A recent post on a computer forum..

I have a pop up box that tells me that it wants to install an upgrade.RealNetworks has identified a security risk in RealPlayer that may make your computer vulnerable to viruses and malware. RealNetworks has issued a fix and it is highly recommended that you download it at this time.

The vulnerability has been identified as a malicious Web page which affects the import method of an Active X control to cause a stack overflow in the RealPlayer. CVE-2007-5601. This posting is applicable to versions of the product downloaded before October 25th, 2007.

There is then a link that promises more information.

I’ve had no problems using Real Player. Is this genuine or is somebody out to get me?

Now, if I’d had a chance to get their first, I’d have suggested he stop being so paranoid and run it. The same forum is full of people scared about security issues – here is a Real pop-up box telling them to install a critical update to protect them. And they don’t want to.

This was closely followed up with…

Real’s own site mentions upgrades, but when i asked for information on the 26th October upgrade none was available. As I’ve had no trouble with it I think I’ll stay with the version I’ve got.

Arrrgghhhh. Well I hope he gets hit by the vulnerability.

As I’ve said before the paranoia about computer security is at absolutely epic proportions, but a little common sense is all it takes. Why bitch and complain about PC’s being unsecure when you won’t install critical security updates? More often than not, the people on these forums are even too paranoid to run automatic Windows updates. Personally, I wish there was an option to automatically install non-urgent updates to Windows as well.

But maybe that’s just me.

There’s a facility with VirtualBox to install “Guest Additions” – various utilities for a particular OS that will enhance it’s capabilities to work with VirtualBox. Most of the other virtualisation software has its own equivalent.

However, I’ve struggled to get it work until I came across an article in PcPro (October 2007) about how to do just that. It’s for Ubuntu but works just as well for Kubuntu.

First of all mount the Guest Additions disk. Now run the following…

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux headers-`uname -r`

When that’s done you’re supposed to change to the CD rom and run the following…

sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

For some reason I can’t get to the CD Rom via the terminal program (well I could, but it said there was nothing on it). Instead I found, by more luck than judgement, that I was able to install it at root via clicking on the CD Rom icon.

Anyway it worked. Amongst other things I can now resize my Kubuntu window up to the full 1280×1024 of my monitor. I’ve also got seamless mouse use – no more using a special key to move in and out of the virtual window, back to the host. All very handy.

Lastly, the same article gave details of a useful command line program provided with VirtualBox for making clones of your virtual hard drives. The command iis in the VirtualBox folder and is…

VBoxManage clonevdi {source disk} {output file}

The source disk is the full path to where you have the virtual drive stored.