Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Wow! what a rider. This guy Ricco showed his explosive uphill acceleration on the Super Besse a few days ago. Today he has showed it again with a long 4-5 kilometre sprint up a 8-10% gradient slope. I am extremely impressed with the speed at which he accelerated, and then the apparent ease with which he just kept going.  He reeled in all the people above him and then bolted for the summit of the Col d'Aspin.

It has been a magic few days watching the Tour De France and the big climbs have now started in the Pyrenees. I am watching Ricco now descending at a very rapid pace and holding my breath as he comes very close to the edge of the road on some corners at around 80-90 km / hour.

Tomorrow there is a massive climb over the Col du Tourmalet at over 2000 metres.

Drupal has today announced Version 5.8 and 6.3, releasing security patches to fix some security flaws.

Here is the announcement:

Multiple vulnerabities and weaknesses were discovered in Drupal. Neither of these are readily exploitable.

CROSS SITE SCRIPTING

Free tagging taxonomy terms can be used to insert arbitrary script and HTML code (cross site scripting [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting ] or XSS) on node preview pages. A successful exploit requires that the victim selects a term containing script code and chooses to preview the node. This issue affects Drupal 6.x only.

Some values from OpenID [ http://openid.net/what/ ] providers are output without being properly escaped, allowing malicious providers to insert arbitrary script and HTML code (XSS) into user pages. This issue affects Drupal 6.x only.

filter_xss_admin() has been hardened to prevent use of the object HTML tag in administrator input.

It was announced today that there was a major DNS security flaw that could allow attackers easily to compromise any name server; it also affects clients.

Here are some specific news articles about this (for techies only)

• Slashdot
• Internet Systems Consortium
• Internet Storm Centre
• Microsoft Security bulletin

What does this mean for you?

Patch your Windows XP PC using Microsoft Update or Windows Update. If you have a MAC use Software Update to patch it. I am not sure if they have released patches yet for MAC but will update this when I find out.

I have full instructions and screenshots for Windows XP and Vista below – also a couple of screenshots for Server 2003 / SBS 2003, though server owners SHOULD know how and when to patch their servers.

We have been exercising using the Wii fit for 4 days now. I have discovered to my chagrin that I have very poor inner muscle strength. While I am pretty fit, and quite strong in my legs and arms I struggle a lot with my abs and waist muscles. They are very weak and I find it a very hard to balance on one leg for example. My twitch muscles are also not finely controlled. The Wii fit  program is making me focus on these exercises and they are hard. Today I spent 20 minutes exercising and one of the exercises was actually standing still as possible. I found that very hard and it is actually harder than it sounds – it hurts after a while using muscles you don’t usually use to keep still. Like wise balancing on one leg and moving the other leg is very difficult. I am enjoying the Ski Slalom, though I find I tend to miss a few gates here and there.