It is now a near certainty that that Microsoft will pull the plug on Windows XP in the next two weeks. Avast Software has issued a warning about XP's demise. Ondrej Vlcek, Avast's chief operations officer, is seeing data indicating that Windows XP users' systems will be "six times" more likely to come under attack by third parties than those running Windows 7 – which Microsoft will still be supporting in the near future, obviously.The Windows XP's end-of-life is poised to bring many security concerns to the forefront of data breach prevention practices. "The abandonment by Microsoft will not only affect Windows XP users, but will create a big security problem for the whole ecosystem. Tens of millions of PCs running XP connected to the Internet, unpatched and without security updates, are just waiting to be exploited. The vulnerable OS will be an easy target for hackers and be seen as a gateway to infect other non-XP operating systems," Vlcek writes.

He also cites the oft-mentioned ATM example as an area where the loss of Windows XP critical updates, maintenance, and exploit patches, could be rather disastrous for a fairly critical industry. There are a number of banks that are working at a presumably fast pace to get their systems kicked up to Windows 7 from Windows XP. Others are contracting with Microsoft for additional Windows XP support – a pricey, but potential alternative - roughly $1,000 to $3,500 for each replacement machine, according to CNNMoney.  ATMs aren't the only devices at risk. "Medical offices that store confidential patient information and stores that keep customer details, such as credit card numbers, on their computers running Windows XP could easily be attacked. The Target data breach last year was conducted through a trojan that attacked the shops' point of sales system. If businesses don't keep their systems safe, we will, unfortunately, see more of data breaches like this," Vlcek writes.

For more, check out Killing Windows XP Wastes Billions.

Some of the basic variations and considerations are as follows:

1. What is the value of the domain name?This is a key preliminary question for a number of reasons. First of all, the amount of effort you put into a lease agreement will often depend on the value of the domain name. A relatively cheap domain name will not usually call for a lengthy agreement full of complex protections for the domain name owner (the lessor) or the lessee.

Also, a lessee of an inexpensive domain name will often be scared off by a 10 page legal document. Accordingly, the starting point for determining what kind of domain name lease agreement you need, is determining the value and importance of the domain name to both the domain name owner and the lessee.

2. Will this be a "rental" or a "lease to own" arrangement?Just like there are different kinds of car leases, such as a "walk away lease", a "balloon payment lease", and a "lease to own" or "finance" arrangement, so to are there different basic forms of a domain name lease agreement.

Skype voice service exposes a users IP address to the world. There are tools, called Skype Resolvers, which can then decipher a Skype username to the IP address of the user. The hacker supplies the target user's Skype account name and instantly retrieved the users IP address. This tool is used for knocking users offline buy acquiring their IP address and then initiating denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against the IP. Skype resolvers work regardless of privacy settings in the users Skype account.

Skype resolvers can also be used to track users location as they travel between cities.

This type of privacy issue can be mitigated by relaying Skype signal traffic through proxies. Although, there remain other methods of eavesdropping on traffic. The problem - the maximum tolerable Round Trip Time (RTT) of VoIP users is 300 milliseconds (ms) whereas the propagation delay in a fiber optical cable is 200ms. Therefore, when a user in France calls another one in India, the proxy service must incur less than 100ms additional RTT.

Google is trying to eliminate search results which contain anonymous junk webpages or plagiarized content written to trick the system. The new system, called Google Authorship, is designed to give a higher priority in the search results to trusted authors. The idea is simple - “Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”  - Eric Schmidt, Chairman Google.

Google has agreed to pay a mere $7 million to 30 U.S. states over a 2010 incident in which its Street View mapping cars collected millions of passwords and other personal data from home wireless networks. The announcement of the settlement is expected to be made by the states early next week, according to the person, though some of the final details of the deal were still being hammered out on Friday. Google has said the incident was a mistake, even though they engaged in this activity in several countries and for a duration of 3 years.

1. Autostart folder
Everything in here will restart.
C:\windows\start menu\programs\startup {english}
C:\windows\Menu Démarrer\Programmes\Démarrage {french}
This Autostart Directory is saved in    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell
Folders Startup="C:\windows\start menu\programs\startup"
'So it could be easily changed by any program.

2. Win.ini
[windows]
load=file.exe
run=file.exe

3. System.ini [boot]
Shell=Explorer.exe file.exe

4. c:\windows\winstart.bat
'Note behaves like an usual BAT file. Used for copying deleting specific files. Autostarts everytime

Google Chrome:
Chrome Passwords are stored in a SQLite file the sites name and sites username is in clear text but the password is seeded in a Triple DES algorithm. The file is called Web Data and is stored in the following location

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data part (and possibly also the header) of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions, or defined criteria to decide whether the packet may pass or if it needs to be routed to a different destination, or, for the purpose of collecting statistical information.

Deep Packet inspection is contrary to Article 23 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. However Federal Law №139 enforces blocking websites on the Russian Internet blacklist using IP-filtering.

In the United States the FCC has adopted Internet CALEA requirements. The FCC, pursuant to its mandate from the U.S. Congress, has required that all telecommunication providers, including Internet services, be capable of supporting the execution of a court order to provide real-time communication forensics of specified users. In 2006, the FCC adopted new Title 47, Subpart Z, rules requiring Internet Access Providers meet these requirements. DPI was one of the platforms essential to meeting this requirement and has been deployed for this purpose throughout the U.S. President George W. Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales have asserted that they believe the president has the authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad without obtaining a FISA warrant.* The Defense Information Systems Agency has developed a sensor platform that uses Deep Packet Inspection.**

Unknown attackers gained access to user data and encrypted password files, prompting the online storage service to alert its subscribers of the breach. Online storage service Evernote warned 50 million users on March 2 that unknown attackers had compromised its system and gained access to the information on more than 50 million users, including encrypted password files. Evernote reportedly uses MD-5, a cryptographic hash function that has been known for years to be vulnerable.

The new “Expired Registration Recovery Policy” (ERRP) goes into effect August 31.

This policy sets guidelines for how registrars treat expired domain names and how they must notify customers that their domains are expiring. The rules will require expiration notices be sent at particular intervals and mandate that DNS resolution be interrupted after expiration.

Domain registrars will be required to send an expiration notice about one month before expiration and another one a week before expiration. A notice is also generally required five days after expiration.

Registrars must also interrupt the DNS of an expired domain for a specific timeframe. This is common practice today — a registrar will change the nameservers to point to a parked page with a notice about how to renew the domain. This disruption quickly gets the attention of the registrant if they didn’t know their domain was expiring.

ERRP also requires a 30 day redemption grace period on non-sponsored gTLDs and requires registrars to publish pricing and information about recovering a domain during this period. The new rules include some suggest best practices. One is that registrars keep a customer email address on file that is not connected to the registered URL so that email can still be received when the DNS is disrupted.