This is NOT a flaw!!

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It has been circulating the web recently about a flaw in Windows 7 security (see http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001675.html)

The fact you can name a file virus.txt.exe and only see the virus.txt and the application can change the icon to match this is not a flaw.

In most cases it will not let you execute the program if it has come from an unsafe location, eg removable media, the Internet, as you will get a lovely pop-up warning you that its a possible unsafe file, and asks if your sure you want to execute it. So for this flaw to be taken advantage of, the file has to be put on the computer, and marked as safe or trusted.

So is it a flaw? No

Do people take more notice of the icon than the extension? Yes

Is this just nit picking because Microsoft’s OS is finally (most probably, no major exploit has been found in Windows 7, and Vista only had the Conflicker one which was a known issue) as secure as OS X or Linux? Yes, I think so.

Windows 7 RC Install

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Yesterday after i got the Official Windows 7 RC from MSDNAA i decided to do a complete reinstall. Due to the improvements in Windows 7 i managed to get my system to the same state it was a little under 4 hours previously. Which is amazingly fast. The slowest thing to install was Visual Studio 2008 Sp1 taking around 30 minutes, but everything else installed in 10 minutes, with Windows taking a little under 20 minutes.

And i have yet to find anything problems. Good Work Microsoft

Virtual PC Beta (Windows 7)

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Due to be publicly released on Tuesday (5th May 2009), the new ‘Windows Virtual PC’ Beta is a massive improvement over Virtual PC 2007.

I have various VM’s which are mostly used for playing with Ubuntu for when i need to compile something on Linux, and more frequently XP for testing the Dokan driver (which is heavily used in one of my forthcoming projects).

From the playing around i did yesterday, the VM’s seem more responsive, and the resource overhead seems a lot less than before. Another improvement is the Integration components. On the ‘XP Mode’ VM they worked instantly, and allowed much more fluid interaction with the host system, including guest OS searching, and file transfers, and of course the new transparency of running applications from the VM like they were on the desktop.

Problems I had:

I couldn’t ‘upgrade’ my settings files to the new format, if the machine had had its state saved(not shutdown).

Also upgrading the integration components from Virtual PC 2007 to the new ones, in a XP VM required 3 reboots, and was rather messy.

I couldn’t shutdown the XP Mode VM i could only disconnect, (you can get around this using the command line). This caused a problem when trying to change how much ram the VM had as it needs to be properly shut down before this setting can be changed.

Apart from that it’s a good all round product, that works really well. My favourite feature is how it creates a new top level user folder, and to manage your VM’s you use this through explorer, which really is a lovely touch(see image below), and i hope to “copy” this level of integration in one of my forthcoming projects.

Virtual PC Beta Integration in Windows 7

Intel users beware: Windows Virtual PC requires Intel-VT, which is available on random processors throughout their product line, so check that you have this feature, and it is enabled in the bios, before trying to use this product.