. More and more back-end computing will not be done on premises but on these large farms and hosting centers."

How come this sounds familiar? IBM in the seventies, anyone?

Celebrate International Sysadmin Day - July 27th

The last Friday in July (the 27th) is International System Administrator Appreciation day. Yay! If you don't know what a sysadmin is or does - then please go to the bottom of this email and unsubscribe from our newsletter! Immediately! Whew. Close call. ThinkGeek has some great gift ideas for that special and almighty sysadmin in your life.
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-SysAdmin-Day


W2K8 To Launch in Feb 08

Last Tuesday at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, Redmond's Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner said Windows Server 2008 (W2K8) would launch on February 27, 2008. They are going to have a party in LA, and also 'invite' Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 even though the latter will not be available until mid next year. Redmond is planning on what Turner called a "feeding frenzy, creating hundreds of billions of dollars in the ecosystem." Meaning they expect you to buy this by the bushel. I'm not so sure about that. W2K8 is at the moment in a Community Technology Preview of Beta 3 and of course Redmond is 'dogfooding' it in-house. RTM is expected end of this year. Of note, this is also likely to be the last hurrah for BillG, who will be stepping away from his day-to-day role in July 08.

Quotes of the Week

Since I'm writing this on Friday the Thirteenth, I thought some 'Lucky Quotes' Of The Week were in order:

"The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work." -- Harry Golden (1902-1981)

"I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

And thank you for being a WServerNews subscriber.

Hope you enjoy this issue of WServerNews! Warm regards, Stu  |   Email me: feedback@wservernews.com


Admin Toolbox

Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without

Has management asked you to transform your call center into a full- fledged customer service center? Then have a look at eGain:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-eGain

World's only Vista-certified defragger. Speed up your servers and PCs today with PerfectDisk 8. Windows IT Pro winner, Microsoft's preferred.
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-PerfectDisk-8

Must Have Freeware-Web Active Directory. Try Self Service Password. Download now:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-NameScape

Run VMs? How do you handle disaster recovery and high availability? Use the World's Number One "DR/HA in-one" tool: Double-Take:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Double-Take



Tech Briefing

Lasers Could Make Disk Drives A Hundred Times Faster

Researchers have demonstrated disk write speeds one hundred times faster than current hard drives. The method uses a laser to heat the recording surface and alter its magnetic field. There is no equivalent read speed increase though, and some problems remain to be resolved. Interesting story in ComputerWorld:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Lasers


Average Zero-Day Bug Has 348-Day Lifespan, Exec Says

The average zero-day (0day) bug has a lifespan of 348 days before it is discovered or patched, and some vulnerabilities live on for much longer, according to security vendor Immunity Inc.'s chief executive officer.

Zero-day bugs are vulnerabilities that have not been patched or made public. When discovered and not disclosed, these bugs can be used by hackers and criminals to break into corporate systems to steal or change data. As a result, there is a thriving market for zero-day bugs.

"Huge amounts of money are being offering to zero-day discoverers for their zero-days," said Justine Aitel, Immunity's CEO. More at:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Zero-Day-Bugs


Old Trick Back In Vista - Remember CTRL-C?

Network open cancellation - Do you remember way back when you could hit CTRL+C to cancel an operation? Well, it's back with Vista - sort of. Try to open a document on a network resource that it can't find. In WinXP, you were stuck until the OS decided it couldn't connect. Vista allows you to hit cancel and it returns control back to you. If you're at the command prompt, CTRL+C works again. Play around with it and discover the power.

Easy Vista CPU Performance Tweak

Get more performance out of Vista. The default power plan in Vista is set to Balanced. Changing it to High Performance will increase the CPU utilization up to 50%. That's in Control Panel, Power Options.

Free Upcoming Seminar: Optimizing Exchange Performance

Time is running out to register for the free 1-day seminar, "Optimizing Exchange Performance: Architecture, Storage and Tuning Best Practices for Today and Tomorrow," coming to Minneapolis, MN on August 2nd! At this SearchExchange.com seminar, independent expert Richard Luckett, a Microsoft MVP on Exchange Server and book author, will offer practical tips and best practices you can apply today to help master everyday Exchange maintenance, tuning and troubleshooting. He'll also show you how to prepare for and take advantage of the significant changes in Exchange Server 2007. Seats are filling up fast, register today!
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Exchange-Performance


Diskpart Technical Guide

Windows admins can use Microsoft's Diskpart utility to allow storage configuration from a script, a remote session or another command prompt. This technical guide reviews Diskpart commands and explains how admins can use Diskpart to manipulate, extend and delete disk partitions. (registration required)
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Diskpart


One Patch For Active Directory Is A Doozy

Of Microsoft's six July patches, the worst of the bunch are targeted at Active Directory and the .NET Framework.
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-AD-Patch


Windows Server News

Some Comments About The Recent Patches

Randy F. Smith from the ultimatewindowssecurity.com site had some good observations about Patch Tuesday that I wanted to share with you.

"6 Patches released today. Most are affecting workstations. One unusual exploit is affecting Active Directory. We know your DCs aren't directly connected to the Internet so you probably already have some workarounds enabled. And of course you have a firewall...Pay particular attention to Windows 2000 Server since an anonymous user with access to the network (oh no!) could deliver a specially crafted LDAP packet to the affected system in order to exploit this vulnerability. Pay particular attention to this one. If you don't have the workarounds in place, check your firewall and/or routers quickly! This one is a good exercise for all AD admins to look at. Follow the best practices and you won't have to hurry home from vacation. Of note too is the exploit only affecting Vista. Teredo has to do with the network address translation of IPv6 traffic. This patch involves changes to the firewall and it seems this would be easier to implement that the workarounds." With grateful acknowledgments to Randy.

Also, one patch caused problems for Ninja. We rushed out a hotfix and a new build that solves the issue.

Windows Vista SP1 Gets Fast-Tracked

According to Mary Jo Foley, a columnist for Redmond magazine who blogs about Microsoft for ZDNet, Microsoft will be releasing a beta of SP1 sometime the week of July 16. Quoting unnamed sources, Foley also reported that the final version of SP1 should be released in November 2007.

That's a speeded-up timetable from Microsoft's recent statements that it expected to release Vista SP1 next year, closer to the release of Windows Server 2008. That time-frame was prompted by changes made to Vista's search functionality, making it more accessible to third-party developers, primarily Google. The changes, agreed to by Microsoft, the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. state attorneys general, are expected to be the major alterations introduced by SP1. More of this story at the MCPmag site:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Vista-SP1


Microsoft Customers Sour On Software Assurance

IT procurement managers are finding that Microsoft's Software Assurance maintenance program may not save them money as hoped, according to a survey by Forrester Research. If you are on SA, read this InfoWorld story:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Software-Assurance


A Revised Vulnerability Rating System Gains Steam

A standardized system to rank computer system vulnerabilities has been revised to help IT managers make better decisions more quickly about potential threats. SearchWinIT has more about this:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Vulnerability-Rating


Grumble: You Can't Virtualize Some Vista Flavors

Redmond has limited its virtualization licenses in some Vista flavors. In the EULA for Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium it states: "You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system." If you shell out more dough, Vista Ultimate -does- allow you to stick it in a virtual hardware system. This limitation could perhaps be aimed at Mac users. They often run a virtual Windows using for instance SWsoft's Parallels. This will make that option a lot more expensive.

WServer Third Party News

New Ninja Vesion With New Features

We have posted version 2.1.4209 of Ninja for download. This version of Ninja contains the following updates:
  • Critical update to AV plugin in response to MS Hotfix KB928365 (.NET 2.0 issues) NOTE: If you haven't installed the MS Hotfix yet make sure you upgrade Ninja first
  • Updated Cloudmark Engine for increase detection of both image and pdf spam
  • Sunbelt Image Spam Engine has been added for additional detection of image spam
  • Spam URL Block List Engine has been added for detection of spam based on URLs within messages
This version is a direct upgrade to existing 2.0 and 2.1 versions of Ninja, simply download the new version from the link below and run the installer. The upgrade may result in the cycling of Exchange services such as the Information Store and Inetinfo during the installation. Readme at:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Ninja-Readme

Download at:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Download-Ninja


Radmin V3.01 Released

This week, the new updated Radmin 3.01 and its localized versions came out. Radmin 3.01 is now available in German, French, Italian and Spanish. The new version also has the following modifications:

Installation Process:
  • License key activation for all computers within a domain is enabled (remote domain activation using ".MST" file).
  • Installation file size is decreased by 2 MB.
  • The system restart check was improved.
Radmin Viewer:
  • Radmin Viewer is now compatible with Wine (remote control from Linux machines enabled).
  • The titles of the Full Control and View Only windows now start with the connection name, so it is easier to distinguish remote computers when working on more than one remote machine.
Radmin Server:
  • Compatibility with Korean and Chinese versions of Windows Vista is enabled.
  • Improved compatibility of Radmin Mirror Driver with current video card drivers.
Multilingual Support:
  • Radmin Viewer, Radmin Server and Documentation Package translated into German, French, Italian and Spanish.
The current version of Radmin software is 3.01. If you already have Radmin 3.0 installed, we recommend that you download and install this update. You can install Radmin 3.01 without uninstalling Radmin 3.0. All settings will be saved, including activation. License keys for Radmin 3.0 Remote Control are valid for any 3.0 and 3.XX versions of Radmin software. You can download Radmin 3.01 at Sunbelt's website:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Radmin-V3


It's Like Swiss Cheese, These Networks

Sunbelt Network Security Inspector has been updated. Check out the new vulnerability signatures for this latest SNSI release: 
W3150   Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution - Excel 2002/XP
W3149   Microsoft Internet Information Services Could Allow Remote Code Exec
W3147   .NET Framework Could Allow Remote Code Execution - .NET 2.0
W3145   .NET Framework Could Allow Remote Code Execution - .NET 1.1 SP1
W3144   .NET Framework Could Allow Remote Code Execution - .NET 1.1 SP1
W3143   .NET Framework Could Allow Remote Code Execution - .NET 1.0 SP3
W3142   .NET Framework Could Allow Remote Code Execution - .NET 1.0 SP3
W3141   Windows Active Directory Could Allow Remote Code Execution - W2K3
W3140   Windows Active Directory Could Allow Remote Code Execution - W2000
W3138   Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 Could Allow Remote Code Execution
W3137   Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution - Office Compack 07
W3136   Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution - Excel 2007
W3135   Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution - Excel 2003 Viewer
W3134   Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution  - Excel 2003
W3133   Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution - Excel 2000
W3132   Symantec Mail Security for SMTP attachment parsing - W2K, XP, W2K3
W3131   GIMP PSD Plug-in vulnerability - W2K, XP, W2K3
W3130   Apache 2.2 Off-by-one error in the ldap mod_rewrite module
W3129   Squid Proxy Fix assertion error on TRACE
W3128   HP Instant Support Driver vulnerability - W2K, XP, W2K3
W3127   RealPlayer SMIL file time string parsing vulnerability - W2K, XP, W2K3
W3126   Wireshark multiple dissectors vulnerable - W2K, XP, W2K3
W2298   Apache 2.0 Off-by-one error in the ldap mod_rewrite module
W2299   Apache 1.3 Off-by-one error in the ldap mod_rewrite module
W0003   Terminal Server Login Buffer Overflow - NT4
W0004   Authentication Flaw in Microsoft Metadirectory Services
W0005   .NET Framework 1.0 Latest Service Pack Installed
W0006   .NET Framework 1.1 Latest Service Pack Installed, XP, W2000, NT
W0007   .NET Framework 1.1 Latest Service Pack Installed, W2003 Server
W0008   .NET Framework 2.0 Latest Service Pack Installed, W2003 Server
W0197   ISA 2004 SP 3 - W2K, XP, W2K3
S0474   Kadmind vulnerability - Solaris 8 - 10
S0473   Nscd susceptible to libsldap flaw - Solaris 8 - 10
S0472   Kadmind RPCSEC_GSS implementation - Solaris 8 - 10
SNSI uses the latest Mitre Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list of computer incidents. It also contains the latest SANS/FBI top 20 vulnerability list. SNSI also uses the latest CERT, CIAC Microsoft and FedCIRC (Department of Homeland Security) advisories. To get the latest SNSI version, visit:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-SNSI

To update from within the SNSI console, select Settings, enter your full registration key and click on Check Now button. To Purchase NOW, visit:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-SNSI-Buy


WServerNews Fave Links

This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.



WServerNews - Product of the Week

Ninja Disclaimers for Exchange: Only $99.95 Per Year

The product is aggressively priced at $99.95 for unlimited mailboxes per organization. Ninja Disclaimers offers robust policy-based disclaimer functionality, allowing you to create automatic global and user-based disclaimers for all outbound email for Exchange 2000 and 2003, with Exchange 2007 support available late July. Designed to be seamlessly implemented within an organization without interrupting existing antispam and antivirus solutions. Configure disclaimers based on specific users, groups, domains, or public folders. Ninja also prevents multiple disclaimers when replying or forwarding. Allow users within different departments to add or bypass a disclaimer on a per email basis based on predefined keywords that are included in the body or subject of the email. Comes with disclaimer templates (HTML or plain text) and reports. A 30-day trial version of Ninja Disclaimers is available:
http://www.wservernews.com/070716-Ninja-Disclaimers