Webmasters who find an annoying error message on their sites may have caught a big break, thanks to a slip-up by the authors of the Gumblar botnet. Tens of thousands of Web sites, many of them small sites running the WordPress blogging software, have been broken, returning a "fatal error" message in recent weeks. According to security experts those messages are actually generated by some buggy malicious code sneaked onto them by Gumblar's authors.

Microsoft has announced the final release of its Platform Update for Windows Vista. The Platform Update consists of runtime libraries that provide a common platform for developers, so that applications making use of new Windows 7 technologies will work correctly with Vista and Windows Server 2008.

A hacker this week released a new exploit that allows users to circumvent Apple's preventative measures that have blocked unauthorized code from being run on the new iPhone 3GS.

In October, Apple unexpectedly began shipping new iPhone 3GS models to ward off hackers who run unauthorized software in a practice known as "jailbreaking." In addition to unlocking the handset for use on other carriers, the practice can also be used to run unsigned code.

Yesterday Microsoft's Jeff Williams, the principal group program manager for the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, said that there is a direct correlation between the current malware infection rate and software piracy. To be more specific, he said that countries with high piracy rates are more likely to be infected by malicious code because they're reluctant to apply updates.

An automated solution to help upgrade problem machines to Windows 7 has been released by Microsoft. If you have machines that hang while upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7, Microsoft has released a FixIt solution - so long as the particular failure involves the upgrade process stopping responding at 62% completed and hanging indefinitely. The problem can additionally be identified by Windows having created a file called system_drive:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther\setupact.log.

Everyone loves a killer feature: that must-have capability or technology that prompts you to plunk down your hard-earned cash in an effort to upgrade your computing experience. In the case of Windows, there have been precious few versions that included a truly killer feature. Windows 3.1 was a killer version because it allowed PCs to finally break (or at least reduce the impact of) the dreaded 640K barrier.

As promised, the latest version of Windows Server 2008 R2 is the first Windows Server to fully support DNSSEC. DNSSEC is a security protocol that helps to verify that a Web address hasn't been hacked and redirected to a pretender. Better still, Windows 7 also supports DNSSEC, which Microsoft claims is a first among client operating systems.

Rumours are circulating about the first Windows 7 service pack, just ten days after the operating system's official release. As with any Windows release, Microsoft engineers start tackling bugs as soon as the OS becomes available, so reports detailing plans for Windows 7 SP1 aren't surprising.