“We just don’t know.”
That’s come to be a common refrain offered by many of us Microsoft watchers when asked about many (most?) things having to do with Windows 8. Despite the fact the operating system is available in Consumer Preview form, and soon to be available as a near-final Release Candidate (or possibly “Release Preview”), there are still lots of unanswered questions.
Microsoft has acknowledged a two-year countdown to remind Windows users that support for its Windows XP operating system and Microsoft Office 2003 suite will end in 2014.
The Microsoft Windows team said in a blog post that it now is a good time for organisations that still have PCs running Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003 to begin the inevitable migration to Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010.
Microsoft today said it would issue six security updates next week, four of them critical, to patch 11 bugs in Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, SQL Server and its virtual private networking platform. One of the updates, labeled Bulletin 4, looks like the one that should top the to-do list next Tuesday when Microsoft ships its monthly security updates, said a security expert.
Three command-and-control (C&C) servers, which are feeding instructions to computers infected with the Zeus trojan, still are operational despite a Microsoft-led effort to disable the botnet, according to researchers at security firm FireEye.
Late last month, US Marshals led the raid on two hosting locations in the US, where they confiscated C&C servers and took down two key IP addresses in the process. In addition, as a result of the seizure, Microsoft assumed control of some 800 domains involved with the servers, a process known as sinkholing.
Microsoft Research is working on a home automation operating system that it calls HomeOS.
In a paper accepted by the highly regarded Network Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI) conference, the firm details that it has already deployed HomeOS among trial users and programmers, with the researchers claiming the operating system will ensure that "all devices in the home appear as peripherals connected to a single logical PC".
Microsoft is looking into allegations that credit card data can be retrieved off an XBox 360 even after the device has been (re)formatted.
Researchers at Drexel University allege that even after restoring an Xbox 360 game console to factory settings, some personal data (including credit card information and billing information) is still stored on the HDD which can then be retrieved using some basic hacking tools.
The browser wars are back on in earnest. For the second time in three months, Internet Explorer made large gains, picking up almost 1 point of market share. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all lost out, as Internet Explorer 9 won over new users.
Microsoft is testing a beta of an Azure-based online backup service for Windows Server 8.
The Online Backup Service is a Windows-Azure-based service that will enable Windows Server 8 users to back up and recover files and folders (but not system state). There’s a downloadable Online Backup Agent that is meant to transfer this data securely to the cloud, and which uses the Windows Server Backup Interface. The backup can be configured via Computer Management or PowerShell cmdlets, as Finn pointed out earlier this month.
Researchers have found a new attack that employs two separate pieces of malware, a malicious Word document and some techniques for maintaining persistence on compromised machines, and the campaign is specifically targeted at Mac users. The attack exploits a three-year-old vulnerability in the way that Office for Mac handles certain Word files, according to researchers at AlienVault, who discovered and analyzed the attacks.
