Microsoft

Microsoft has agreed to license the source code for communications protocols in its Windows server software in a bid to avoid being fined €2m (about £1.37m) a day by the EC (the European Commission), the company's top lawyer said today.

"I don't believe any decision to implement a fine is warranted," Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, told reporters in Brussels, following the announcement that the firm would license the code to third-party vendors.

Microsoft may take the most heat on security vulnerabilities, but other software vendors need to catch up when it comes to dealing with flaws found in their products, according to users and analysts interviewed last week.

For Windows Vista and later versions of the Windows family of operating systems, kernel-mode software must have a digital signature to load on x64-based computer systems.

This paper describes how to manage the signing process for kernel-mode code for Windows Vista, including how to obtain a Publisher Identity Certificate (PIC), guidelines for protecting keys, and how to sign a driver package by using tools that are provided in the Windows Driver Kit (WDK).

Screenshots and code for the most recent build of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 browser have leaked to the Internet, several Windows devotee sites reported Friday. nternet Explorer 7, which is being co-developed for the upcoming Windows Vista and the current flagship Microsoft OS, Windows XP -- has been posted to at least one German Web site -- links are available from JCXP.net -- where it can be downloaded as an 11GB file in .rar format.

As the world's biggest software company, Microsoft Corp. boasts 60,000 employees in 85 countries, and $40 billion U.S. in sales last year. But it apparently falls a little short in the irony-detecting department.

Microsoft has denied allegations that the Windows Metafile (WMF) bug is actually a "back door" planted by the company's developers so they could secretly access users' PCs.

The charges were raised last week by Steve Gibson, security researcher best known for his ShieldsUp Web site, in a podcast. A transcript of that podcast is available here.

Although Gibson presented no proof of the indictment -- he said that without access to Windows' source code, it would be impossible to prove, or disprove, his charge -- he said that any other explanation just didn't make sense.

Expect to see a lot more interoperability work between Microsoft Corp. and some of its open-source competitors over the next year—like the agreement struck with JBoss Inc. last year—as well as more participation by the Redmond, Wash., software maker in preventing interoperability problems earlier in its product cycle and providing potential fixes when issues arise.

Microsoft Corp. has sold 600,000 of its new Xbox 360 video game consoles in the United States since its November launch, an analyst for market researcher NPD Group said Friday.

The Xbox 360 debuted to much fanfare on November 22 in North America. Since then it has been in short supply. Analysts, video game publishers and retailers have said shipments during the key holiday season fell short of expectations.

Microsoft said in a statement that its challenge has been to meet consumer demand for the Xbox 360.

Despite pledging its support for Apple's platform, Microsoft has backed out of future releases of Windows Media Player for Mac, and the company's Web site now directs visitors to download a third-party application from developer Flip4Mac.

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday released two security bulletins to fix "critical" flaws in several widely deployed products, including one that presents a remote unauthenticated attack vector that could leave corporate e-mail servers open to a destructive network worm attack. A company spokesperson flagged MS06-003 as the most serious issue, warning that a bug in the way TNEF (Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format) is decoded can allow malicious hackers to inject harmful code automatically without user interaction.