With the use of passwords coming under increased scrutiny, Microsoft is taking steps to move beyond them in Windows 10. Its biggest move: Joining the FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance and adding support for the biometrics technology in the upcoming upgrade of the OS, which has been slated to ship this year.
One of the security bulletins released by Microsoft on Tuesday fixes a privilege escalation vulnerability which, according to researchers, can be exploited by malicious actors to bypass all the security measures in Windows by modifying a single bit.
Authors: Xeno Kovah, Corey Kallenberg, John Butterworth amd Sam Cornwell - The MITRE Corporation
Presentation Overview: http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2014kul/sessions/watching-the-watcher-extreme-privilege-escalation-on-windows-8uefi-systems/
Abstract
The Windows desktop is at once the most important and least important part of the Windows experience. On the traditional desktop and laptop, it's fundamental; it's where most apps run, and it's where most users want to be. The perceived downplaying of the desktop in Windows 8 was one of the many reasons that desktop users were unhappy with the operating system.
A long-standing oddity of Windows is that its branded number has for some years now not matched the version number stamped into the kernel and other parts of the operating system. Windows 7, for example, reported itself to software as being version 6.1. Windows 8 is 6.2, and Windows 8.1 is 6.3.
A researcher with IBM said that a dangerous bug that existed in every version of Windows from Windows 95 onwards has finally been fixed.
Robert Freeman, manager of IBM X-Force, said that it told Microsoft about the bug in May this year and at last Microsoft is fixing it.
Here's a summary of the four "critical" patches this month; the top one is super critical or, if you will, Heartbleed critical:
Underscoring just how broken the widely used MD5 hashing algorithm is, a software engineer racked up just 65 cents in computing fees to replicate the type of attack a powerful nation-state used in 2012 to hijack Microsoft's Windows Update mechanism.
Microsoft has finally announced its new OS. The Wi-Fi password at today’s intimate San Francisco event was "Windows 2015", leading some to speculate that Microsoft might have chosen to return to naming its OS after the year of launch (a nod to Windows 95/98), but that turned out not to be the case -- a wise move. So what name would the tech giant choose? Not Windows 9, the obvious and expected pick, nor Windows One, the rumored alternative.
Linux doesn't have any kind of PR, and in the collective mind of the people, there is still an impression that Linux users spend their time inside the terminal and in dreary desktops. In fact, most of the current Linux desktops are much better than anything made by Apple of Microsoft.
