It seems that the old way of delivering malware, using bogus audio or video files, is in practice in great scale once more. This, according to McAfee Avert Labs Blog.

Detection of a trojan named Downloader-UA.h was added to the McAfee DAT files several days ago. Since that time more than 360,000 McAfee VirusScan Online users have reported detections, a whopping 32% of those reporting in the past 24 hours alone. Now Downloader-UA.h is not your everyday trojan, this detection covers fake music and video files associated with fastmp3player.com.

When a user attempts to load one of these MP3 and MPG files, they don’t get the music/video they were hoping for; instead they’re directed to download a file named PLAY_MP3.exe. In fact, the MP3/MPG file they downloaded was completely fake, playing no media clip what so ever. [...]

Original Article

Important!: It appears that if you make the slipstreaming in a Vista machine, an unattended setup of XP will stop at the Key Input screen and it won’t accept any kind of key.

I just read in the TechNet forums. I will make some research and i will posts my findings.

Meanwhile, please slipstream SP3 in a computer with XP if you plan to do an unattended setup.

As i posted yesterday, you can download Windows XP SP3 from torrent sites (and now from Microsoft as well) without waiting for Microsoft to publish it in their download center or via automatic updates.

I already slipstreamed it to my Windows XP SP2 media. Here’s a simple guide if you want to do it on your own. This way, you can have your own SP3 media in no time.

You need the following:

• Windows XP SP2 media or disc image. We will use the files in the disc/image and update them with SP3.

• An application to extract ISO files in case you are using the spanish release of SP3 or you have your Windows XP SP2 as an image file. You can use 7-Zip which is free and a great file archiver.

• nLite to make a bootable cd image from the updated SP3 files.

Note: At the end of the guide you will fin a link to download it as a PDF file if you want to print it or take it with you.

1.- Copy/Extract the contents of your SP2 disc/image to something like D:\XPSP2

If you are using a cd/dvd, just select all the files and copy them to a location of your choice.
If you have a Windows XP SP2 disc image file, use 7-Zip or other program to extract all the files to a location of your choice.

2.- Copy/Extract the files from the downloaded SP3 release to something like D:\XPSP3

If you are using the english release of SP3 you need to copy the installer to this location.
If you are using the spanish release, you need to use 7-Zip to extract the files to this location. Open the image file you downloaded and extract its contents.

3.- Run the SP3 installer with a command-line switch to update the files

I use Launch, my own program, to run files with switches. If you don’t want to use Launch, use the Run box in the start menu, but make sure you have administrator privileges.

The command-line switches are:

WINDOWSXP-KB936929-SP3-X86-ESN.EXE /integrate:D:\XPSP2
WINDOWSXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.EXE /integrate:D:\XPSP2

After you run it, the installer begins to update the files in the folder you specified. Wait until it finishes and you should see a dialog that tells you that everything went fine.

4.- Use nLite to make a bootable disc image with the updated files

Open nLite and point it to the folder where the updated files are and click Next.

In the Task Selection window select Create: Bootable ISO and click Next.

In the next window write a label for the disc image or leave it as it is. Click the Make ISO button and choose where to save the disc image nLite will generate. Wait until it finishes and click Next.

Then exit the program.

5.- We are done now

You can now burn the image file to a cd/dvd and use it to install Windows XP SP3 just like you did with earlier versions.

Download the guide as a PDF file. English/Spanish available.

As promised, here are the links to download Windows XP SP3. You need a BitTorrent client in order to download them. I recommend getting uTorrent or Deluge. They are free and easy to use.

Both links are for the final, RTM version of the SP3 intaller which you can use to slipstream it to your current disc of SP2 or to upgrade your current installation.

I just finished taking screenshots of the slipstreaming process and i will upload the guide later today.

Edit: Microsoft now has XP SP3 English release in windows update site. Here’s the link also.

Edit2: Microsoft now has XP SP3 available in several languages. It is believed that tomorrow they will be available in Microsoft download center. Meanwhile, here are the official links.

Spanish English French German Hebrew Italian Japanese Korean Russian Czech Chinese (Hong Kong) Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional)

Windows XP SP3 English RTM Torrent Download
Windows XP SP3 Spanish RTM Torrent Download

As i posted yesterday, i had to buy a new wireless router because my two years old Belkin F5D9230-4 started to give me problems 15-20 days ago. My HTTP traffic (mostly when browsing) was very intermittent and sometimes i had to hit F5 or Refresh many times in order to display a web page.

I began researching the new models from the most popular brands and i was pondering to buy a new pre-N router or an old one which costed much less. I have planned to build a HTPC (Home Theater PC) in the near future so i will eventually need a draft-N or pre-N router in order to stream content from my main PC to the HTPC i will have in the leaving room.

But as the N standard isn’t approved yet, i resolved to buy a cheaper one and when i need a new one, then i will buy it. This way i save save money now and i hope than when i need N speeds the standard will be certified already (or at least the price of routers will drop considerably).

It comes to Linksys (Cisco) faced some problems back in 2003 when they used open-source code in their routers and they didn’t make the code public, which was against the GNU General Public License.

I ended buying a Linksys WRT54GL because it allows me to install a variety of open-source firmware if i want to.

I stumbled upon a site where the author develops a firmware called Tomato for mainly a few Linksys and Buffalo routers. In that website were links to other open-source firmware projects. I learn about them all and choose to install Tomato in my new router.

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Sev7en, a guy from Micropctalk.com managed to install Apple OS X into a Sony VAIO UX and posted the instructions about how he did it.

This is something more people are trying to achieve, get Mac OS X to run on generic Intel/AMD hardware.

There is another guy from jkOnTheRun.com that installed it on a Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium and posted about this experience.

Despite all the claims and statements made by Apple, that their Mac OS X will only run on Apple hardware, people are trying to circumvent TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in order to isntall it on generic hardware.

If you are interested in this topic, please visit the OSx86 Project wiki to learn more about it.

Researchers with Princeton University and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have found a flaw that renders disk encryption systems useless if an intruder has physical access to your computer — say in the case of a stolen laptop or when a computer is left unattended on a desktop in sleep mode or while displaying a password prompt screen. The attack takes only a few minutes to conduct and uses the disk encryption key that’s stored in the computer’s RAM. The attack works because content as well as encryption keys stored in RAM linger in the system, even after the machine is powered off, enabling an attacker to use the key to collect any content still in RAM after reapplying power to the machine.

“We’ve broken disk encryption products in exactly the case when they seem to be most important these days: laptops that contain sensitive corporate data or personal information about business customers,” said J. Alex Halderman, one of the researchers, in a press release. “Unlike many security problems, this isn’t a minor flaw; it is a fundamental limitation in the way these systems were designed.” The researchers successfully performed the attack on several disk encryption systems — Apple’s FileVault, Microsoft’s BitLocker, as well as TrueCrypt and dm-crypt — but said they have no reason to believe it won’t work on other disk encryption systems as well, since they all share similar architectures. They released a paper about their work as well as a video demonstration (available at YouTube) of the attack.

Source: Wired News.

This occured about one month ago but somehow i forgot to post it here for you to read. The open-source file sharing program Shareaza is facing some serious troubles because of the anti-piracy efforts of companies and coporations world-wide.

The following article was posted in Releaselog and it is very interesting. If this gets its way somehow, the open-source developers are in risk of loosing its work anytime, if legal problems such as the one Shareaza is facing arise.

Beginnings Are a Good Place To Start

In mid 2002, a lone programmer by the name of Micheal Stokes released the first version of a Gnutella client he had written, dubbed “Shareaza”. Over the next two years Micheal added to his client and coded in support for the eDonkey 2000 network, BitTorrent and a rewritten Gnutella-based protocol which he named Gnutella2.

Shareaza gradually became more and more popular and Mike started to receive several job offers based on the strength of his work on Shareaza. He eventually decided that continuing to work on a p2p application in an increasingly hostile legal climate was too risky, but he did the honorable thing and released the Shareaza source code under the GNU GPLv2 on June 1, 2004 (which coincided with the release of Shareaza v2.0).

Mike stopped working on Shareaza and went on to develop a new p2p-based streaming radio project named Mercora. As part of distancing himself from Shareaza, he transfered the shareaza.com domain to one of his old alpha testers named Jon Nilson, who continued to administer the domain until late 2007.

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For years people have wondered why music labels set the prices too high for new releases Mainstream artists, first Radiohead with their album In Rainbows, and now Nine Inch Nails and The Charlatans are giving away their newest albums for free as digital downloads.

Nine Inch Nails uploaded their own album to some torrent sites. The album is available in many DRM-free formats under a Creative Commons license which states that the music is free to distribute and you can use it for all purposes except commercial use.

Also, the band released a note along with the album, which you can find in this site, along with links to the songs.

The album is called Ghosts and is comprised of 4 parts, all instrumental. The first one, Ghosts I is available for download on their own website, but the site has been down since this morning, maybe because excessive traffic as this news are flying around fast. Anyway, you can still download it if you want from a torrent site here. For just USD $5 you can download the whole 4 parts.

The other album i saw that is being given away for free is You Cross My Path by The Charlatans. For more information on the album and links to download it, read this XFM (UK radio station) article. It has news from the band manager as well as download links to get the album.