Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has released an automated tool to neutralize the recent vulnerability that was discovered in the Windows Shell, which we reported on last week. Called "Fix It," the automated tool is available on Microsoft's support website and will mitigate the vulnerability temporarily by preventing shortcut files from being displayed.
Microsoft will not follow the lead of Mozilla and Google in paying researchers for reporting vulnerabilities, a company executive said today.
"We don't think [bug bounties] are the best way for us to compensate researchers," said Mike Reavey, director of the Microsoft Security Research Center (MSRC) in an interview Thursday.
Reavey was responding to questions about recent moves by Google and Mozilla to boost payments made to outside researchers who report flaws, and whether Microsoft would follow suit.
Microsoft may have a tough time fixing the Windows shortcut vulnerability, a security researcher said today. A noted vulnerability expert, however, disagreed, and said Microsoft could deliver a patch within two weeks.
"The way Windows' shortcuts are designed is flawed, and I think they will have a very hard time patching this," said Roel Schouwenberg, an antivirus researcher with Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab.
Windows 7 is superior to Apple’s Mac OS X, the open source Linux and to all operating systems on the market, noted Kevin Turner, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer during the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2010. Undoubtedly, Windows 7 has seen unprecedented success in terms of adoption and customer satisfaction. To this day, almost nine months after the operating system hit store shelves, Microsoft continues to sell some 7 copies of Windows 7 every second, having passed the 150 million sold licenses a while back.
New Zealand IPv6 specialist Dean Pemberton warns that a transitional protocol to IPv6 may have underlying security risks.
Teredo is one of several tunnelling protocols that carry IPv6 traffic encapsulated in IPv4 packets to ensure transmission over an IPv4 network. Teredo, moreover, is designed to ensure that the packets also cleanly cross network address translation (NAT) devices.
There may well have been an increase in Mac sales over the past few years, but there’s no denying the fact that Microsoft still has an undisputed dominance over the computer industry. A lot has been written about Microsoft over the years, but we may not know it all.
An interesting article, by Amy-Mae Elliott over at mashable.com has provided a list of ten things that you may not have heard about Microsoft before. For example, did you know that the first ever mention of “Microsoft” came in a letter from Bill Gates to co-founder Paul Allen in 1975?
It's been a long road, hasn't it? Well, in some respects, it hasn't -- in fact, it's only been about two years since development of Windows Phone 7 as we know it today kicked off -- but when you consider that this product will be replacing Windows Mobile 6.5, that puts things in proper perspective.
The Department of Health is ending the £500m deal between Microsoft and the health service in England. A Department of Health (DoH) spokesperson confirmed that it will not renew its contract with the software firm for 900,000 licences for Microsoft's PC software, which was due for renewal this year.
"The Department of Health has already invested so that NHS trusts are able to have access to the latest versions of Microsoft desktop software," the spokesperson told SmartHealthcare.com on Thursday.
Microsoft has named a new managing director for its Research division.
The company said that US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program director Dr. Peter Lee would be taking over as managing director of the Microsoft Research Redmond operation beginning in the Fall of 2010.
Formerly a professor at Carnegie Melon University, Lee had previously worked as director of DARPA's Transformational Convergence Technology Office, a project focused on areas such as crowdsourcing, machine intelligence and biosynthesis.
ONE OF THE RUSSIAN SPIES recently uncovered in the farcical cold war throwback was for a time a Microsoft employee.
According to the Washington Post, Alexey Karetnikov was working at the Microsoft campus outside Seattle, Washington. He is the 12th person to have his collar felt on allegations of spying but the US authorities could only charge him with immigration violations. As a result, he was merely deported back to Russia.
A Microsoft spokesman, Lou Gellos, confirmed Karetnikov had a job as a software tester at the company for nine months.
