* Astronomy

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta (32- bit) and (64-bit)

Windows Vista is everyone's favourite tech punching bag, and not without reason. But the reviled operating system has some amazing potential and with some tweaks and a few utilities, you can do what Redmond didn't: make Vista great.

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This week at the Black Hat Security Conference two security researchers will discuss their findings which could completely bring Windows Vista to its knees.

Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc. have discovered a technique that can be used to bypass all memory protection safeguards that Microsoft built into Windows Vista. These new methods have been used to get around Vista's Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and other protections by loading malicious content through an active web browser. The researchers were able to load whatever content they wanted into any location they wished on a user's machine using a variety of scripting languages, such as Java, ActiveX and even .NET objects. This feat was achieved by taking advantage of the way that Internet Explorer (and other browsers) handle active scripting in the Operating System.

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The new Microsoft Windows Site has dropped the Vista Aero Glass theme, and gone back to the calm clouds theme.

www.microsoft.com/WINDOWS/