As a (nearly) degreed web design student, I pay particularly close attention to web and internet threats to the average user. First, I don’t want my site or software to be hacked. Second, I don’t want to be the source of someone else getting hacked.

It appears that Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash has been found to have some security holes. Why is this an issue? Well, it seems that 98% of Web users have the Flash Player installed on their computer. Here is today’s report from the CERT team.

National Cyber Alert System

Cyber Security Alert SA06-075A

Adobe Macromedia Flash Products Contain Vulnerabilities

Original release date: March 16, 2006
Last revised: –
Source: US-CERT

Systems Affected

Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and other operating systems that use
the following products:
* Adobe Macromedia Flash Player
* Adobe Macromedia Flash
* Adobe Macromedia Flex
* Adobe Macromedia Breeze
* Adobe Macromedia Shockwave Player

Overview

There are critical vulnerabilities in Macromedia Flash player and
related software that may allow an attacker to take control of your
computer.

Solution

Apply Updates
Adobe has provided the updates for these vulnerabilities. To obtain
the update, visit the Security Bulletin. US-CERT recommends that
you update to the most current version of your Macromedia product.

Description

Some features of Macromedia products contain critical
vulnerabilities. If an attacker can convince you to open a
malicious Flash file, which may be hosted on a web site, he or she
may be able to take control of your computer or cause it to crash.
The Macromedia Security Bulletin provides updates that address
these vulnerabilities. For more technical information, see US-CERT
Technical Cyber Security Alert TA06-075A.

References

* US-CERT Technical Cyber Security Alert TA06-075A.html -

* US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#945060 -

* Macromedia - APSB06-03: Flash Player Update to Address Security
Vulnerabilities -

* Microsoft Security Advisory (916208) -

As part of my career while attending college, I am doing various websites for local and other groups, and just finished a major one this morning in the wee hours. It’s for one of our local high power FM stations…one I worked at for a year and a half as a DJ.

Check it out at http://www.myktrz.com. It’s a very custom installation of Wordpress, and the management tools for their use are second to none.

Rich

Had an interesting afternoon and evening at the college…

First, got a free meal ( with 50 other students ) in the food court, courtesy of the student senate…ya see, this week is “spirit week”, with the soccer team having their “homecoming” game this saturday. The meal tonight was supposed to be “Free BBQ”, but someone forgot to tell the food court manager to order BBQ, so it was burgers, meatloaf, and burrito style wraps for all! Still, it was awful darn nice of them.

Unbenownst to all of us enjoying our fabulous gourmet meals, the expected thunderstorms of the day was producing a small tornado south of town, between our tiny town of Riverton, Wyoming, and Lander, 24 miles away. No damage…simply crossing open farmland, but unexpected way up this way.

After dinner, my Flash class was enjoyable, until I got selected to research and give demos of *all* the various audio editing tools for creating, modifying, optimizing, and playing “audio that can be imported into Flash”.

Boy, that is a mouthful of stuff to try to cover in the alotted 10 to 15 minutes I have to do it in…so I’ll be a little EXTRA busy this weekend.

Finally, in trying to help my fellow students, many of whom do not understand even rudimentary pc security, I created a page this week that to get them, the faculty, and many of my online friends, better prepared for saving their ‘puters from the evil that idiots with keyboards will do.

Check out the computer survival page, and grab all the REST of the tools that you don’t already have.

Well, back to work…

Major problems last nite trying to add some new functionality to the software running here…up til 3am, with no luck…deleted everything but the mysql database, reinstalled fresh, and copied the key config files over…but still getting errors when I try to use the old main file (index.php), so will have to figure it out…and all my plugins are erroring out…

sheesh…what a pain…I’ll spend more time later this weekend…got more important stuff to do for the next three days…
8^0

I’ve been playing with Wordpress most of this evening…going thru many plugins I downloaded earlier this week, tweaking php and css code (and learning a little bit more every time), and really getting a kick out of this nifty FREE programming package.

As you might see, we now have my current weather added, and several more bells and whistles are in place, waiting for new and better postings to let them see the light. One new item lets YOU, the reader, rate MY postings as you see fit….we’ll see how that goes.

Of course, YOU can post by registering for an account…or by using the COMMENT link under any post…give it a shot.