Neowin.net

A build of Office 2003 Beta 2 this evening leaked to the internet. We reported about the availability of this build internally nearly a month ago here.

Unfortunately WinBeta have mislabelled the release as the Office 2003 Beta 2 Refresh code which is due within the next 2 weeks for official beta testers. The build number is 5207 and is ment for internal use, designed as a pre-refresh build. The official code will be released by web download only. In this new build it seems Microsoft have made Outlook 2003 much more stable and previous problems with Exchange 2003 RC1 have been eradicated.

After using it for a few hours overall I can say the only major improvements are to the interface where minor icon adjustments have been implemented. Obviously this build has fixed a lot of bugs that were present in the beta 2 release which is the reason for releasing such an update.

Screenshot: Previous Screenshots
News source: Winbeta.org

A Quick & Easy Check for IRC Zombie/Bots from grc.com, many thanks to Steve Gibson.

Check 1

"All of the IRC Zombie/Bots open and maintain static connections to remote IRC chat servers whenever the host PC is connected to the Internet. Although it is possible for an IRC chat server to be configured to run on a port other than "6667", every instance I have seen has used the IRC default port of "6667".

Consequently, an active connection to an IRC server can be detected with the following command:

netstat -an | find ":6667"

Open an MS-DOS Prompt window and type the command line above, then press the "Enter" key. If a line resembling the one shown below is NOT displayed, your computer does not have an open connection to an IRC server running on the standard IRC port. If, however, you see something like this:

TCP 192.168.1.101:1026 70.13.215.89:6667 ESTABLISHED

. . . then the only question remaining is how quickly you can disconnect your PC from the Internet!"

Check 2

"A second and equally useful test can also be performed. Since IRC servers generally require the presence of an "Ident" server on the client machine, IRC clients almost always include a local "Ident server" to keep the remote IRC server happy. Every one of the Zombie/Bots I have examined does this. Therefore, the detection of an Ident server running in your machine would be another good cause for alarm. To quickly check for an Ident server, type the following command at an MS-DOS Prompt:

netstat -an | find ":113 "

As before, a blank line indicates that there is no Ident server running on the default Ident port of "113". (Note the "space" after the 113 and before the closing double-quote.) If, however, you see something like this:

TCP 0.0.0.0:113 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING

. . . then it's probably time to pull the plug on your cable-modem!"