The Security Kitchen

So, my brother bought this new fancy HP laptop with Windows 7 and he asked me to prep it for him. You know the drill, basic settings, install software, configure network adapters, install anti-crapware (preferably free), …

While uninstalling some of the packaged software (Norton, MS Works, some trial versions of other craptastic software), My eye fell on the (nowadays) ubiquitous Adobe software packages that were installed.  Adobe AIR 1.5.0 (the latest version available from Adobe is 1.5.2) and Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.1.0 (latest = 9.2.0) . A quick look at http://www.securityfocus.com showed that several exploits exist.

And then to know that the first 15 minutes starting a new HP laptop are spent looking at an update screen where HP happily tells you that it’s installing the *latest* updates.

Things will never change …

I hereby release the slides of the presentation I did at Excaliburcon in Wuxi, China.  Be on the lookout for the next edition, cuz this con is really promising.