The punches keep on coming for my favorite PC manufacturer. Dell has started warning customers this week that spyware managed to be shipped in the firmware for their PowerEdge R410 Server Series. The malicious software is installed on the hardware itself in firmware. Dell was not specific about the type or name of the spyware detected, or how to get rid of it.

What is known is that the spyware is windows-centric and will not affect other operating systems. New servers ordered through Dell will not be infected, although why you’re ordering from them, I don’t know.

If you happen to have recently bought a R410, Dell should be contacting you via phone and mail. If I were you though, I’d get on the phone right now and let them know just how unhappy you are and how this is causing a production-level disruption to your organization.

Sources:

PowerEdge R410 replacement motherboard contains malware?! (Dell Support Forums)
Dell warns on spyware infected server motherboards (The Register)

After only 24-months, brief even in the world of mobile phones, Microsoft has permanently retired the Kin. The Kin was advertised as the latest and greatest in social networking for phones. A niche that should have offered it some legitimacy and press apart from its huge rivals iPhone and Android.

The Kin was neither revolutionary or evolutionary. Neither its features nor its price were liable to turn heads. In fact, recent reports say that, apart from press samples, Verizon has sold only about 500 of these, out of their 2000 stores; that’s 1 Kin sold for every 4 Verizon stores, a dismal failure when compared to Apple and Google.

The Kin’s niche was that it was designed for social networking. It runs a precursor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. I would call this a bridge product. It has some of the features of Phone 7, but its not a full-blown implementation. While tells me that maybe Microsoft should have finished that up and shipped a finished product before asking us all to buy what is essentially an expensive stop-gap aimed at bandaging their falling market share.

At one point, the mobile phone world was cut between Windows CE \ Windows Mobile and Blackberry. Since then, Apple and Google have really come out with worthy, superior products, and Microsoft is rushing to catch up. I can’t see how Windows Phone 7 can be the iPhone\Android killer that Microsoft wants it to be, especially with these articles citing it as an Ad Delivery Platform. Unless they’re going to give it to me for free, they can keep their ads, and I’ll keep my business somewhere else.

So the Kin is dead and nobody cares. It’s time for Microsoft to step up with a finished product instead of a half-baked idea. With Apple and Google retaining most of the mobile phone market share, Microsoft’s product will need to be superior in order to increase market share. Superior, Kin was not.

Sources:

How Many Kins Did Microsoft Sell in Two Months? (Tom's Hardware)
Microsoft Kin is dead (Engadget)
Microsoft Kin One and Two review (Engadget)

There’s a pretty bad vulnerability out there with the Microsoft Help function. It has been acknowledged by Microsoft; after having been found by a Google employee. This vulnerability ONLY EXISTS for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003; later versions are NOT affected.

This is important because the guy who announced the vulnerability provided explicit documentation on how the vulnerability could be exploited. It involves the “hcp” protocol handler (like the http:// or ftp:// protocol handlers).

It could take Microsoft up to a month to get a patch out for this.

Sources:

Vulnerability in Help Center could allow remote code execution - Microsoft Support
HCO 0-Day Quick Fix - Steve Gibson's Blog