Microsoft

Panned as a hollow public relations campaign ten years ago, Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative has improved Windows products and introduced new standards for developing secure software.

In 2002 then-CEO Bill Gates wrote a letter to every Microsoft employee stating that product security was a top priority for the software giant. While the fight against attackers is not over, the company has made significant strides in making it harder to compromise the operating system and associated software, according to security experts in and out of Microsoft.

In continuation with the ongoing investigation regarding suspicious activity on the accounts of Xbox Live users, some gamers are taking matters into their own hands. Jason Coutee, a network infrastructure manager who had his Xbox Live account hacked decided to look into the issue himself after Xbox Live customer service failed to be of much help.

Microsoft is testing a new service to distribute threat data captured from botnets and other sources to governments, law enforcement, computer emergency response teams, and companies.

Microsoft representatives told the International Conference on Cyber Security being held this week in New York that the company plans to provide intelligence feeds using the data it collects from captured botnets, such as Kelihos and Rustock, to government and industry partners, according to a report by Kaspersky Lab’s Threat Post.

A funny thing happened on the way to console stardom. Microsoft took it easy.

Back in November, 2010, it launched Kinect - its all-seeing, all -hearing body motion capture device that would "revolutionise" gaming. Microsoft's critics scoffed. How was it any different from Nintendo's Wii controller or Sony's Move?

User Account Control (UAC) was a feature first introduced by Microsoft in Windows Vista. Designed to protect your machine against hackers and malicious software, UAC alerted PC users any time a program tried to make some kind of change to a computer. However, many Windows users complained the feature was intrusive and became annoying by constantly nagging and asking for permission before software could make changes. When Windows decides your permission is needed, the desktop is dimmed and a dialogue box appears asking you to approve or deny the request.

Researchers at Symantec yesterday confirmed that working attack code published Jan. 6 can cripple Web servers running Microsoft's ASP .Net.

The proof-of-concept exploit was published last Friday on GitHub, a site that hosts software projects, and has been used in the past by hackers to distribute their work.

The few bits of genuine news in Microsoft's CES keynote on Monday all concerned Kinect, the company's natural user interface sensor. CEO Steve Ballmer announced that 18 million devices had been sold since launch, either as standalone units or bundled with Xbox 360. There are a smattering of Xbox content deals with Fox and others, using Kinect as a selling point.

Microsoft today shipped seven security updates that patched eight vulnerabilities in Windows and a code library used to protect Web applications from cross-site scripting attacks.

As experts expected, today Microsoft issued the patch it pulled at the last minute in December 2011.

GAMES CONSOLE MAKER Microsoft has denied that its Xbox Live internet gaming service has been breached by hackers.

The statement comes following news that members of the service have been the victims of various scams. One user's account in particular was targeted to create new accounts with Microsoft points to be sold on the black market.

Microsoft has published a new Windows Phone update, build 8107, to resolve a problem where the soft keyboard sometimes disappears, leaving users no way to type anything on the phone. The bug can affect any handset on any carrier, so it should be rolled out to everyone as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't willing to say who will actually receive the update, or when.