Microsoft

Windows 8's browser, Internet Explorer 10, leads a double life. You can run it in Metro, and it can also be run in the traditional Windows desktop view. Underneath, however, both use the same rendering engine. This engine has been considerably improved, in terms of both its speed and support for new web technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3. Maybe even more significantly, IE10 isn't just the browser for Windows 8, it actually becomes the underlying engine which powers Metro style applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript.

At the Office 2013 event in San Francisco on July 16, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to make the case that Office isn't just about work—it's a lifestyle brand. Saying, "My entire life is on Office 15 and Windows 8," Ballmer played up the consumer-focused nature of Office, and its place in Microsoft's effort to make work more like personal time and personal time more...like work.

Microsoft has decided is enough is enough: Java-based malware sees no end and it's time to do something about it. The software giant points to two type-confusion vulnerabilities (CVE-2012-0507 and CVE-2012-1723) that have been very actively exploited in recent months. Redmond thus wants you to do one of three things: update Java, disable it, or uninstall it.

Windows is about to get a lot less fun to hack.

That's one upshot of a talk given by security professionals Chris Valasek and Tarjei Mandt at this week's Black Hat USA Briefings in Las Vegas. Valasek and Mandt are white-hat hackers -- security professionals who probe for vulnerabilities in Windows components, such as the Windows kernel or the Windows heap.

At this year’s Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam we’ve had the opportunity to speak to Steven Seeley regarding his research on heap managers. Since the topic was highly interesting, and since part of expert’s work was based on prior analysis made by Chris Valasek, we decided to do a follow-up on the subject by talking to Valasek himself.

Chris Valasek, who works as a security research scientist at Coverity, is highly passionate about the topic and as soon as Windows 8 was released, he started studying its heap manager to learn what improvements have been made.

Microsoft's fourth quarter of its 2012 financial year was a mixed bag. Revenue is up to $18.06 billion, up 4 percent year-on-year. However, operating income is down 97 percent to just $192 million, and the company reported a $0.06 loss per share.

Microsoft attributes the results to two things. The company has written off $6.2 billion of goodwill value in the fallout of its 2007 purchase of advertising company aQuantive.

 In the past year, a number of Xbox Live subscribers have seen their accounts taken over by hackers. In the past, Microsoft has denied that their Xbox Live servers have been breached by cyber attacks and instead have blamed outside attacks, such as phishing scams, as the reasons for these issues.

Security experts continue to hammer home the point that reusing login credentials across multiple sites is a bad thing, but now Microsoft gives us an insight into just why it is so bad to reuse passwords.

According to Microsoft Account group manager Eric Doerr, hackers have access to some 20 percent of all Microsoft account system (formerly Windows Live ID) logins, which cover services such as Hotmail, Messenger and SkyDrive. These logins have not been compromised from the Microsoft server, but are instead based on login information leaked from other sites.

Skype, a division of Microsoft, confirmed on Monday that a glitch in its software has led to instant messages being shared with unintended parties.

The company said it will deliver an update to fix the problem in "the next few days."