WServerNews (formerly W2Knews)

Vol. 14, #18 - Apr 17, 2009 - Issue #723

Upgrade To Windows 7?

This issue of WServerNews is sponsored by

Editors Corner
- Upgrade To Windows 7?
- Now That's Dedication
- Malicious Activity Grew At a Record Pace In 2008
- Quotes Of The Week
Webinars and Seminars
- No Time for Migration Downtime? Discover an Optimized Approach to Workload Portability
- BriForum Early-Bird Registration Ends Next Wednesday!
Admin Toolbox
- Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without
Tech Briefing
- Microsoft: 97% Of Email Is Spam
- It's Starting Already: Win7 Tips, Tricks And Tweaks
- Understanding Virtualization With Hyper-V
- Integrating Document Management Systems Into SharePoint 2007
- Tip: Improving VM Density Ratios
- Data Center And IT Server Room Cooling Guidelines
- Dirty Dozen: 12 IT Disasters
Windows Server News
- First Look: Exchange 2010 Beta Shines
- Microsoft Sets Office 2007 SP2 Release For April 28
WServer Thrid Party News
- New Batch Of Vulnerabilities
WServerNews Fave Links
- This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.
WServerNews - Product of the Week
- Triple Support Without Increasing Staff

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	Editors Corner

Upgrade To Windows 7? If Win7 comes out in September, are you going to deploy it to your user's workstations before the end of the year? Beta reactions are generally positive, so it would be interesting to see how you are thinking about this. Many of us are looking at the issues involved with a wholesale upgrade, like training costs for users, concerns about incompatibilities, potential hardware requirements and the current economic situation. So here is the new SunPoll: "If Windows 7 comes out in the second half of this year, are you going to upgrade before the end of 2009?" Yup, we'll roll it out right away Nope, not before the end of 2009 6 to 12 months after release 12 to 24 months after release 24 to 36 months after release Not planned yet / don't know Vote here at the bottom right column: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-SunbeltSoftware *Now That's* Dedication Sunbelt staff BELIEVE in our VIPRE product. Cris Godfrey got a VIPRE tattoo. http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Tattoo Come See us at TechEd booth 111 in LA this year. We're giving away dozens of PSP3000 handheld game consoles. Here is the picture to prove we actually have them in house: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-PSP Malicious Activity Grew At a Record Pace In 2008 An anonymous reader at Slashdot writes "Symantec announced that malicious code activity continued to grow at a record pace throughout 2008, primarily targeting confidential information of computer users. According to the company's Internet Security Threat Report Volume XIV, Symantec created more than 1.6 million new malicious code signatures in 2008. This equates to more than 60 percent of the total malicious code signatures ever created by Symantec - a response to the rapidly increasing volume and proliferation of new malicious code threats. The total cost to a company of recovering from a single data breach reached $6.6 million in 2008, an increase of 4.5 percent from the $6.3 million cost in 2007, according to a recent benchmark study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by PGP Corp. Lost business accounted for nearly 70 percent of a data breach (compared with 65 percent in 2007), averaging $4.6 million. Another anonymous Slashdot reader notes a related report from Verizon, which says 285 million records were compromised in 2008, more than the total of the previous four years combined. So, I have a 'Malware Flash Survey' for you. This is literally a 4-click survey on malware you can do in 30 seconds. Thanks a bundle!!: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-MalwareFrequency Quotes Of The Week** "All political power comes from the barrel of a gun." -- Mao Tse Tung "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -- Plato Warm regards, and thank you for being a WServerNews subscriber. No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced. Please tell your friends about us. They can subscribe here: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Subscribe

Hope you enjoy this issue of WServerNews! Warm regards, Stu |

Email me: feedback@wservernews.com

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	Webinars and Seminars

No Time for Migration Downtime? Discover an Optimized Approach to Workload Portability Date: April 28, 2009 Time: 11am - 12pm EST Traditionally, server migration is complex, time-consuming, and expensive. Now, discover fast and easy migration for physical and virtual environments with new workload portability products from Double-Take Software. Join ESG Analyst Lauren Whitehouse together with Double-Take Software for an overview of "Double-Take Move" - the latest of the Workload Optimization Software suite of products from Double-Take Software. Learn how this product assists with efficient, flexible datacenter consolidation; simple storage migration; P2P / V2P or P2V / V2V migrations. In this educational webinar, Lauren Whitehouse will provide an overview of the market demands and needs around migration and what technologies other organizations are considering. Then, you'll hear a technical overview of Double-Take Software's newest product - Double-Take Move. Double-Take Move streamlines the traditional migration process with real-time data movement and hardware-independent conversion technology that make workloads simple for administrators to move - and minimizes the impact on user productivity. Click here to register: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Double-Take-Move BriForum Early-Bird Registration Ends Next Wednesday! BriForum is the only independent conference 100% dedicated to end-user computing. Join desktop virtualization industry expert and blogger, Brian Madden and your IT peers from across the globe at this event in Chicago on July 21 - 23. Learn advanced technical information, tips and strategies on VDI, Terminal Services (including Citrix XenApp), and application streaming from top industry experts, plus get hands-on experience with the newest technologies in the Demo Labs. There are just a few more days to take advantage of the BriForum early-bird special registration price of $995 (a $500 savings) before the deadline on April 22. Don't miss out - this event is only happening once this year - register today: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-BriForum

	Admin Toolbox

Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without Simplify your life with mPowerTools - 100+ Reports - Tackle AD chores in bulk - A Search & Replace Tool - you'll never script again & no 3rd party databases! http://www.wservernews.com/090420-mPowerTools 10 iPhone Apps For IT Administrators - Even if out of the office, you can use the following Apps, all available from the iTunes App Store. Slideshow: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-iPhone-Apps Kiss Your Antivirus Bloatware Goodbye! You can now upgrade from Symantec, McAfee or Trend to VIPRE Antivirus. Competitive Upgrade is just $10/seat: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-VIPREEnterprise Email Security in Half The Admin Time. Ninja protects your Exchange Server against spam, viruses, malicious attachments and more. Very easy to manage: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Ninja-Email-Security

	Tech Briefing

Microsoft: 97% Of Email Is Spam In their latest security report, Microsoft said that only 3% of the email we receive is legitimate, wanted mail. The rest is spam or otherwise relegated to the trash bin. Of course, the typical user sees only a small fraction of those spam messages, thanks to filtering programs. Interestingly, the report says that almost half of the spam messages are ads for pharmaceutical products. Some other studies report a smaller percentage of mail as spam - but not that much smaller. The lowest numbers still show almost three quarters of our mail is junk. Read more here: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Spam It's Starting Already: Win7 Tips, Tricks And Tweaks ComputerWorld said: Running the Windows 7 beta, and want to bend it to your will? No problem. We've got plenty of tips, hacks and secrets to keep you busy for a long time, including automatically opening Windows Explorer to a folder of your choice, bringing back the Quick Launch toolbar, forcing User Account Control to act the way you'd like, keeping your Explorer searches secret from others, and more. So check out these tips. If you like them, we'll keep more coming: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Win-Tips Understanding Virtualization With Hyper-V In this webcast, Microsoft MVP Greg Shields explains exactly what the release of Hyper-V means to the future (and present) of server virtualization, with details on how it differs from both Microsoft Virtual Server and VMware ESX. Learn what the minimum requirements needed to support Hyper-V are and get a breakdown of the networking components of the hypervisor: (Registration Required) http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Hyper-V Integrating Document Management Systems Into SharePoint 2007 If you use SharePoint, you're probably familiar with its document management functions: opening, creating and uploading documents, version and permission management, content types and so on. Because of its document management capabilities, many administrators are looking to make Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 their primary document management system. This tip discusses integrating the content of your document management system in a new SharePoint environment: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-SharePoint Tip: Improving VM Density Ratios The number of virtual machines (VMs) that you can fit on each physical server -- or VM density -- is one of the most important metrics to determine the success of your server consolidation and virtualization deployment efforts. It also enhances business outcomes by indicating where your organization can be more cost-effective and improve operating margins. This tip highlights new research that compares the best, average and worst performers in terms of VM density -- and the results may be surprising: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Virtualization Data Center And IT Server Room Cooling Guidelines Keeping IT server rooms and data centers cool is a constant challenge for businesses and the solution providers that serve them -- especially in this economy. This resource has pulled together guidelines for basic data center and server room cooling tips, best practices, and planning and design advice to help you implement more efficient and inexpensive server room cooling solutions for your customers: (Registration Required) http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Cooling-Guidelines Dirty Dozen: 12 IT Disasters Learning from your mistakes is good. Learning from others' mistakes is even better. BaselineMag looked at 12 major IT failures to learn more about how and why they happened. Instructive: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Slideshow

	Windows Server News

First Look: Exchange 2010 Beta Shines InfoWorld has been a reliable IT publication for decades. I started reading it in 1981. Expected the latter half of 2009, they had a look at the new Exchange 2010, and liked it. Their Bottom line: Although pricing has yet to be announced, based on operational and usability improvements, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 will be a major step up from Exchange Server 2007. A potential hurdle: Support for Windows Server 2003 is dropped in favor of Windows Server 2008 only. One of the biggest improvements is that OWA (Outlook Web Access) will support for IE 7 and 8, Firefox 3, and Safari 3. You should check out the whole review at their site, and see the slide show they created: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Exchange-2010 And here is the official MS E2010 Beta Page: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-ExchangeServer2010 This is an overview of the New Exchange 2010 Stuff on TechNet: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Server-2010-Beta Microsoft Sets Office 2007 SP2 Release For April 28 ComputerWorld reported that Redmond has set April 28 as the release date for Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2), the first update since December 2007. Last week, Redmond said said that it would begin pushing Office 2007 SP2 as an upgrade via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) this month, but until yesterday had not set an exact date. Office 2007 SP2 adds support for Open Document Format (ODF) Version 1.1 to Word, Excel and PowerPoint; boosts the performance of the Outlook 2007 e-mail client; debuts the ability to uninstall service packs using a separately utility and the Windows command line; and integrates the "Save As PDF/XPS" command into the suite's applications. More at: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Office07-SP2

WServer Thrid Party News

New Batch Of Vulnerabilities

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.

New Checks
L2286 Epiphany Extensions multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2287 XULRunner browser multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2288 Firefox browser multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2289 Netatalk papd daemon pipe command weakness - FC 
L2290 Argyll translate image to native color space weakness - FC
L2291 Compiz-fusion expo plugin screen saver drag bypass error - FC
L2292 PhpMyAdmin setup.php/BLOB streaming & other security flaws - FC
L2293 Epiphany browser multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2294 BLAM RSS reader multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2295 Galeon browser multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2296 DevHelp API browser multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2297 Gnome-python2-extras multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2298 Gnome-web-photo multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2299 Google Gadgets multiple security vulnerabilities - FC 
L2300 Kazehakase browser multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2301 Mozvoikko extension multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2302 Miro multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2303 Mugshot multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2304 Yelp multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2305 Chmsee HTML Help multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2306 GtkMozEmbed multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2307 Totem multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2308 Evolution-rss multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2309 Gecko-sharp2 multiple security vulnerabilities - FC 
L2310 Pcmanx-gtk2 multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2311 Ruby-gnome2 multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
L2312 Seamonkey browser multiple security vulnerabilities - FC
S39 Dtlogin failure with certain LDAP patches - Solaris 9
W3566 Microsoft Office Excel 2000 vulnerabilities - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3567 Microsoft Office XP Excel vulnerabilities - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3568 Microsoft Office 2003 Excel vulnerabilities - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3573 WordPad and Office Text Converters in Windows errors - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3574 WordPad and Office 2000 Text Converter errors - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3575 WordPad and Office XP Text Converter errors - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3578 Windows MSDTC Elevation of Privilege - W2K/XP/W2K3 
W3580 Windows WMI Service Isolation vulnerabilities - XP/W2K3
W3582 Windows HTTP Services errors - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3586 Blended Threat Vulnerability in SearchPath vulnerabilities - 2K/W2K3/XP
S317 Adobe Reader Multiple Vulnerabilities - Solaris 10
W3569 Microsoft Office 2007 Excel vulnerabilities - W2K3/XP/Vista 
W3570 Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003 vulnerabilities - W2K/W2K3/XP/Vista
W3571 Microsoft Office Excel Viewer vulnerabilities - W2K3/XP/Vista
W3572 Microsoft Office Compatibility Excel vulnerabilities - W2K3/XP/Vista
W3576 WordPad and Office Converter Pack flaws - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3577 Microsoft DirectShow Remote Code Execution - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3579 Windows MSDTC Elevation of Privilege - Vista/W2K8
W3581 Windows WMI Service Isolation vulnerabilities - Vista/W2K8
W3583 Windows HTTP Services errors - Vista/W2K8
W3584 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer - W2K/W2K3/XP
W3585 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer - Vista/W2K8
W3587 Blended Threat Vulnerability in SearchPath vulnerabilities - Vista/W2K8
W3588 Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway Flaws - Vista/W2K8
W3589 Microsoft ISA Server 2004 Flaws - W2K/W2K3 
W3590 Microsoft ISA Server 2006 Flaws - W2K3 


Updated Checks
H154 Libc Vulnerability - HP-UX 11
W1142 Anti-virus Signature Outdated - McAfee
W1986 Anti-virus Signature Outdated - Symantec
W1999 Anti-virus Signature Outdated - Trend Micro
W2067 Anti-virus Signature Outdated - F-Secure 
W2070 Anti-virus Signature Outdated - CA eTrust
W2493 Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Tool Not Updated
H122 Veritas 4.X/5.X Vulnerabilities - HP-UX 11
M76 ClamXav / ClamAV signatures not the latest - Mac OS X 
M80 Virex signature file out of date - Mac OS X
S33 ClamAV signatures not updated - Solaris
W2012 Anti-virus signature outdated - Avast! 4
W2013 Anti-virus signature outdated - AVG 8 - W2K/XP/W2K3

Sunbelt Network Security Inspector version 2.0.2670.0 Definition Set 173 was released April 15, 2009. Sunbelt Software recommends you download the new SNSI Vulnerability Update Definitions 173, scan, and patch your machines today. To get the latest SNSI version, visit:
http://www.wservernews.com/090420-SNSI

	WServerNews Fave Links

This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff. This is what a REAL crisis looks like, hand-in-hand with hyper inflation: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Crisis Somebody up there protects stupid people. Guy dons bulletproof vest and allows his buddy to shoot him. Dang. Next stop, the hospital: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Bulletproof Located in a bunker 30 meters under solid bedrock in downtown Stockholm, Sweden, exists a datacenter fit for a James Bond movie. It used to be a cold war bunker and is supposed to be able to withstand a hydrogen bomb: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Data-Center The first spoof on the MS "laptop hunters campaign" and pretty funny too: Homeless Frank gets to choose -his- fave machine: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Homeless The Aptera 2e electric car has a fuel efficiency equivalent of 300 mpg, accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in less than 10 seconds, gets a top speed of 90 mph and will be available later in 2009 for $ 25,000. I want one: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Electric-Car This guy makes art out of trash bags... pretty cool when they come alive: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Street-Art This cute film contains a number of rather sneaky animals ... http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Thieves Zero S - affordable, street-legal electric supermoto hits the freeways. Check out the whole gizmag site by the way, lots off cool stuff: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Supermoto And while we are at it, here's the world's top 5 fastest street legal electric cars. Check out the videos at the bottom of this page: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Fast-Electric-Cars AA-12 Automatic Shotgun: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid. I want one. http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Shotgun The Picasso's of Chess Boards: 10 of The Best: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Chess Into the background of stolen credit cards and PINs? Here is the scoop: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Bank-Card-Security One of us "technically inclined" has built an automated cat door that sends a tweet when one of his two pets comes in through the catdoor: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Cat-Door Low level flight through the Swiss Alps in a Swiss Air Force fighter jet: http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Jet One of the most unexpected performances on "Britain's Got Talent". 47 year-old Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Miserables": http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Boyle In the category "Weird Japanese" video, this one is pretty high on the scale. A rendition of Beethoven's fifth symphony set in a restaurant. ("Asagohan" means breakfast in Japanese.) http://www.wservernews.com/090420-Breakfast

	WServerNews - Product of the Week

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