If you use Windows, ya oughta read this...

[CapnK]

It's really important that you make sure to do your Updates sometime after 10Am PST today, and keep up with them for the foreseeable near future.

There have been some pretty gnarly issues come to light in the past couple weeks WRT Windows security, at least 2 major problems which between them could be affecting potentially every and any Windows and/or IE user.

The first part: Google and a bunch of other companies got owned by the Chinese using (so far as they can tell as of now...) a vulnerability in all versions of IE from 5-8 IIRC, possibly also including some parts of the Office suite:

computerworld.com article -> http://tinyurl.com/yjao2fn

Every Black Hat in the world knows about this now, and has the means to exploit it, so...

Second: In addition to that, someone else found a vulnerability that affects ALL 32-bit versions of Windows a few days back. I imagine MS will issue a patch regarding that soon. So keep your Updates, updated. :)

Hope this might save someone some grief!

[Tim]

Thanks Capt. I had heard about the IE thing, but wasn't too worried as I never use it and do updates regularly, the 32 bit was news.

[AdriftAtSea]

Yes, and unfortunately, MS has been very slow to admit that while IE 6 has the flaw, so do the later versions found in Windows Vista (IE7) and Windows 7 (IE8).  While DEP and such help minimize the attack's damage, the exploit is still there and vulnerable.