Microsoft

The Outlook and Exchange vulnerability disclosed by Microsoft Tuesday has the potential to become a much more virulent problem than the long-hyped Windows Metafile bug patched last week, said one of the email flaw's discoverers Wednesday.

"What I find bizarre is that there's still all this focus on the WMF [Windows Metafile] bug," said Mark Litchfield, the director of NGS Software, a UK-based security company, and one of the two researchers credited by Microsoft with the discovery of the TNEF (Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format) vulnerability.

One of the big concerns of anyone considering moving to Windows Vista is “How many of my applications will work on Windows Vista?” We have spent a lot of time trying to answer that very question for our company so I will share with you some of the common problem areas we found for applications to help give you an idea of what applications might have problems for you.

Microsoft Corp. has shut down the Internet journal of a Chinese blogger that discussed politically sensitive issues, including a recent strike at a Beijing newspaper.

The action came amid criticism by free-speech activists of foreign technology companies that help the communist government enforce censorship or silence dissent in order to be allowed into China's market.

Following on from the critical Windows security patch issued overnight, Microsoft has said it intends to release two further critical patches next week.

Next week’s patches will fix a number of flaws in Windows, the Microsoft Office collaboration suite and the company’s Exchange e-mail server platform.

Microsoft issued patch late yesterday ahead of the usual security patching cycle to fix a problem in the way Windows handles Windows Meta File images on websites.

The flaw allowed remote attackers to effectively take over users’ infected machines.

Rival Google Inc. may be nipping at its heels, but Microsoft Corp. wasn't flashing any defeatist signs as it showcased its latest plans to help make living in the digital world safer, easier and more fun.

In his 10th keynote to kick off the International Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Wednesday night highlighted the Windows Vista program, a major operating system upgrade set for release later this year.

Microsoft has released a beta of its .Net port to Python.

IronPython 1.0 Beta 1, which was released at the end of last week, is "well integrated" with the rest of the .Net programming framework and allows all .Net libraries to be "easily" accessed by Python programmers, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft's support for Python could help the software giant attract Unix developers to the Windows platform, as it is a commonly used scripting language on the Unix platform, according to Salim Fadhley, who develops Python programs for Unix.

Microsoft Corp. plans to release a patch for a new security flaw at its next scheduled update release on Jan. 10, leaving users largely unprotected until then from a rapidly spreading computer virus strain.

"Microsoft's delay is inexcusable," said Alan Paller, director of research at computer security group SANS Institute. "There's no excuse other than incompetence and negligence."

"It's a problem that there's no known solution from Microsoft," said Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering at Symantec Corp.'s security response team.

Windows users should install an unofficial security patch now, without waiting for Microsoft to make its move, advised security researchers at The SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC).

Reports from a game console enthusiast site, apparently verified by independent members of its forum just before Christmas, state that Microsoft distributed to retailers who display Xbox 360 consoles in their store kiosks, a self-booting playable demo disc without incorporating the company's usual security protection. As a result, .ISO binary images of the disc can be made, redistributed, burned to CD-R media, and played from those replicated discs.

Last week's security update for Internet Explorer has left some users testing the beta of IE 7 with what Microsoft called "odd browser behavior," the company acknowledged Friday.

Users who had installed the beta of IE 7 alongside IE 6, then updated the latter with the patch provided Tuesday, Dec. 13, experienced browser "hangs," blank pages, and multiple windows that opened for no reason, wrote Jeremy Dallman, project manager for IE security, on the team's official blog.