Dear mIRC User,

mIRC v7.1 has been released today.

This is the first stable release of the new Unicode version of mIRC.

The project to convert mIRC to Unicode has taken almost two years of development and testing and has required tens of thousands of changes to 150,000+ lines of source code. This has been the most complex and time-consuming update to mIRC since it was created in 1995, when it started out as a non-Unicode, 16-bit, Windows 3.1 application.

Many areas of mIRC have had to be updated or re-written, from file handling to text processing, from display to memory allocation, from server communications to file transfers.

mIRC should now be faster, more stable, and more compatible with the latest versions of Windows, and should be able to better handle the display and input of a variety of languages.

In addition to being converted to Unicode, there are a few other notable changes:

Improved Windows 7 compatibility
More reliable INI file handling
Faster text display/scrolling
Speech support
Improved interface design for a number of features
Automatic text color correcti...

Microsoft plans to release a patch on Monday for a flaw involving how Windows handles shortcut files, after seeing the hole being used to spread a particularly nasty and fast-spreading virus, the company said Friday.

Initially, the Windows flaw was used to spread the Stuxnet worm via USB drives. The vulnerability, which is in all versions of Windows, is in the code that processes shortcut files ending in ".lnk," according to the Microsoft advisory from two weeks ago that included information on a work-around.

Now there are copycat attacks in which the .lnk hole, or "shortcut hole," is be...

Information relating to a fifth of Facebook’s users is now available for download. By anybody.

A directory containing the personal information of (and be sure to say this in your best Dr. Evil voice) 100 million Facebook users has been made available on a torrent site and the almost 3 GB file can be downloaded by absolutely anybody. Ron Bowes of Skull Security created a script that harvested user information from Facebook’s user directory.

According to the Skull Security blog, the torrent contains:

■ The URL of every searchable Facebook user’s profile
■ The name of every searchable Facebook...

Facebook is apparently testing new options for letting members delete their accounts. It's about friggin' time.

Rumors are swirling Facebook may be adding an actual "Delete Account" option to its service. Rumors are also swirling this is just a red herring -- that Facebook is trying out different language that makes it seem as if it's offering an easy way out without actually changing anything substantive.

Which is true? Only Facebook knows for sure, and they ain't talking. Well, they're talking, but they're not saying much. Per Facebook product manager David Breger (posting a comment on...

Pays out $4,274 in bounties for five vulnerabilities, two workarounds

Google on Monday patched five vulnerabilities in Chrome by issuing a new "stable" build of the browser.

The update to Chrome 5.0.375.125 fixed three flaws rated "high," Google's second-most-serious threat rating, as well as one pegged "medium" and another labeled as "low in Google's four-step scoring system. Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia judged the cumulative update as "highly critical" using its own ranking.

As per Google's usual practice, technical details of the vulnerabilities were hidden from public view...

Twitter is having trouble again with a digital certificate that secures communications to its Web site, which has been causing trouble for third-party applications that integrate with it, but the problem may have been fixed.

Some users have reported trouble in using TweetDeck, an application used to post messages to Twitter and organize other streams of messages from the microblogging service. Users see a message saying that a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate issued by Equifax to "*.twitter.com" has expired and/or is invalid.

The certificate apparently expired on Monday and was use...

AT&T is patching software in its network to fix a bug that kept iPhone 4 users from getting the full upstream speed on their handsets.

A patch has been developed for the software glitch on the Alcatel-Lucent 3G (third-generation) mobile network equipment and will be fully rolled out in the next two to three weeks, said AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel.

The problem, which came to light earlier this month, only affects devices that use HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access), the fastest mobile upstream protocol on AT&T's network. That means Laptop Connect cards for PCs and netbooks, but only one handset: the iPhone 4. It does not affect downstream performance.

The problem came to light because of the high upstream demand from the iPhone 4, which has features such as high-definition video sharing that can consume a lot of upstream capacity, according to Alcatel-Lucent.

To cope with ...

25M sold in last 29 days, 175 million since launch, crows company

Microsoft sold nearly 10 copies of Windows 7 every second over the last month, according to numbers the company released Thursday.

Yesterday, Peter Klein, Microsoft's chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts of the latest Windows 7 milestone. "With 175 million licenses sold to date, it is the fastest selling operating system ever, and now runs on over 15% of all PCs worldwide," Klein said during an afternoon earnings call.

A month ago, Microsoft announced that it had sold 150 million Windows 7 licenses.

By...