Welcome to Ubuntu 9.04

Welcome to Ubuntu 9.04

The latest release of Ubuntu brings the best open source technologies together on one platform, with the benefit of free updates for 18 months. Constant improvements, feature additions and extended machine and network support explain why Ubuntu wins more converts with every release. This tour will help you discover, like millions of users worldwide, why Ubuntu Desktop Edition 9.04 is the desktop operating system for you.

Productivity tools: Ubuntu supports all of your favourite web-based mail programs like Yahoo(TM) or Gmail (TM). For the office, Evolution provides all the calendering, contacts and office email you need. Pidgin IM also puts you in instant touch with colleagues and integrates with your personal IM services simply and easily.

Browsing: Includes Mozilla's Firefox 3 as the default browser. Faster, safer and themed browsing for users.

Photos: Upload from your camera or phone to F-Spot and manage, tag, share and sort your photos and upload easily to your favourite social networking sites. Music and video: Plug in your PSP, iPod, MP3 player; share playlists with your friends; buy in online music stores; visit your favourite sites like Last.fm, stream more live radio and content from the BBC and plug in more devices with uPnP (universal Plug and Play)

Office applications: Word processing, spreadsheets and presentations can all be delivered through OpenOffice.org 3.0 featuring in this release of Ubuntu for the first time. And, they completely integrate with the proprietary office applications out there. The big difference is that they are free.

Accessibility: At the core of the Ubuntu philosophy is the belief that computing is for everyone and access should be free and complete whatever your economic or physical circumstances. Ubuntu is one of the most accessible desktop operating systems around.

Download:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Conficker Worm Of The Year

Another worm attack infects over 9 million PC around the world!


Early Friday on January 16, 2009, the Finnish firm revised its estimate of the number of computers that had fallen victim to a new worm called Confiker (Known as Kido or Downadup as well).

The worm, which is surging dramatically during the past few days, exploits a bug in the Windows Server service used by all supported versions of Microsoft’s operating system, including Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008. It disables system restore, blocks access to security websites, and downloads additional malware to infected machines. The worm uses a complicated algorithm which changes daily and is based on timestamps from public websites such as Google.com and Baidu.com. The worm’s algorithm generates many possible domain names every day. It concern hundreds of names such as: qimkwaify .ws, mphtfrxs .net, gxjofpj .ws, imctaef .cc, and hcweu .org. This functionality makes it impossible and impractical to shut them all down — most of them are never registered in the first place.

Urgent advice: users are strongly recommended to ensure their antivirus databases are up to date. A patch for the windows bug/vulnerability is available from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx It concern Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067 – Critical / Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (958644).

Sources/references of this outbreak alert and background information:

Kaspersky Lab
Guardian.co.uk
Microsoft
ThreatExpert
F-Secure
Symantec
NetworkWorld
DarkReading

Kaspersky Lab disinfection/removal tool: http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208279973

Steps to take in order to ensure your protected April 1st against the Conficker worm:

1. Ensure that you are up to date with the latest Microsoft Security Patches, go to http://www.windowsupdate.com for more information.

2. Ensure that your anti-virus is up to date with the latest signatures. You can also visit http://www.symantec.com, and http://www.mcafee.com for more information on detection and removal tools for the Conficker worm.

3. Ensure your passwords are complex, this should consist of an eight character password with uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special symbols for example !@#$%^&*()-+.

4. If your company is already infected with the Conficker worm, contact SecureState immediately for incident response support.

5. Additional sites that may be of help: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007, http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_153464.htm, and http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/worm_w32_downadup_al.shtml

The Rise Up Of The Moroccan Hackers

A group of Moroccan hackers attacked hundreds of Israeli websites on Wednesday. Some reports say that as many as 750 websites with the suffix co.il have come under attack.

The website attacks started after Israel Defense Forces began preparing for the retaliatory "Summer Rain" operation in Gaza.

The hacker group, which calls itself 'Team Evil', replaces the home page of the target websites with the following text: "Hacked By Team-Evil Arab hackers u KIll palestin people we Kill Israel servers" (sic).

Some of the sites under attack are Globus Group ticketing, the Rambam Hospital website, the sites of Bank Hapoalim and Bank Otsar Hahayal, and the site of the pension and provident fund management group Halman-Aldubi. Smaller sites have also been targeted.

GreeTz To Team-Evil & All others Moroccan Hackers.