Keeping up with Microsoft and other adventures

From: Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz SBS Rocks [MVP] (sbradcpa_at_PACBELL.NET)
Date: 07/04/03

  • Next message: Brett Moore: "Re: Windows Media Services Remote Command Execution #2" 
    Date:         Fri, 4 Jul 2003 13:04:52 -0700
To: NTBUGTRAQ@LISTSERV.NTBUGTRAQ.COM

    If you are like me you find that trying to find information on the
    Microsoft web sites is... well..... somewhat frustrating, you might want
    to sign up for a recent service that the kind people at
    http://www.thundermain.com have set up.... a RSS feed for the Microsoft
    Download site that immediately alerts me to new downloads. Lately these
    new downloads have included lots of Security Whitepapers.

    1. What is a RSS feed and how can you set it up?

    According to http://backend.userland.com/rss, RSS is a Web content
    syndication format. Its name is an acronym for Really Simple
    Syndication.
    RSS is dialect of XML. All RSS files must conform to the XML 1.0
    specification, as published on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
    website.

    Web sites that provide a RSS feed can be "subscribed to" using News
    Aggregators that will at a prescribed time go an "pull" the feeds into
    your news reader. Thus I don't have to go to web sites anymore to see
    if the content has changed, the notification comes to me inside my news
    aggregator.

    2. What is a news aggregator?

    A news aggregator is a program like FeedReader, AmphetaDesk, NewsGator
    that is either a standalone news aggregator or in the case of NewsGator,
    resides inside Outlook.

    http://feedreader.com/
    http://disobey.com/amphetadesk/
    http://www.newsgator.com/

    All of these programs allow you to "subscribe" to these RSS feeds and
    then at a predetermined time, grab these updated feeds.

    You can search inside these Aggregators for these RSS feeds. Click on
    the subscribe button and voila! You don't have to go to that web site
    again looking for new content, the "RSS feed" gets pulled by your News
    Aggregator program and you get notified of the new content.

    In my computer I've got the following feeds pulling into my Outlook
    NewsGator:

    A RSS feed from Thundermain that monitors the Microsoft Download site:
    http://www.thundermain.com/rss
    [This one is my treasure find as it pushes to me all the "new" downloads
    that hit the MS site]

    MSDN RSS feeds
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/aboutmsdn/rss.asp
    I subscribe to the MSDN Just published and the Security feeds [note this
    is NOT the security bulletins on RSS just the MSDN Security content]

    Mary Jo Foley Feed [the Microsoft-Watch RSS feed]
    http://rssnewsapps.ziffdavis.com/msw.xml
    Handy for keeping up with Bill ;-)

    Security topics from the Register
    http://xml.newsisfree.com/feeds/93/1393.xml
    NewsisFree provides headlines from 5931 sources around the world....

    But there are thousands of feeds that you can subscribe to... just do a
    search on Microsoft or Security....
    http://lists.insecure.org/lists/nmap-hackers/2002/Oct-Dec/0007.html
    You can also subscribe to "blogs". Blogs are "Web logs". According to
    http://www.salon.com/blogs/, "A blog, or weblog, is a personal Web site
    updated frequently with links, commentary and anything else you like.
    New items go on top and older items flow down the page. Blogs can be
    political journals and/or personal diaries; they can focus on one narrow
    subject or range across a universe of topics. The blog form is unique to
    the Web -- and highly addictive"

    Jiri Ludvik has begun a listing of Security Weblogs:
    http://radio.weblogs.com/0100367/stories/2003/04/09/securityWeblogs.html

    These blogs change and just like the news sites you can get their
    changed information pushed to your desktop. Information pushed to your
    desktop in one "aggregated" spot rather than a bunch of bookmarked web
    sites that you have to visit.

    IMHO news and awareness are the first line of defense. I hope this
    explaination helped to highlight some additional tools to get
    information directly where it needs to be.

    Susan Bradley

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