Microsoft

At the D9 conference today, Steve Sinofsky, President of Windows and Windows Live at Microsoft, gave the first look at the next version of Windows, currently "codenamed" Windows 8. On display was the new touch user interface: an interface designed for tablets and touch computers. For the first time in its life, Windows will receive a true touch interface. Since Windows XP, Microsoft has tried to graft touch capabilities onto its operating system, but has consistently failed to bridge the gap between precise mouse and keyboard interfaces, and sloppy, imprecise, finger-based interfaces.

Microsoft today downplayed the threat posed by an unpatched vulnerability in all versions of Internet Explorer (IE) that an Italian researchers has shown can be exploited to hijack people's online identities.

The bug, which has been only discussed and not disclosed in detail, was part of an attack technique described by Rosario Valotta, who dubbed the tactic "cookiejacking," a play on "clickjacking," an exploit method first revealed in 2008.

An Italian security researcher has demonstrated an exploit in Microsoft’s web browser that could allow remote stealing of digital credentials, or cookies, The Register is reporting.

Rosario Valotta demonstrated his “cookiejacking” proof of concept last week at the Hack in the Box security conference in Amsterdam. His hack exposes a flaw in all current versions of Internet Explorer (IE) to steal session cookies that Facebook and other websites issue once a user has entered a valid password and corresponding user name.

Microsoft investigators have uncovered more than 400,000 e-mail addresses from a single hard drive seized during the Rustock botnet takedown in March, according to court documents. The Rustock gang also had stolen credit card numbers.

Shy and retiring Microsoft CEO, Steve "there's a kind of hush" Ballmer has softly whispered to a gaggle of Japanese developers that Windows 8 will be out in time for 2012.

He whispered a time frame which indicated that the new OS would be in the shops in time for the end of the Mayan calender and will be the operating system of choice when the world ends. It is the first time that Vole has given a time frame for the operating system and the first time that he has mentioned the OS by name.

Nearly half of IT professionals planning Windows 7 rollouts for their organisations are concerned about migrations issues, specifically those of user profile migration. This was the main finding of a survey from RES Software which polled over 1,500 IT professionals worldwide from a range of industries. It found 57 per cent were planning the move to Windows 7 this year, mostly down to Microsoft’s scheduled closure of Windows XP support in 2014.

The next time a website says to download new software to view a movie or fix a problem, think twice. There's a pretty good chance that the program is malicious.

In fact, about one out of every 14 programs downloaded by Windows users turns out to be malicious, Microsoft said Tuesday. And even though Microsoft has a feature in its Internet Explorer browser designed to steer users away from unknown and potentially untrustworthy software, about 5 percent of users ignore the warnings and download malicious Trojan horse programs anyway.

Microsoft yesterday told Mac Office users it doesn't yet have a fix for a PowerPoint bug that it patched for Windows customers.

"Security updates for Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, and Open XML File Format Converter for Mac are unavailable at this time," the company's MS11-036 security bulletin said. "Microsoft will issue updates for these software when testing is complete, to ensure a high degree of quality for their release."

The Microsoft-Skype merger is potentially the beginning of the biggest change in technology since the PC. Of course, this is hardly the industry's first attempt to redefine the lucrative space.

Back in the 1980s - when I first formally came into the technology industry - there was a massive push to force telecommunications and technology together. This is kind of like mixing oil and water, really, so it didn’t go too well, which contributed to both the failure of old AT&T and the near failure of IBM.

Microsoft addressed two security bulletins in May’s Patch Tuesday release. Despite its small size, security experts said administrators should apply the fixes immediately as they addressed significant threats.

Microsoft fixed a critical vulnerability affecting Windows Server and an important bug in Microsoft Office PowerPoint, according to the Patch Tuesday advisory released May 10. Microsoft also assigned separate “exploitability” scores for newer versions of the software under the “improved” exploitability index ratings.