Microsoft

Microsoft Wednesday issued "kill bit" updates for ActiveX controls from HP and a Washington state developer, the third time it's disabled third-party add-ons in the last four months.

Microsoft released its Patch Tuesday update today, which includes a fix for a zero-day flaw affecting Microsoft Office Access that has been targeted by hackers. Other fixes address issues in Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Windows and other products.

Microsoft released its August Patch Tuesday update today with 11 bulletins that plug 26 security holes across multiple products.

Expect that chairs to be flying over at Microsoft HQ about this...

Search Security reports during a charged presentation at the Black Hat hacking conference last week Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov of VMware Inc revealed a fatal flaw in Windows Vista which potentially blows the OS wide open and in such a way that it cannot be fixed.

Microsoft is to release fixes for a dozen serious vulnerabilities next Tuesday, seven of them ranked critical. But the firm has also announced a three-stage process to reducing the effects of future vulnerabilities.

Next week’s update (the regular ‘Patch Tuesday’ release which comes in the second week of each month) includes critical fixes for Windows, Internet Explorer, Media Player, Access, Excel, PowerPoint plus Office in general.

Microsoft began making SQL Server 2008 available to users today, slightly behind schedule but still making good on its goal of releasing an upgrade to its flagship database within three years of shipping the previous version.

The software vendor released the new database to manufacturing and said that MSDN and TechNet subscribers can download the 1GB package immediately. Other users will be able to download evaluation versions of SQL Server 2008 starting tomorrow, according to Microsoft's announcement.

IT Pros and system administrators will be mighty busy this month as Microsoft announced on Thursday that it plans to release 12 patches for its monthly security bulletin rollout. Seven of these patches will be critical and five will be deemed important when released on Patch Tuesday next week, Redmond says.

You may have heard of the Mojave Experiment: Microsoft took a bunch of XP users who were afraid to move toward Vista because of all the negative press it had received. In an attempt to reverse their negative feelings, the company sat them down in front of the latest desktop OS -- but didn't tell them it was Vista. And, lo, the people said they like it!

Microsoft will be giving companies that sell security software and services to its customers a sneak peek at the technical details of the vulnerabilities in Microsoft software before the company releases its monthly 'Patch Tuesday' updates.

The new Microsoft Active Protection Program, set to be announced at the Black Hat security conference on Tuesday, is designed to give software vendors a chance to prepare updates to their software before attackers have a chance to reverse-engineer Microsoft's security patch and create an exploit.

Microsoft has warned of a growing threat to its business model from open source software.

In its annual report the company has said that it was facing increasing pressure from open source vendors, who Microsoft claims are stealing its ideas and benefiting from its intellectual property.

If you build it, it appears they will come, eventually.

Such is the case with 64-bit computing. Advanced Micro Devices launched 64-bit chips for the desktop back in 2003, hoping the fact that it was there and didn't cost extra would convince consumers.

"Our industry, right now, is hungry for another round of innovation," AMD chief Hector Ruiz told the crowd at the San Francisco launch in September 2003. Not that hungry, apparently.