For Mac Os, What Is The Simpsons Applescript Worm, And What Can I

1. For Mac Os What Is The Simpsons Applescript Worm And What Can I Play
2. For Mac Os What Is The Simpsons Applescript Worm And What Can I Get

The past three weeks, I noticed that whenever I tried to edit MP3 / AAC ID3 properties in iTunes (4.0.1), it would commit the changes to the file(s), and then immediately crash. ITunes is perhaps the best way to manage, name and ID3 tag files, and I love its global editing features.

Crashing sucks. Even not saving changes to a file caused crashes to occur. So how did I fix the problem? You guessed it, repair permissions. Just go into your /Applications - Utilities folder, run the Disk Utility app, and select Repair Permissions. I noticed the permissions were set wrong on an item in the iTunes.app package having to do with id3 usage.

Voila, problem solved. robg adds: This small hint has inspired me to finally finish writing my own 'OS X Troubleshooting 101' hint (it's been 'almost done' for um, quite some time now.), which I'll try to get posted before the week is out. And repairing permissions is definitely part of that process, as for a number of other OS X issues. There is an issue with Camino that also is present in other web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla: when requesting a page, the browser will take all available CPU time it can.

This can be quite annoying for individuals like myself that do a lot of CGI scripting work (Lasso in my case), where developing a page requires constant reloading of a web page, only to have things slow down to a crawl because the web browser and web server on the same machine fighting for dominance. The reason for the CPU usage is due to the status 'barber pole' animating. Since it seems that this animation routine is built into OS X, the issue is not really an issue with Camino, but more with Mac OS X itself (you can see similar behavior in other applications which also use the barber pole animation).

To resolve the issue of CPU usage, all you have to do is remove the status bar from the BrowserWindow.nib file. This file is inside the Camino.app bundle (control-click on the app for the Show Package Contents pop-up), on the path Contents - Resources - English.lproj - BrowserWindow.nib. To edit this file, you will need to have the Developer Tools installed (or XCode if you are fortunate enough to have it). Once open, simply double click on the 'Browser' icon in the BrowserWindow.nib window, and then select and delete the status barber pole widget. Save, and restart Camino, and you should find it to be much quicker during page loads.

This might also affect other areas of performance, such as browsing pages that contain Flash content. I've been hit hard with e-mails from the latest Blaster worm, so I've created an AppleScript (blasterblaster) that works with Mail to alleviate the problem. This AppleScript takes a somewhat heavy-handed approach - it simply checks the body of the message for references to Windows executables -.exe,.scr,.pif and.bat. If found, it flags the message as junk and puts it in the Junk folder. Obviously, if someone sends you a legitimate Windows executable, it too will end up in the Junk folder if you use this script.

Why use an Applescript instead of simply checking 'Message Content' in a Mail Rule? Because Message Content doesn't seem to work. To use the script in Mail, create a new Rule for 'Every Message' and in 'Perform the following actions' tell it to 'Run AppleScript' and 'Choose' the AppleScript file.The script is available at robg adds: A explained how to block other non-attachment worm emails based on message content. Mounting.DMG disk images has been getting slower and slower on my 10.2.6 machine, to the point where it took at least 15 seconds to open any DMG. I figured the OS was caching mounted volumes or something, and searching a bloated cache was causing the slowdown.

• I thought Mac's were the preferred computer for educational software and schools. After having my new iMac 24 for a few weeks I'm not so sure about that anymore. Many educational games cannot change the screen resolution and run in a tiny 640x480 box in the center of my iMac.
• They can get more harmful (you can AppleScript anything) and better hidden, but there are some basic rules for using a computer that will keep you from having these problems. Click to expand.

Apple has urged Mac owners to use anti-virus software. In a note posted on its support site in late November, Apple said it wanted to 'encourage' people to use anti-virus to stay safe online. The move is widely seen as a response to the growing trend among cyber criminals of booby-trapping webpages that can catch out Mac users.

Sure enough, I sudo rm'd the Library/Caches directories from , /, and /System, restarted, and now DMG mounts are back to a couple of seconds. robg adds: The actual command to do this would be:% sudo rm -r /Library/Caches /Library/Caches /System/Library/CachesYou won't permanently hurt anything by removing the cache files, but you may notice that it takes longer to open large directories (for example) while the cache files are rebuilt.

We all (well, most of us, I think) are of the opinion that the iCal - iSync - mobile phone syncing is a great addition. Well, I found out that sadly enough, all-day events where not correctly synchronized to my T610; they are just left out.

This renders the organiser in the T610 pretty useless. So I created an AppleScript which automatically creates a series of normal events from 1 to 4 am out of an all-day event which can span several days. These events are all put in a separate calendar, which can be turned off in iCal, but is nevertheless then synced to the phone, showing all the dates. It is pretty complicated because AppleScript actually does not give you any information on the end date of an all-day-event; I had to get that information directly from the.ics file. Therefore, your calendar name should not have any spaces in it, or just the first day of the recurring event will be parsed. There's on VersionTracker's discussing this issue, and it includes an email address where you can send feedback requesting better support for all-day events.Read the rest of the hint for the script. robg adds: I have checked that the script syntax checks properly in AppleScript, but I have not tested it.

The macosxhints Rating: Score: 10 out of 10. Developer:. Price: Free!After a few weeks off again (it's amazing what moving two offices into one new one will do to one's schedule), the Pick of the Week returns with a nice, simple application. This weekend, I wanted a simple slideshow viewer to look at the of the at Virginia Tech University. I had dowloaded all of the images from the above mirror site via the brute force method ( wget -r and was left with a number of sub-directories, each containing a number of images.

While I have several 'large' apps that will present slideshows with relative ease (and Preview would work, but it re-orders the images in some seemingly random fashion), I decided to look for a small and 'easy on the RAM' tool to do the same thing. After trying a few from the various Mac download sites, I stubmled on SimpleView.

This freeware app has no dock icon, no user interface, and no menubar. You just drag and drop a collection of images on it, and they're presented in a full-screen viewer, one at a time. There are a few controls - previous, next, rotate left/right, delete, show info, enlarge, and you can hit F10 to change the background color and other assorted options. When you're done viewing, just hit Escape and you're back to the desktop.

SimpleView is very fast, very easy to use, and perfect for those times when I just want to flip through a folder of images in a hurry. The locate command is a beautiful thing. It's ugly but critically-useful cousin is updatedb, which periodically runs a series of commands (most noticably, the useful and resource-intensive find) to find all files (with some configurable exceptions) on the system and put them in a database. So when you want to quickly find a file on your system, you use locate, which queries the database and tells you where the file was when the database was last updated.

OK, enough background. The only problem with the locate package (of which updatedb is a part) is the updatedb process itself. It thrashes the disk and uses a lot of CPU.

It's set up by default to run four times a day, at noon, midnight, six in the morning and six in the evening. Sometimes these times are convenient and sometimes they're not. If I'm using my computer at all during these times, it's easy to notice when the process starts and I can't stand it. I have just recently downloaded and installed a learning management system (LMS) known as on my iMac (iMac DV, 400mhz, 512mb RAM, OS X 10.2.6). It is written in PHP and connects to MySQL without any problems.

If you are looking for such a system, please check this out. I have had 20 students connect and take tests, participate in forums, and upload files for me to grade. All this without any problems or performance slow downs. I hope to move it over to a dedicated server soon for some real world testing.

For Mac Os What Is The Simpsons Applescript Worm And What Can I Play

I usually have 60 students in a class, so I need to test it with 60 students simultaneously connecting. For any teacher, having quizzes and test grades added to your grade book automatically is a blessing.

I have a total of 300 students that I have to grade and this makes my life easier. If you looking for something like this, please check it out. I forgot to mention, this is is open source and it is all FREE as in free beer. It will run on any OS as long as PHP is supported.

Another fairly quiet week, punctuated with two virus-related 'firsts' - the first AppleScript worm for the Macintosh and a password stealing Trojan that exploits the RTF remote template vulberability we reported a few issues back. On the security front, Microsoft has had all manner of trouble getting the patch for last week's Outlook Web Access vulnerability in Exchange right, and has had to release two updates to the original patch. Microsoft also released an update for a bevy of holes in its Windows 2000 Telnet service and a privilege escalation bug in SQL server. The popular University of Washington imap server has seen a couple of security holes fixed and people using Apache on Mac OS X should look at the final item. Virus News First AppleScript e-mail worm hites Macs.

The first MacOS AppleScript e-mail worm was reported late last week (after the newsletter was posted, of course!). Variously dubbed Mac/Simpsons and AplS/Simpsons, this worm uses AppleScript's ability to script Outlook Express and Entourage (the version of 'Outlook' in Office 2002).

For Mac Os What Is The Simpsons Applescript Worm And What Can I Get

Much along the lines of Windows' VBS/LoveLetter and the like, the Simpsons worm sends copies of itself, as an e-mail attachment to all addresses in the e-mail program's address list. The e-mail message itself promises the chance to view Simpsons episodes online Various antivirus vendor descriptions:, Password stealer uses RTF remote template vulnerability Three weeks ago we reported the release of an update for Word versions 97, 98, 2000 and 2001 that fixed the RTF remote template vulnerability.

At the time there were no known exploits of the vulnerability, which was discovered by Microsoft's internal testing. Word 2002, the newest version of Word that is included in the recently released Office XP, does not suffer from this vulnerability.

This morning that changed. Russian antivirus developer, Kaspersky Labs, has announced the discovery of a password stealing Trojan Horse program that depends on code delivered to the victim machine via the RTF remote template vulnerability. Kaspersky Lab has tentatively named this Trojan 'Goga', but this name may not be used by other developers.Security News Updated Outlook Web Access update Further to the report in the previous newsletter about the Exchange 2000 update that fixes an error in the way Outlook Web Access (OWA) handles attachments, Microsoft has now twice updated the patch. The initial release of the patch contained a regression error and it was discovered that despite the original claims that it was not vulnerable, it turns out that Exchange 5.5 also suffers a form of this vulnerability.

So, shortly after last week's newsletter was distributed, Microsoft pulled the first version of the patch from their web site. A second release of the patch was posted later on Friday (US West Coast time).

However, this patch also contained errors and was itself replaced on 13 June (US West Coast). Several sites have reported that installing the second patch caused Exchange's store.exe to consume 100% of CPU and it stopped processing the incoming mail queue. If you installed either of the patches released before 13 June (US West Coast), you should run (not walk!) to the URL below and download and istall the latest release of the patch even if you have not noticed any obvious problems with your Exchange 5.5 or 2000 systems. Patch fixes multiple Windows 2000 Telnet server holes The Telnet service shipped with all Windows 2000 versions contains seven security holes that are patched with this update.

All users of any Windows 2000 system who have enabled the Telnet service on Internet-connected machines are recommended to obtain and apply the patch as soon as practicible. The security threats these seven holes expose range from information disclosure through privilege elevation to denial of service. The privilege elevation threat is likely to be greater from internal users than across the Internet, though could be exploited either way depending on various conditions reflecting security policy on the machine running the Telnet service. The gory details are available in the Microsoft security bulletin, linked below. Microsoft claims none of the vulnerabilities are present in the NT version of the Telnet service. SQL Server 7 & 2000 update prevents privelege escalation One of SQL Server's query methods has a flaw such that carefully timed submission of a query using that method can result in the query assuming the cached client connection, and thus security credentials, of the administrator. This can only occur on SQL Servers configured to use Mixed Mode authentication, rather than Microsoft's recommended Windows Authentication mode.

The vulnerability is limited to users who have already authenticated and their actions will be audited if auditing is enabled. If you run SQL Server 7 or 2000 and must run it in Mixed Mode, obtain and install the patch as soon as practicible. imap update for various Unix/Linux distributions Several buffer overflows that may allow remote shell access to servers running the UW-IMAP package have recently been fixed. As a result, updated imap packages for several Linux and Unix OSes are now available from their respective vendors.

Alternatively, you may wish to grab the source from the University of Washington and build your own. Apache on case-insensitive Mac OS X HFS+ volumes A recent post to the bugtraq mailing list raised the issue of how to make Apache's directory protection work properly on case-insensitive file systems such as Mac OS X's HFS+. If you run Apache on OS X, it may be a good idea to read the whole thread.