A Reuters story suggests that police in Germany may have busted the author of the Sasser worm and more than 20 variants of the Netsky virus.

The arrest in Germany of two men suspected of writing crippling computer worms may be the biggest break yet in taking down the most prolific virus-writing group, security experts said on Saturday.

Since January, a group of crafty programers going by the name “Skynet anti-virus group” have been flooding the Internet with multiple variations of the debilitating Netsky virus, some capable of hijacking unwitting Internet users’ PCs with the aim of using them to send out spam e-mail or attack Web sites.

If the story turns out to be true, this would be the first time that a real honest-to-goodness virus writer has been caught in the act.

Update: The Washington Post confirms the story and says that the 18-year-old culprit has confessed to creating the Sasser worm. The suspect was identified by acquaintances who apparently stand to collect a $250,000 reward from Microsoft.

Microsoft has sold 210 Million Copies of Windows XP.

From Reuters: “Microsoft Corp. said on Monday that retail and new PC sales of Windows XP, its flagship operating system, have grown to more than 210 million copies since the product was launched two and a half years ago. …

“Windows lead product manager Greg Sullivan. … claimed that the actual number of computers using Windows XP was much higher, since it doesn’t include software loaded onto machines under corporate licensing agreements, which typically are not closely tracked since they are sold under volume licensing agreements.”

I am shocked – shocked! – to discover that a Linux distributor is supporting Microsoft’s Windows Media Format:

“Turbolinux becomes the first major Linux distributor to ship a media player capable of streaming pure Windows Media format audio and video.”

Don’t they realize that this is the software equivalent of having matter and anti-matter collide, and that the entire universe could disappear?

Brian Johnson’s Buffer Overrun blog is an excellent source of security information. (Brian’s the content specialist behind the MSDN Security Center for developers.)

Today, he points to the Microsoft Security Newsletter, another excellent source of information.

If security is even a small part of your job responsibilities, you should have Brian’s blog in your RSS feed and the MS Security Newsletter in your inbox.

Kevin Drum, writing in his excellent Political Animal blog, says, “I’m really tired of registering with online newspapers. Apparently Knight Ridder recently decided to require registration, and you have to register separately with every single one of their papers. What’s more, a slew of other newspapers have also decided to require registration within the past week or two. Is it something in the water?”

Don’t know about the water, but I have noticed the same thing. Two responses:

A comment on the entry points to Bug Me Not, where you can enter the URL of the padlocked page and view a list of accounts that others have created for anonymous access. The entries for the NY Times Web site are, um, creative.

I use AI RoboForm, a wonderful (and spyware-free) product that keeps track of logins and passwords. It can remember details of multiple identities and fill in Web-based forms with a single click. It also manages credit card data for use with online merchants. I’ve set up one alternate persona expressly for sites that insist on asking me for personal information even when they have no legitimate need for it. Using RoboForm’s password generator, I can enter a completely random password and not have to worry about remembering it or be concerned that I’ve used that password somewhere else.

The RoboForm data files and passwords fit on a USB memory keychain for security and can themselves be password-protected and encrypted. I’ve backed up the data files (in encrypted format) and saved them in online storage.

This is a great program. The free version offers a 30-day trial, after which you lose some features. I think the $30 license fee for the Pro edition, which stores an unlimited number of passwords and identities, is a tremendous bargain.

We’ve all seen that dialog box that pops up after Windows crashes, offering to send the details to Microsoft. Well, according to this press release (and my personal experience), Microsoft really does keep track of this information.

The totals tell a depressing story: “…deceptive software causes more than 50 percent of Windows operating systems failures reported to Microsoft.”

Amazing.

You cannot even begin to consider yourself a Windows Power User unless you have downloaded and installed the Tweakomatic Scripting Tool.

Tweakomatic is a nifty new utility that writes scripts that enable you to retrieve and/or configure Windows and Internet Explorer settings. So what, you might say. Well, think about it. Because these are Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) scripts, they can be used to configure settings on remote computers. Need to change something on a remote computer? Then haul out Tweakomatic. And think about this: because Tweakomatic writes scripts, you could do something like run these scripts as logon or logoff scripts. In other words, you could quickly, easily, and automatically configure settings on any or all the computers in your organization. Tweakomatic is undoubtedly the single best thing Microsoft has released since Windows itself!

Well, okay. But it is better than Microsoft Bob.

If you aren’t comfortable with scripts, then you should tinker with TweakUI instead.

PC Magazine‘s latest issue (I subscribe to the digital version) includes a collection of 68 Windows tips. The collection is actually pretty good. I didn’t see any that were too easy or incorrect.

However, I have to say that PC Magazine has the most user-hostile Web site I have ever seen. Ever. Each of the 68 tips is on its own page, surrounded by – no, make that overwhelmed by – literally dozens of ads. It is inconceivable to me that any sane human would actually wade through this dreck. I was ready to give up after the first four tips. This sort of layout is a profound disservice to Neil J. Rubenking and the other experts who worked on this stuff. They deserve better. (And Michael Miller, if you’re reading this, I’m not the only one who thinks your Web site represents the most egregious abuse of advertising ever seen.)

Eventually, I found the printer-friendly pages for this article, where all but a single banner ad are stripped away and the tips in each category are grouped on a single page for convenient reading. As a public service, I present those links here. (Note that two of these categories consist of a single tip each, and the designer, either deliberately or through a screw-up, didn’t create a printer-friendly page.)

Customization, File Management, and Navigation

Performance and Troubleshooting

Security

Networked, Multiuser, and Telecommuter PCs

Editing the Registry (with ads)

Mobile Computing

Internet Explorer

Outlook Express

Windows Keyboard Shortcuts (with ads)

The Seattle P-I’s Microsoft Notebook looks at Microsoft’s $53 billion in cash reserves and does some amusing math:

“The sum of $53 billion is enough to fund NASA for a year, assemble a fleet of 100 Boeing 747s, and buy every person in Seattle a 2004 Subaru Outback — with a few billion left over for incidentals.”

Visit the P-I’s superb Microsoft Blog for a breakdown of the math.

Exhibit A: Fred Langa reports that “…AOL is parsing the content of its members’ emails and blocking them even if they merely *mention* a site that AOL disapproves of.”

Exhibit B:

TechDirt passes along the story of a couple in New Hampshire who claim that AOL’s AutoFix program switched their dial-up phone connection to a toll number and helped them run up a $3,400+ bill. The state’s Attorney General is on their side.

I’d switch to tin cans and string before I allowed AOL on any computer in my home or office.