Sunbelt IT Security Recap for the week of August 14

Homeland Security: Fix Your Windows

In a rare alert, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has urged Windows users to plug a potential worm hole in the Microsoft operating system. The agency, which also runs the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), sent out a news release on Wednesday recommending that people apply Microsoft's MS06-040 patch as quickly as possible. The software maker released the "critical" fix Tuesday as part of its monthly patch cycle.

The flaw addressed in MS06-040 is the only one among the updates that could let an anonymous attacker remotely commandeer a Windows PC without any user interaction. There will soon be worms that'll exploit this MS06-040 vulnerability, so be quick to fix! It's all over the press, but ZDNet has a good write up here.

Our friends at eEye created a free scanner that you can run on your network and quickly check which machines are vulnerable: It's called the Retina MS06-040 NetApi32 Scanner and is here.

IT Pro: My Nine Biggest Professional Blunders

We've all had at least one or two embarrassing moments on the job, whether they involved inadvertently wreaking havoc on a system, making a social gaffe, or mishandling a project. IT pro Becky Roberts decided to come clean and share her worst career moments --along with the lessons she took away from each experience.

Mark Russinovich Teaches Very Last Public Windows Course

By now, many of you have heard about Microsoft's acquisition of Sysinternals and Winternals and that Mark Russinovich has joined Microsoft as in the Platforms and Services Divison. Mark will be teaching his last public Windows OS internals and advanced troubleshooting class with David Solomon on September 18-22 in San Francisco. (David will continue to offer the class through his company, see www.solsem.com). For details or to register, click here.