Microsoft on Monday announced an overhaul of its gaming platform that includes a revamped MSN Games, a new social feature called Game Hub, and the online PC games store, Games for Windows Marketplace.
The Game Hub - available at games.msn.com - will tie MSN Games, Windows Live Messenger, and Bing all together, allowing users to play online games by themselves or with friends. Users can sign in with their Windows Live or Facebook IDs.
A notorious rootkit that for years has ravaged 32-bit versions of Windows has begun claiming 64-bit versions of the Microsoft operating system as well.
The ability of TDL, aka Alureon, to infect 64-bit versions of Windows 7 is something of a coup for its creators, because Microsoft endowed the OS with enhanced security safeguards that were intended to block such attacks. The rootkit crossed into the 64-bit realm sometime in August, according to security firm Prevx.
Microsoft has sold a million Kinect devices worldwide in 10 days and the company claims it is on track to sell five million by the end of the year.
The impressive figures come a week before the Black Friday shopping rush in the United States, and represent only Kinect units sold in North America and Europe. Kinect is set to launch in Asia and Australia on November 18, followed by Japan on November 20.
Security investigators from Trusteer a security company claim that albeit Microsoft has enhanced its MSRT (Malicious Software Removal Tool) with new defense abilities towards assisting organizations combat the notorious data-stealing Trojan namely Zeus, the tool has, however, failed in detecting the malware's most recent edition.
Usually when it comes to talking about jailbreaking a smartphone it all centres around the Apple iPhone and iOS, but other smartphones also get jailbroken, and one being targeted for jailbreaking at the moment is the Windows Phone 7 platform.
According to an article over on the Boy Genius Report by Zach Epstein, I Started Something is claiming that a jailbreak for the Windows Phone 7 operating system is almost ready. Apparently hackers already have root access to the WP7 file system and registry, but so far aren’t packaged.
Microsoft today explained why it has not patched older versions of its Office for Mac, but would not disclose a release schedule for doing so.
"We cannot give an exact date, but we expect to provide these updates during one of our normal monthly update cycles very soon," said Jerry Bryant, a group manager in the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). Bryant was responding to questions raised Tuesday when Microsoft issued a multi-patch update for all versions of Office on Windows, including Office XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010, and Office for Mac 2011.
Enterprises in the midst of migrating to Windows 7 are unlikely to repeat that same work in just two years with Windows 8, an analyst said last month.
"[Businesses] would certainly like to upgrade only to every other edition," said Gartner Inc. analyst Michael Silver. "If Windows 8 comes out in two years, many [enterprises] will be very suspect about migrating to the next release."
Microsoft today patched 11 vulnerabilities, including one in Office that hackers will quickly exploit to launch drive-by attacks, said security experts. As expected, Microsoft did not ship a fix for the flaw in Internet Explorer (IE) that criminals are currently using to hijack Windows PCs.
Of the 11 flaws addressed in three separate updates, only one was pegged as "critical," Microsoft's top ranking in its four-step scoring system. The remaining 10 were all marked "important," the second-highest rating.
For its decision to include a free MSE download with its Windows Update. Panda Security and Trend Micro have jumped on a Microsoft decision to include free anti-virus software in its Windows Update.
The Redmond giant now includes Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), a year after the software was made available to download for free. Both Panda and Trend have taken umbrage at the situation, with the former hinting Microsoft should push all of the various forms of anti-virus on the customer rather than only MSE.
Microsoft today announced several enhancements to its Windows Server platform, aimed at giving IT buyers hardware and software configurations that are ready for use as part of a private cloud.
The new platform additions, which were announced as part of Microsoft's annual TechEd event going on this week in the US, are dubbed Hyper-V Cloud. This is essentially a blueprint for the software and hardware configurations that Microsoft's customers and partners can use to get a private cloud set up quickly and without changing hardware buying habits.
