Microsoft

Microsoft announced yesterday that they are planning to kill access to the MSN Service via MSN for Mac OS X software from May 31st onwards.

Microsoft Corp. is to give the U.S. government priority in fixing security holes in Windows and other software, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Under a plan to take effect later this year, Microsoft will give the U.S. Air Force versions of software "patches" to fix serious security vulnerabilities up to a month before they are available to others, the paper said.

Microsoft Corp. is giving early versions of its software security patches to the U.S. Air Force and other organizations, a practice some experts fear could give rogue hackers important details about how to break into unprotected computers on a massive scale.

After more a year of teases and false starts, Microsoft is finally starting to talk about its next generation game machine.

Every title for the next generation Xbox will offer high definition graphics, custom personalization and be tied into the online world, said J Allard, Microsoft corporate vice president and chief XNA architect at an ongoing game development conference.

"This system is a monster," said Allard. "In this decade, I believe we are going to double our audience."

Security researchers have published details of a denial-of-service vulnerability that could enable hackers to attack Microsoft Windows and spin computers into senseless processing loops.

Posting to the SecurityFocus industry forum site late Monday, an individual identified only as Dejan Levaja first described how the threat, known technically as a LAND attack for the type of code that triggers it, could affect Windows users by needlessly occupying their computers' processing power.

Microsoft has opened a research and development (R&D) center for mobile software and services in South Korea, hoping to benefit from the country's position as one of the most sophisticated markets for wireless and mobile technologies. "This is the first time we've set up an R&D center for our business outside of (Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington)," said Pieter Knook, senior vice president of Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices Division, during a telephone interview.

Microsoft Research is showing off prototypes for two security projects aimed at containing zero-day Internet worms and thwarting malicious code execution attacks. At the company's annual TechFest event in Redmond, Wash., Microsoft Corp. engineers presented the first glimpse of a new technology code-named Vigilante that proposes a brand-new approach to automate worm containment.

The Vigilante project is specifically geared toward containing fast-spreading worms that exploit unknown software vulnerabilities.

Microsoft does not plan to release any security bulletins or patches this month despite claims from IT security companies that there are flaws requiring fixes. Last month Microsoft issued 13 security bulletins covering 17 security flaws.

Every second Tuesday of each month, Microsoft's Security Response Center releases a security bulletin pointing out vulnerability problems in the company's software--ranging from text editors to enterprise servers--and supplies patches to handle them.

Researchers at Microsoft showed off some forward-looking technologies on Wednesday, including new ways to protect systems against Internet worms, prevent hacker attacks and measure available bandwidth on home networks. At its fifth annual TechFest, Microsoft Research presented about 150 projects at the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters. The event was expected to attract about 6,000 Microsoft employees. Its main purpose is to promote the exchange of ideas, or "tech transfers," between Microsoft Research and product teams at the software maker.

One of Microsoft's key Windows architects has defected to Google. But at least so far, no one is talking about what Marc Lucovsky's new role will be at one of Microsoft's major rivals.