Google Desktop // McAfee
Posted on November 9, 2005
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Mentioned Google Desktop in my last post. Updated to it last night and used it a bit today. Gotta say, I’m really quite impressed!
To fully try it all out, I switched from Gaim, my preferred IM client, to the “normal” versions of MSN Messenger 7.5 and AIM. Why? Well, GD indexes them too and I wanted to see how it worked. Turns out it works rather nicely and pretty close to real time too.
Killer new feature (or maybe this was always there and I never noticed?): The Timeline feature. From the Google Desktop page, click on “Browse Timeline” and check it out. You can see just about every thing you did for the day under “ALL”, or you can winnow it down a bit by click on “emails - files - web history -chats”. Oh - and over on the right is a calender. Want to try and remember that web site you found last saturday night? Click on “Web History” and click on Saturday and have a look.
All in all, so far I’m pretty dang impressed. Now to decide if I’m going to switch back to Gaim or not… I did find a Gaim plugin for GD, but last time I tried it I was rather underwhelmed. However, I also found where Gaim stores the logs (as text files) and told GD to index that directory too. But in doing some quick tests, I can’t seem to hit anything that I know is in those logs…
Formatted and reloaded my daughter’s laptop this past weekend. It was long overdue for some attention (probably 2 years on that last install) and had a few infections and crapware on it. So, since I was starting fresh, I decided to go with XP Pro (licensed!) and then use the free McAfee antivirus that Comcast offers. Oh, and I didn’t automatically make her an Admin of her machine — she’s a Power User. I figured that would make more sense and maybe help control some of her software installing…
So this morning I go down to kick her out of bed and check her machine. There’s a message from McAfee on the screen that says something to the effect of, “I have AV updates to install, but you need to be an Admin for me to update.” OMG — you gotta be kidding? I really hope this is a configuration issue… going to go do some research on this yet tonight. I know windows security is often mocked, but the framework is there — if commercial applications would just bother to play in that framework.
[hour later]
Well, that’s disappointing. Chatted with a tech for a bit and got the standard, “Oh, your daughter must be an admin to get software updates.” I pointed out some example of why making teen-aged kids ADMINISTRATORS on the computer just doesn’t always seem wise… but got no where. So then I asked about services - if some of the McAfee stuff runs as a service, perhaps that would be a tolerable work-around? He thought it was worth a shot too. But alas, it didn’t seem to help. And oddly enough, once I caved and added her domain account to the local admin group, McAfee, as part of the update process, reloaded itself from the web! Oy Vey.
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http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2005/12/researcher_expo.html
In a detailed analysis published on his Web site, Gillon demonstrates how the hack could be leveraged to steal data on the victim’s machine indexed by Google Desktop Search, a free program that allows users to quickly find a variety of files on their computers. The problem is not with Google’s software, which contains several built-in security measures to ensure that data cached by its software cannot be read by anyone other than the user.
Good thing I don’t use IE, huh?
Saw a similar article earlier today. This is one of those deals where, if it would’ve been fixed 6 months ago, we’d never have heard “boo” about it.