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A new Google tool: Google maps

Google Maps was quietly unveiled in beta form today. The product is a very nice tool that enable you to acuire map and route information all accros the United States.

This is prehaps one of the most streamlined and efficent mapping tools out there dedicated towards competing with larger players like Mapquest. Google Maps offers a few advantages over competitors. Maps can be dragged to view adjacent areas, which means users do not have click and wait for graphics to reload. Zooming is also instantaneous with the help of a slider placed atop the map.

Google Maps is also closely tied with the company's local search. Instead of entering a specific address, users can simply search for a term such a "sushi," which would then show all nearby sushi restaurants directly on the map.

The service offers a fairly clean interface and works with IE and Mozilla/Firefox.

EU Steps Up Fight Against Spam

The European Union  head office called for closer coordination among all member governments to hunt down and prosecute those illegally spreading unsolicited e-mails across the 25-nation bloc. 13 EU countries agreed to cooperate in investigating complaints against spammers.

The deal of combatting unsolicited e-mails is voluntary but "establishes a common procedure for handling cross-border complaints on spam" and closes loopholes. The 13 countries are: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands and Spain.

The anti-spam rules are part of tough privacy regulations adopted in 2003 on electronic communications.

Microsoft: Issues a large number of security patches

On 8 February 2005 the Microsoft Security Response Center is planning to
release several security patches.

Most of the patches are for the Microsoft operating system, but some of them will also repair leaks in other Microsoft applications. Most of these updates will require a restart.

The patches can be downloaded at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Flash Europe

EU opens door to Gates, but remains firm on Windows

The European Commission has welcomed Microsoft boss Bill Gates for a "courtesy visit" but made it clear that a legal row between Brussels and the US software giant was not on the menu.

Gates, in Europe after last week's Davos meetings, was invited for talks on Tuesday with EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, internal market chief Charlie McCreevy and industry commissioner Guenter Verheugen.

But EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes kept her door firmly shut, avoiding discussion of a ruling by her predecessor Mario Monti last year that the Seattle-based company enjoys monopolistic powers in the software market.

Along with a hefty fine, Microsoft was ordered to offer a European version of Windows without Media Player, which offers access to audio and video content, and offer server product information to rivals.

"Mr Gates has not requested to meet Mrs Kroes and Mrs Kroes is most certainly not going to request to see him," said Kroes' spokesman, Jonathan Todd.

Gates was relaxed about the talks, noting that he had already met EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso in the Swiss mountains last week.

Back door breach of Windows XP SP2

Back door breach of Windows XP SP2 It is all to do with the SP2 measure, known as Data Execution Protection, which is intended to prevent attackers from inserting rogue code into a PC's memory and tricking Windows into running the program.

Problem

In October 2004 it was discovered by MaxPatrol team that it is possible to defeat Microsoft® Windows® XP SP2 Heap protection and Data Execution Prevention mechanism. As a result it is possible to implement:

1. Arbitrary memory region write access (smaller or equal to 1016 bytes)
2. Arbitrary code execution
3. DEP bypass.

Details are described in the article by our expert: PDF format, HTML format. Solution As a temporary security measure we've developed simple utility PTmsHORP, which allows restriction of lookaside list creation, governed by a special global flag.

Download PTmsHORP (21 Kb)

During the first execution this program shows the list of applications which already have this flag set. In order to activate this safety flag for other applications you just need to add the name of the executable file to the list. Any time you can review or modify the list of protected applications by running PTmsHORP again.

Warning. The flag, while enabled, may decrease the application performance.

Firefox 2.0 Roadmap released

Goodger, the lead engineer for Mozilla Firefox, said that the new roadmap will have a Developer Preview (alpha) in March and a Preview Release (Beta) in April.

Their goal is to continue to build a "best of breed" browser product for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. This document is a description of our current thinking on how they intend to get to Firefox 2.0. At this stage it is brief, but over time it will grow much as the 1.0 roadmap did.

Structure

The team is planning for a Firefox 2.0, but will divide the planned work over (at this point) three major Milestones, 1.1 (March 2005), 1.5 (unscheduled) and 2.0 (unscheduled). All development work will be done on the Mozilla trunk, and these releases will coincide with Gecko version revs.

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