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Beware of Geek

There’s a report out of the Los Angeles area that a lawsuit has been filed against Best Buy and their Geek Squad by a young woman and her mother, after a Geek dispatched to their house allegedly used a cell phone to record video of the 22-year old woman showering.

Hao Kuo Chi has been arrested on suspicion of using a camera to view a person without their consent, and of annoying or molesting a child under 18. Chi is alleged to have also placed the camera phone in the bedroom of the woman’s younger sister, who is 13.

Wired has more on the story, which they have dubbed the “Peek Squad” incident.

Now, this is an unfortunate situation, and Mr. Chi is certainly an isolated case, assuming the charges are legitimate. Geek Squad is very careful about screening its techs, but incidents like this are likely to happen when a giant, faceless corporation tries to implement the “personal touch” required for our sort of business. When you invite us, whether Geek or Wizard, into your home, trust is our most valuable asset. We are nothing without it.

.ANI patch can break audio applications

Reports are coming in that some users are experiencing a problem with the Windows .ani vulnerability patch I informed you about previously.

The patch is reported to break certain audio applications, specifically the Realtek HD Audio Control Panel, and CDtag, which is used for ripping music CDs.

If you are affected, you will see an “Illegal System DLL Relocation” error when you start your computer. Microsoft has issued a hotfix for the problem, which you can find here.

Microsoft regards this as an isolated incident and does not plan to issue the hotfix as part of its automatic updates.

The hotfix should be installed only if you are experiencing the problem described.

Patch available for animated cursor exploit

Microsoft today issued a security patch for a recently discovered vulnerability that can affect users of Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and Outlook 2002 (also called Outlook XP) on Windows XP.

By embedding a hacked animated cursor (.ani) file in an HTML e-mail message or Web page, a malicious individual can potentially take control of your PC. All you have to do is view the infected e-mail message or Web site. This security advisory from Microsoft has all the details.

This is not a widespread problem, but Microsoft considers the exploit potential to be serious enough that it issued a patch outside of its normal security update cycle.

Make sure you have this patch installed. Even if you have automatic updates enabled, there can be a delay before the patch is downloaded. I suggest you run Windows Update (or Microsoft Update, if installed) from your Start menu at your earliest convenience. Select the “Express” option to install critical updates. You will have to reboot your system after the patch is installed.

While we’re on the subject, there’s also a nasty virus being distributed via e-mail messages with a subject line of “Internet Explorer 7 Downloads.” Details are here. As always, common sense applies. If you don’t recognize the sender, don’t open the message.