Illustration: Harry CampbellComputer attacks in space are no longer the stuff of science fiction: Recently, laptops on the International Space Station turned out to have computer viruses. NASA believes that the malware--a password stealer that targets online games--may have infected the laptops via a USB thumb drive that one of the astronauts carried aboard. While it wasn't much of a threat, it just goes to show that the little buggers are everywhere.
One flaw in the largely forgotten Windows Image Color Management (ICM) system allows a villain to take over your PC if you view a tainted image displayed on a Web page or embedded in an Office document or e-mail. This is one of 19 holes for which Microsoft issued six "critical" patches; attackers could use them for their malicious creations (no booster rocket required). Though ICM (meant to ensure that colors display correctly on different devices) never caught on, the insecure code still resides in Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4) through XP SP3 and Windows Server 2003. Vista users are safe.
Ad Choices