WMF Exploit More Help

I’ve received a lot of  feedback from many of our WinPatrol users  regarding the WMF Exploit danger I wrote about yesterday. It’s clear that this threat has been distributed widely and is a real danger to all users.  I’ve come up with a couple more tips you should consider.

My first tip is specific for AOL users.

Click on the Settings icon or go to Keyword “Settings”.

 

One of the options under E, will be “Email Setting”.

 

 

 You’ll see the following dialog. 
  
The check box “Hide images and disable links in mail from unknown senders” should always be checked.
This will prevent any dangerous images from being displayed in AOL Email and also keep you from clicking on potentially dangerous links.  This won’t help when using AOL’s browser or most forms since Internet Explorer is integrated into the AOL client.

A safety feature built into Windows is “Data Execution Prevention(DEP)

DEP may depend on the type of processor you’re using and how new your computer is.
Microsoft has information in their article titled Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2. 
Data execution prevention (DEP) is a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help protect against malicious code exploits.  In Windows XP SP2, DEP is enforced by both hardware and software.
Alex Eckelberry of SunBelt Software has kindly posted details on how to check if your computer supports DEP complete with screen shots and steps to turn it on. Unfortunately, there has been some debate whether turning on DEP will protect you completely or if it effects systems performance.

Our best advice remains to continue using WinPatrol and unregister the smimgvw.dll as explained in our last entry.
Click on the Start Button and select “Run”
Type in “regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll” and click OK