Schonhose

It has been a hectic week. The user ‘solar-flare’ over at the Pixelpost forum informed us that an exploit has been found for Pixelpost. Further investigation by the development team confirmed this exploit and the fact it has been around since at least version 1.5.

We have released an immediate security update in the form of version 1.7.1 at the Pixelpost homepage. Everybody running an older version is strongly advised to upgrade since the exploit actively tries to get both the admin username and the password (the latter still being in the encrypted format). We also strongly suggest changing the password or the username (or both) after upgrading just to make sure since we don’t know how many blogs have been targeted with this exploit.

The second part of the title, ‘system restore’ is more lighthearted. Normally I would disable system restore right after a new install. Two years ago, the date of my last clean install I did this for all the drives except the C:\ drive which hosts Windows XP. A decision I was quite happy with today. I finally setup my computer to use Activesync and connected my HTC Touch.

Windows detects a new device and starts making registry changes all of a sudden. This makes Kaspersky very nervous and several pop-ups come up asking me to confirm the change. They just kept on coming and then I clicked ‘Deny change’ instead of the wanted ‘Allow change’. So needless to say the mobile device wasn’t installed properly so I decided it was time for a reboot.

Once rebooted my system didn’t display the taskbar anymore and came to a grinding stop, pretty much showing only the wallpapers. So, wanting to remove the new Activesync I loaded up the safe mode and guess what? I could do a system restore.

After going back one day and another reboot, the system was back up again. I never thought I might say this but today Microsoft has saved my ass.