Despite warnings to businesses about the dangers of skipping Windows Vista, many IT managers and CIOs are standing firm that the risks of migrating to Vista outweigh the benefits.
The recent press coverage regarding performance efficiencies seen in the Windows 7 pre-beta (delivered at Microsoft's recent Professional Developers Conference) has dimmed the spotlight on Vista a bit.
Microsoft found software makers and security vendors made significant inroads in protecting their customers from malicious threats in the first half of 2008, according to its Security Intelligence Report (MSIR) released on Monday.
Based on data from hundreds of millions of computers around the globe, the report is an in-depth look at the overall software security threat environment, Microsoft said. MSIR revealed that reports of vulnerabilities have gone down. However, the actual threat posed by cyber criminals and malware continued to grow.
Microsoft has claimed in its fifth Security Intelligence Report that Windows Vista is giving hackers a much harder time.
Using data collected from computers worldwide, the company found that when it comes to browser attacks - the most common type - only six per cent targeted the Vista operating system, compared to 42 per cent with Windows XP.
The spread of malicious software that can harm computers and open gateways for hackers and identity thieves is on the rise according toMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT).
The amount of so-called malware and other unwanted software found on computers rose 43% in the first half of the year, the company said Monday. More than 90% of the vulnerabilities affected applications, while only about 10% impacted operating systems, according to Microsoft, which released the data in its Security Intelligence Report.
Microsoft Corp took the wraps off a new computing service that allows companies to use its data centers to run their Web applications in a bid to become a player in the "cloud computing" trend.
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, said on Monday it will start previewing "Windows Azure," a platform that allows third-party developers to host, manage, calculate and store data for applications running on the Internet.
Security experts say they’ve already figured out ways to exploit the bug for which Microsoft issued an emergency patch last week. One Trojan horse is already spreading faster thanks to the loophole, though it was already in existence before the patch was announced.
The virus is most commonly named ‘Gimmiv.A’, though is also known as ‘Spy-Agent.Da’. It’s a fairly typical Trojan horse in that it looks for passwords and other data and then sends them to a remote computer.
Last week, Chinese hackers were posting fake links promising to fix Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s "black screen of death" -- the links lead to malware that attempts to attack visitors' computers.
Earlier today, Microsoft did something unusual. The company made an exception to its normal security processes and issued an "out-of-band" urgent update. The update applied is classified as critical for Windows XP and older versions and is considered important for Windows Vista.
On October 20, Microsoft China announced that they would release an anti-piracy patch in China called the “Black Screen of Death” to combat pirated versions of Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Office software. Hours after the release, Chinese Internet users asserted that Chinese hackers have already broken the anti-piracy patch. It is not yet confirmed whether the hackers have been able to crack all the anti-piracy patch specifications.
THE SAME DAY that the Microsoft Vole launched its global " Anti Piracy Day" the crazy "pirates" from Sweden that run the Pirate Bay, self defined as the "World's largest BitTorrent tracker" decided to scoff at the software giant's initiative.
Visitors to the tracker quickly found the page "did a Google" and changed its logo to celebrate the special day in their own humorous way. Its logo above the search field changed to that famous Bill Gates 1970s "Mug Shot", with the caption "Bill Gates made me do it", followed by "Microsoft Anti-Piracy Day, Oct 21".
