Microsoft on Tuesday shipped seven patches to address 23 vulnerabilities, including fresh fixes for flaws that could enable the espionage trojan Duqu trojan to spread.
Three of the seven bulletins were rated "critical" by Microsoft, but all of the attention seemed squarely focused on one: MS12-034, a rather convoluted fix that remedies 10 issues in Windows, Office, Silverlight and the .NET Framework.
A critical security flaw that has been affecting Adobe's Flash Player application now has an update from the software company towards remedying the problem. Actually the flaw had been enabling hackers to exploit it so users could be deceived into taking down malware while browsing in IE (Internet Explorer) that too was getting impacted. Redorbit.com published this on May 6, 2012.
Microsoft is changing the look and feel of the Bing interface, turning it into a three-column design with new “Snapshot” and “Sidebar” panes added.
Microsoft officials are calling it the biggest update of Bing since the search engine was launched three years ago. The core of the new design is the new more Metro-ish search results page that Microsoft showed off last week. In addition to delivering less cluttered look-and-feel, Microsoft made changes under the covers, resulting in search results calculating faster and more accurately, officials said last week.
Mozilla complained Wednesday that Microsoft prohibits running any browser except Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows RT, hampering choices for users. Google said on Thursday it shares the concerns.
Windows RT, the version of Windows 8 that runs on devices using an ARM processor, restricts user choice, reduces competition and chills innovation said Harvey Anderson, Mozilla General Counsel in a blog post. By only allowing Internet Explorer to fully access advanced OS functions, "third-party browsers are effectively excluded from the platform," he said.
This year’s Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam promises a lot of great challenges, but also a number of interesting topics that will be presented by the speakers. Two of the subjects detailed at HITB will be the “Ghost in the Windows 7 allocator” and the new Windows 8 RunTime feature.
If you think that Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller for the Xbox 360 is amazing, then you’re going to love this.
Microsoft Research has developed a new gesture-based motion controller that makes use of the Doppler effect to detect in-air gestures done around the device. The project is called SoundWave and what’s particularly interesting about it is that it doesn’t need any additional hardware in order to work.
Nokia has responded to a recent ZDNet Mobile News article that pointed out the partnership with Microsoft, the owner of Skype, is causing trouble with the carriers affecting sales of the Lumia phones. In that article Nokia watcher Tomi Ahonen used comments by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to gather he was claiming sales were lost due to the Skype deal.
As you probably know, Windows 8 connects with all sorts of networks, social and otherwise. The Metro Mail app has built-in hooks for Hotmail, Gmail, and Exchange; Metro Photos links to Facebook and Flickr; the Metro People app (which stores contacts) can pull data from Hotmail, Gmail, Exchange, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. All you have to do is log on to Windows 8 with a Microsoft account, then go out and connect the online dots.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 25 April 2012 - Following last year’s successful LEGO Mindstorms Hackerspaces Challenge, HITB is excited to be working with Microsoft for this year’s CommSec Challenge which will bring players into the world of motion capture devices. The Kinect for Windows CommSec Challenge takes place on May 24th and 25th alongside HITBSecConf2012 - Amsterdam.
Microsoft has blamed a Chinese security firm for leaking Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) exploit code that was patched in March.
Hangzhou DPTech Technologies Co, a specialist in firewalls and intrusion prevention systems, breached its non-disclosure contract with the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) by releasing the code. It was booted from Microsoft's vulnerability-sharing program last week.
