Microsoft

Ten years ago this week, the Blaster worm swept through Windows XP and Windows 2000 networks, bringing some government agencies to a halt and perhaps contributing to a major power blackout in the Northeast U.S.

Blaster, also dubbed the DCOM Worm and Lovsan, first appeared on Aug. 11, 2003, and exploited a known Windows vulnerability in a component that handled the RPC (Remote Procedure Call) protocol. Microsoft had patched the bug the month before.

In March, Panos Panay, the general manager of Microsoft's Surface tablet division, told a group at a company summit meeting that while the Surface RT is a tablet, the Surface Pro is in fact a real PC. Now a cunning techie has proven Microsoft's point by completely replacing his huge desktop PC for the much more diminutive Surface Pro as his personal workstation.

Internet Explorer proved to be the biggest security concern for Microsoft in the last month, with the browser spurring 11 of the 19 critical vulnerabilities the company issued in August's "Patch Tuesday" set of software fixes.

Such a sizable group of critical patches once again underscores the need for users and organizations to update their copies of Internet Explorer. Their reluctance to upgrade has been a source of ongoing frustration for security professionals, who repeatedly warn of the dangers of unpatched browsers and remind everyone how easy it is to actually update.

Microsoft has released a new ergonomic split keyboard and mouse combo, and it looks downright weird.

The Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop kit pairs a new keyboard, the Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard, and a new mouse, the Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse. The purpose of both is to encourage you to hold your arms "just so" and keep your wrists healthy.

On July 31, Microsoft celebrated the one year anniversary of Outlook.com, its new take on the web-based email service. The launch started with a public preview where anyone could try out the service meant to be a replacement for the older Hotmail service.

As part of a set of stats Microsoft published this week, the company revealed it now has 16 different businesses currently at an annual $1 billion (or more) run rate.

(This doesn't mean businesses with $1 billion in profits; it means businesses contributing $1 billion or more in revenues.)

Cyber criminals will bank their Windows XP zero-day vulnerabilities until after Microsoft stops patching the aged operating system next April, a security expert argued today.

Jason Fossen, a trainer for SANS since 1998 and an expert on Microsoft security, said it's simply economics at work.

Microsoft will include a more advanced version of its Kinect sensor and camera with every $499.99 Xbox One console. Ever since this was first announced back in May, Microsoft has defended adding the Kinect to the Xbox One package, even calling it an "essential and integrated part of the platform."

Microsoft's Scroogled campaign, an attack on rival Google, is still in full-swing, despite taking turns between entertaining and ridiculous. My colleague Wayne Williams described it as "sad and embarrassing", but I am not so sure I would go quite that far, though neither will I defend the software maker in this battle.

Microsoft will deliver eight security updates next week to patch dangerous vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer (IE) and the business-critical Exchange Server, as well as less-serious bugs in all versions of Windows.

Experts pushed the IE update to the top of their must-do-ASAP lists.