Greetings,

After the recent DoS vulnerability in BIND (ASB-2011.0102) I found myself wondering what a "denial of service" actually means to non-IT people. So I decided to conduct a short test with a couple of friends and found the following results amusing:

• Tom (a tennis player) suggested that it might be when your serve hits your teammate in doubles.
• Jason (works at a pub) said it happens when one of the customers gets abusive or drunk.
• Tina (lawyer) joked that it could be when someone in the army refuses to be deployed.

When I mentioned it was to do with computers, every single one of them mentioned their Internet connection dropping out as their first response! Of course, if you haven’t patched the BIND vulnerability, and have Internet facing DNS servers you may want to jump on it. After all, without DNS none of your other services will be reachable.

We also had two (yes two) versions of Google Chrome released this week (ASB-2011.0101, ASB-2011.0103). I don't think I have restarted my browser twice in a week before. Just before these we also had a patch for Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR (ESB-2011.1149). However the days are numbered for patches to the mobile version of Flash after Adobe decided to stop development - although some device manufactures have said they will continue to support it.

Lastly Apple released iTunes 10.5.1, which corrects a single vulnerability from Jan 2008 - yes, you read that correctly. About four years ago a vulnerability was found in iTunes version 6 that they have now corrected in version 10.5.1 (ESB-2011.1151). On the up side, this version also brings iTunes Match. On the down side, we don't live in the USA, so no iTunes match for us.

Well, I am off to play a game of indoor soccer for the first time in AGES! So if you don't hear from me again - eat less junk food, exercise more and you won't have a heart attack.

Richard