Fix MSE Utility – Repair Microsoft Security Essentials

Repair Microsoft Security Essentials with Fix MSE Utility from The Windows Club.

We are pleased to release the Fix MSE Utility v 1.0. This freeware portable utility will reset all the Registry and other settings of Microsoft Security Essentials to default value.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a new antivirus from Microsoft. It provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.

Microsoft Malware Protection Center

Resizeable Textarea add-on for Firefox

A lot of forums and boards provide very small textareas for postings. If you type a long post you have to scroll up and down to read and edit what you have written. This can be very annoying!

The Resizeable Textarea extension lets you resize most textareas in online forums and message boards. Works great! Give it a try. Resizeable Textarea for Firefox

Add-ons Blocklist | Mozilla

UPDATE: Mozilla has now removed the extensions from the block list after Microsoft clarified some information in its bulletin on how Firefox users were affected. More information: Mozilla unblocks one sneaky Microsoft add-on

I just got a pop up in Firefox saying it’s blocked some Microsoft add-ons because of high security risks.

Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.1
Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5.30729.1

The two add-ons were automatically added to Firefox as a part of recent Windows updates without approval from the user (us) or explaining what they do and if they are actually needed. Microsoft even goes so far as to change the user agent string of Firefox by appending the user’s current .NET framework version to the end of the existing string!

Now it looks like Mozilla has had enough with Microsoft’s antics and have decided to fight back by disabling these unneeded and unauthorized add-ons. Here is the page you go to when clicking ‘More information.’ Add-ons Blocklist | Mozilla

I wonder if this is a big war in the making? As long as our browsers don’t become the battle field then let them go at each other. Ultimately a war should make a better, stronger browser for everyone no matter if you use IE or Firefox. At least that’s my hopes.

Edit: The officail Mozilla blog post. .NET Framework Assistant Blocked to Disarm Security Vulnerability

MojoPac

MojoPac turns any USB 2.0 storage device, such as iPods, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, USB-enabled cell phones, and USB-enabled digital cameras, into a portable computing environment. The term “MojoPac” is used by the company to refer to the software application, the virtualized environment running inside this software, and the USB storage device that contains the software and relevant applications. MojoPac supports popular applications such as Firefox and Microsoft Office, and it is also high performance enough to run popular PC Games such as World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2.

It looks and acts like a new install of Windows, it has it’s own Desktop, My Computer and also any programs that you install into it. I found the easiest way to install a program into it, is have it all set up and then drag the .exe onto your Pen drive using your host computer, then go back into Mojopac and double click the .exe.

The video explains it much better than I can. http://www.mojopac.com

MojoPac Installation instructions.

Mozilla Plugin Check Now Live

From my earlier blog post.

The Mozilla Plugin Check Is Now Live. It has a new URL and no more security warnings about the certificate being out of date.

The official Mozilla announcement is as follows.

A little over a month ago, I talked about a project we had started to inform users when their plugins were out of date. This is a really important project for us, because old versions of plugins can cause crashes and other stability problems, and can also be a major security risk. In the first phase, we focused on the popular Adobe Flash Player plugin, and we were thrilled to see more than 10 million Firefox users click through to Adobe’s download page to get themselves updated in the first week.

Today, we’re bringing the rest of the story. Our web team has just pushed the full plugin check page live, checking the status of more than 15 popular plugins, with more still in the works. Visitors to the page can see which plugins they have installed and, for any that are outdated, follow an easy link to the update site.

In the upcoming release of Firefox 3.6, we’ll also include built-in support for helping users keep up to date. When you visit a page with Firefox 3.6, we’ll use this same service to let you know if any of the plugins used on the site have updates available.

We’ve got a pretty strong list of plugins and versions already but we’ll continue to maintain and grow it based on our conversations with plugin authors and our users. If you want more information, or are interested in helping out, check out the web team’s post. Did the plugin check uncover any surprises for you?

Johnathan Nightingale
Human Shield

Microsoft Patch Registration Cleanup Tool

On a computer that has a Windows Installer based product installed, you may receive an error while installing an update for the product and the installation of the update may fail. Installation errors caused due to incorrect patch registration may be corrected using this tool.

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Server 2008 R2; Windows Vista; Windows XP

Additional Information

Please see the Knowledge Base Article KB976220 for more information.

Patch Registration Cleanup Tool Homepage

Preview a TinyURL

This is a great feature if you are like me and hate clicking on unknown URL’s.

Preview a TinyURL. Don’t want to be instantly redirected to a TinyURL and instead want to see where it’s going before going to the site? Not a problem with our preview feature. See here: http://tinyurl.com/preview.php

You can also add the preview feature to TinyURL links you post by adding ‘preview’ to the link.

Example: This is actually the link to my blog. http://tinyurl.com/c6usbr

Preview: Add ‘preview’ to the link, http://preview.tinyurl.com/c6usbr and it will take you to the TinyURL Preview page so the users can see where they are going instead of just bounding into an unknown website or download link.

Are your Firefox plug-ins up-to-date?

I found this on the Avira TechBlog and think it’s a very nice addition to other scanners like the Secunia OSI.

Although I disagree with MS adding third party drivers to Windows Updates it looks like Mozilla is (and quietly has been) following suit in “thinking for us” when third party software updates are needed. No matter if we want them or not!

Important! As of this posting Firefox 3 did warn of an invalid certificate because the Plugin Check isn’t final yet. Although, the site is safe. Mozilla will hopefully fix the certificate very soon.

The Mozilla Foundation has published a Plugin Check for web browser plug-ins. Just by visiting the web site you can immediately see if your plug-ins are up-to-date (green), outdated but without known vulnerabilities (yellow) or if they are known to have security holes and are outdated (red).

The check is supposed to work for Java, Adobe Reader, Flash, Shockwave, QuickTime, Windows Media Player and DivX. Supported operating systems are Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. If a plug-in is outdated, you can click on the button next to it to be sent to the manufacturer’s homepage and fetch the update.

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Microsoft Security Essentials Final

The day has come and the new Microsoft Security Essentials has gone into a full release. I haven’t tried it but this is a big deal so I thought I would announce it on my blog. However, here is a good review from Alex Eckelberry on the Sunbelt Blog. Thoughts on MSE

Key Features

• Comprehensive malware protection
• Simple, free download*
• Automatic updates
• Easy to use

*Your PC must run genuine Windows to install Microsoft Security Essentials. Get Genuine MS Software

Minimum system requirements for Microsoft Security Essentials

Operating System: Genuine Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3); Windows Vista (Gold, Service Pack 1, or Service Pack 2); Windows 7

• For Windows XP, a PC with a CPU clock speed of 500 MHz or higher, and 1 GB RAM or higher.
• For Windows Vista and Windows 7, a PC with a CPU clock speed of 1.0 GHz or higher, and 1 GB RAM or higher.
• VGA display of 800 × 600 or higher.
• 140 MB of available hard disk space.
• An
  Internet connection is required for installation and to download the
  latest virus and spyware definitions for Microsoft Security Essentials.
• Internet Browser:
  • Windows Internet Explorer 6.0 or later.
  • Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or later.
• Microsoft Security Essentials also supports Windows XP Mode in Windows 7. For more information see the Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC for Windows XP Mode in Windows 7

Microsoft Security Essentials Homepage

Cloud Antivirus coming under fire

Looks like the new Cloud Antivirus that many companies are releasing might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Click the links for the entire article.

Dissipating the Cloud – ESET Threat Blog One of the big problems with using “the cloud” is that at times the product may actually upload a file from your computer to the internet. This has very serious privacy implications. Virus scanners make mistakes at times. In this case a file that is proprietary or contains sensitive information may be uploaded and the customer may not want that file to leave their network.

VB Conference Day 2 – Avira Blog Another hot topic was cloud computing. There were two perspectives shown: From the testers point of view and from the developers side. Fortunately, both sides agree in a central point: In-the-cloud-computing is not the holy grail of the Antivirus and Antispam industry. It helps to fix some of the problems, but it is definitely not the panacea, the solution to all problems.

A Cloud is a Container of Fog that Obscures Vision – ESET Threat Blog What they found in extensive testing is that “Cloud” scanners do not have a detection advantage over traditional solutions. In one example they showed where a product had no normal or cloud detection, but did have detection in tradition beta signatures.  In some cases cloud based products added detection much later than a traditional solutions.