Yahoo! News reports that Microsoft’s monthly Security Alert for May is “refreshingly short”:

“The single new vulnerability revealed does allow for remote code execution by an attacker, but with many limitations on the attack, leading Microsoft to classify the problem as ‘important.’ “

After last month’s extra-long list of updates, this is good news. Could it be that the Trusted Computing initiative is finally paying off? Or is this just a blip?

Official link is here: Security Update for Windows XP (KB840374).

Phillip Torrone at Engadget has an interesting how-to on Overclocking Your Pocket PC.

“Why would you want to do this? speeeeed of course, up to 50% faster in some cases, but you can also (in theory) get better battery life and better performance if you underclock your device when you don’t need all the speed and overclock when you do.”

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.