Microsoft

I deal with a lot of customers who area worried about Windows password attacks. These days, the biggest fear is of pass-the-hash attacks, a topic I've written about many times in the past couple of years.

Often, when customers voice concern about pass-the-hash attacks, they ask me about cached log-ons in Windows. They've heard about the vulnerability and have read one or more whitepapers about it. Even Microsoft recommends disabling cached log-ons.

In fact, cached Windows log-ons aren't a big risk at all. I'll tell you why in a minute, but first, let's review the basics.

This article is a follow-up to my previous 2011 article on Reverse Engineering and Modifying Windows 8 apps. In this article we’ll see how to use innate Windows 8 security attack vectors in such a way that could compromise Windows 8 games revenue stream. We’ll review real-world examples for all Win8 programming languages and frameworks.

Silverlight developers just can't catch a break.
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Microsoft has closed its primary Web resource for its Silverlight browser plug-in and development framework -- the Silverlight.Net site -- breaking loads of links out there to resources and discussions on Silverlight, as noted by blogger Tim Anderson on ITWriting. Clicking on those links dumps users into a bare-bones Silverlight informational page on Microsoft's MSDN site.

 When you see the click-friendly headline of "The Most 15 Overpriced Gadgets of All Time", you know the story will be filled with such notables as the Apple Lisa that cost $10,000 or the Nokia Booklet, but the Surface?

Noted security researcher Kristin Paget (formerly Chris Paget) — known for her work that helped to beef up the security of Windows Vista—is now working at Apple as a Core OS Security Researcher. Paget confirmed to Wired that she has been working at Apple since September but couldn't divulge any specific details of her work.

Pneumonia, which claims the lives of more than 1.2 million children under the age of 5 every year, is the leading cause of death in children worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. And in certain regions, such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, pneumonia alone accounts for 85 percent of pediatric deaths.

Today Nokia announced the Lumia 620, a range of colorful handsets running Windows Phone 8 that should have an unsubsidized cost of around $249. The phones will be released in the first quarter of 2013, initially in Asian and African markets and later in Europe and South America.

November saw Firefox climb back up above 20 percent, Internet Explorer grow further still, and Chrome apparently suffer a surprisingly sharp drop.

Internet Explorer was up 0.63 points at 54.76 percent, its highest level since October 2011. Firefox was up 0.45 points to 20.44 percent, all but erasing the last six month's losses. Chrome, surprisingly, was down a whopping 1.31 points to 17.24 percent, its lowest level since September 2011.

Tami Reller, corporate vice president (and chief financial officer and chief marketing officer) for Windows and Windows Live, announced today that Microsoft has sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses after its first month of retail availability.

Is that number good, bad, or merely mediocre? Probably good, but perhaps not great. Microsoft sold 60 million copies of Windows 7 in the first ten weeks of that operating system's availability, with the Wall Street Journal estimating that 40 million copies were sold in the first month.

The stable, supported, mainstream version of Firefox on Windows is a 32-bit application. Even if you use 64-bit Windows, if you use Firefox, you're using a 32-bit browser. The exception is if you're using the Nightly build of Firefox. This represents the latest, cutting-edge version of the browser, and it's available in two versions: a 32-bit one, and a 64-bit one.