Microsoft plans to fix critical bugs in its Word, Publisher, and Jet database software next week.
The software vendor also plans to release a less-critical update for its antivirus products, fixing a flaw that attackers could use to launch a denial of service attack against products such as Windows Live OneCare and Microsoft Forefront Security.
The updates will be released Tuesday, the day set aside for Microsoft's monthly set of security patches. Microsoft provided some early details on the patches Thursday, in a note on its Web site.
Microsoft considers flaws to be critical when they could be exploited by attackers in order to run unauthorized software on a victim's system.
Although Microsoft's note does not describe the bugs in detail, it looks like the company is planning to fix a known bug in the Jet database engine, which was disclosed in late March. Attackers had figured out a new way to launch a malicious Jet file using Microsoft Word, Microsoft warned in a blog posting.
Microsoft's Vista operating system is more susceptible to malware than Windows 2000, and though it's 37% more secure than Windows XP, it's still too vulnerable.
That's the contention of security vendor PC Tools Software, which has a financial interest in the vulnerability of Microsoft's software.
"Ironically, the new operating system has been hailed by Microsoft as the most secure version of Windows to date," said Simon Clausen, CEO of PC Tools, in a statement. "However, recent research conducted with statistics from over 1.4 million computers within the ThreatFire community has shown that Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than the eight year old Windows 2000 operating system, and only 37% more secure than Windows XP."
According to statistics gathered from users of PC Tools' ThreatFire security service, Vista let 639 threats per thousand computers through, compared with 586 for Windows 2000, 478 for Windows 2003, and 1,021 for Windows XP.
Microsoft has claimed that the available places for this year's Microsoft UK Challenge in Scotland are down to single digits.
The event will see 35 teams, including those from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and Microsoft, competing in a variety of physical and mental challenges over four days.
These include problem solving, mountain biking, code cracking, kayaking, long distance orienteering and construction.
Katrina Nabavi, team captain of the 2007 Dell team, said: "It was brilliant to win the IT cup last year. Not only did we beat the other teams within the industry, it was great to be the best of the Dell teams there.
"Competing against some of the best teams in the world was a fantastic experience and we are looking forward to defending our title this time round."
The winners of the UK leg will go on to France for the international Intelligent Sports final later this year.
Last year the teams raised 500,000 (pounds) for the NSPCC, and over 600,000 (pounds) has been pledged this year.
Mozilla warned Wednesday that a malicious program inserted adware code into a Firefox plug-in that has been downloaded thousands of times over the past three months.
Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware, Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog posting. "Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy," she wrote. "Mozilla does virus scans at upload time but the virus scanner did not catch this issue until several months after the upload."
Mozilla is now going to add additional scans of its software to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, she said.
The malware in the language pack is from the Xorer Trojan, according to discussion on Mozilla's Bugzilla developer Web site, which indicates that Mozilla developers first discovered the issue on Tuesday.
"I think it (happened) just because the author's local network was infected with the virus, so it modified HTML files," wrote developer Hai-Nam Nguyen. "The infected code just display(s) annoying banner but it can't propagate."
Within hours of its release, Microsoft's Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs.
The problems with XP SP3, according to posters on Microsoft's Windows XP message board, range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.
"My external disks are having trouble starting up, which results in Windows not starting up," complained user Michael Faklis, in a post Wednesday. "After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep s**t," said 'Doug W'.
Another user said the service pack prevented him from starting his computer. "I downloaded and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package for IT Professionals," wrote 'Paul'. "Now I can't get the computer to boot."
Dozens of other posters reported similar problems.
News Corp's MySpace social network will let users choose to share their public profile information, such as pictures, videos, and text, across the Web to spread its service beyond its own borders.
At launch, the new "data availability" function will let users share their information on sites owned by Yahoo Inc, eBay Inc, Twitter and its own Photobucket, MySpace Chief Operating Officer Amit Kapur told Reuters in a phone interview.
"MySpace no longer operates as an isolated island on the Internet," Kapur said. "The walls are coming down."
MySpace's decision to makes its user data available is part of a Web-wide move to adopt open standards.
Along with other big companies including Google Inc and Yahoo, MySpace has backed the OpenSocial network which aims to create a set of technological specifications that lets software developers build games, photo shows and other applications that can run on any network.
Adware purveyors are using fake MP3 and MPG files on peer-to-peer networks to spread their wares.
More than a half million computers have been infected by a Trojan spreading through bogus MP3 files on popular peer-to-peer networks in the past several days, according to researchers at McAfee’s Avert Labs.
McAfee first reported noticing a spike in the discovery of a Trojan known as Downloader-UA.h on May 6. The malware was added to the McAfee DAT files May 2.
In the past seven days, the malware has been detected by McAfee VirusScan Online on more than 530,000 computers - roughly 26 percent of the approximately 2 million scanned, according to figures posted by the company May 7. In contrast, the next most-reported piece of malware was found on less than 6 percent of the scanned computers.
The Trojan is spreading through MP3 and MPG files disguised to look like audio or video recordings. Some of the bogus file names are listed in a McAfee blog. When downloaded, users are directed to a Web site and prompted to download a file called PLAY_MP3.exe, McAfee researcher Craig Schmugar reported in the company’s blog.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says sales of Windows Vista have been "rapid", with more than 140 million copies sold worldwide.
Gates, speaking in Tokyo, said the figure represented "a very rapid sales rate," according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday.
Despite the sales figures, Microsoft has admitted to struggling with the public's perception of Vista. Windows XP, Vista's 7-year-old predecessor, is still popular among both businesses and consumers.
Microsoft already extended the deadline for ending XP sales to large computer makers one time, allowing sales through June 30, as opposed to ending them this past January. The software maker also granted a more narrow extension, allowing XP to be used on ultra-low-cost computers through 2010.
News of DRM's death has been greatly exaggerated, according to an executive with the Recording Industry Association of America.
At a time when the top recording companies appear to be phasing out digital rights management (DRM), the RIAA is predicting that the highly controversial software will make a comeback.
"(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM," said David Hughes, who heads up the RIAA's technology unit, during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference. "Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead."
Hughes just stated the obvious. DRM still exists; one can find it at iTunes, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, and at free-music service SpiralFrog just to name a few. But his statement was startling because the top four music labels have seemingly been warming up to unprotected music files.
A federal judge is dinging the shuttered TorrentSpy service with a $111 million penalty for facilitating the infringement of thousands of copyrighted works.
U.S. District Judge Florence -Marie Cooper in Los Angeles, ruling in a case brought by the Motion Picture Association of America, said site operator Justin Bunnell and associates must pay the maximum $30,000 for "each of the 3,699 infringements shown."
The case, producing what is among the largest fines in copyright history, was bolstered after the MPAA allegedly paid a hacker $15,000 for internal TorrentSpy e-mails and correspondence.
"This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites," MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman said in a statement.
TorrentSpy, a U.S.-based torrent tacking service, shuttered in March after it lost its case against the MPAA. TorrentSpy did not lose on the merits, but defaulted after it failed to produce internal records.
Microsoft has warned users updating to Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) that they won't be able to downgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to the older IE6 without uninstalling the service pack.
The warning first appeared in a post Monday to a company blog written by the IE development team. Microsoft released Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update as an optional download Tuesday.
"If you choose to install XP SP3, Internet Explorer 7 will remain on your system after the install is complete," said Jane Maliouta, an IE program manager, in the blog entry. "Your preferences will be retained. However, you will no longer be able to uninstall IE7. If you go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, the Remove option will be grayed out."
The inability to downgrade to IE6 after installing XP SP3 was by design, said Maliouta, because the service pack includes newer versions of the old browser's files. If Microsoft had allowed users to revert back to the pre-SP3 version of IE6 -- the one saved on users' PCs when they upgraded to IE7, and until now what was used to back out of the newer browser -- Windows would have ended up in a "mixed file state," Maliouta said.
Microsoft, which trails far behind Apple in the portable media player market, tried to narrow the gap Tuesday with the release of new technology that enables Zune users to share more of their music libraries with friends.
The latest update to the Zune software that synchronizes the player with a person's music library on the PC and Microsoft's online store reflects how Microsoft is hoping to grab market share from the Apple iPod by encouraging Zune users to build online social networks. Microsoft last November launched a music community Web site called Zune Social, where users could browse each other's playlists and share opinions on songs and bands.
The upgrade takes the community element a bit further by letting Zune users download each other's nine most recently played songs, as well as nine tunes flagged as favorites. The playlists are updated each time a person connects their Zune to the PC.
In order for people to trade tunes, they have to subscribe to Microsoft's mobile music service called Zune Pass. The service costs $14.99 a month and lets subscribers download onto their Zunes any of the 3.5 million songs in Microsoft's library.
The Recording Industry Association of America's chief voiced skepticism on Tuesday about the need for Net neutrality rules, but warned that the government may need to step in if Internet service providers don't become more proactive in fighting digital piracy.
The House of Representatives subcommittee hearing was further evidence that the now years-old debate over Net neutrality is taking on a new dimension, in which concerns about Internet piracy are entering the debate. Net neutrality, of course, refers to the idea that network operators should be barred from discriminating against or prioritizing Internet content that travels on their pipes.
RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol told the panel that a Net neutrality bill proposed this year by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) isn't all bad because it views "unlawful" content, such as copyright-infringing material, as unworthy of protection by Internet service providers. He said he hopes that approach may even help to pressure ISPs to "focus on the piracy problem."
Microsoft on Tuesday said it is resuming two major Windows updates that had been halted because of a conflict with one of its own software products.
A week ago, Microsoft delayed the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 because of a problem that could lead to data loss when running the XP update in conjunction with its Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System program. It also halted automatic updates to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 because of a similar issue.
The software maker on Tuesday said it is releasing XP Service Pack 3 for Web downloads, and resuming automatic updates to Vista Service Pack 1, after developing a filter that will prevent machines running Dynamics RMS from getting either update.
The filter is not a fix for the incompatibility, though Microsoft said it is working on that as well.
"A fix for this issue is currently in testing at Microsoft and with customers, and we hope to make it publicly available this month," the company said in a statement. "Until then, Microsoft is advising Microsoft Dynamics RMS customers to not install either service pack."
Those already running Dynamics RMS with one of the Windows updates should contact customer support, it said.
Microsoft recently filed suit against eight software resellers in the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, and Egypt for copyright infringement and for illegally importing and distributing its software.
Bonnie MacNaughton, senior attorney with Microsoft's worldwide antipiracy team, says the cases aren't related to counterfeit software, but to genuine software that's being sold without the appropriate licenses.
In Egypt, software pirates have been diverting volume licensing versions of Microsoft software and selling it as retail versions, using counterfeit product license keys to install and activate the software, said MacNaughton. One reseller in Egypt used this tactic to reap "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in profit, she said.
In other cases, software is being diverted from discount programs that Microsoft offers to educational and volume licensing customers abroad and being imported and resold illegally in North America, she said.
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Microsoft plans to fix critical bugs in its Word, Publisher, and Jet database software next week.
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Microsoft's Vista operating system is more susceptible to malware than Windows 2000, and though it's 37% more secure than Windows XP, it's still too vulnerable. 
Microsoft has claimed that the available places for this year's 
News source: 
Mozilla warned Wednesday that a malicious program inserted adware code into a Firefox plug-in that has been downloaded thousands of times over the past three months.
Within hours of its release, Microsoft's Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs. 
News Corp's MySpace social network will let users choose to share their public profile information, such as pictures, videos, and text, across the Web to spread its service beyond its own borders.
Adware purveyors are using fake MP3 and MPG files on peer-to-peer networks to spread their wares.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says sales of Windows Vista have been "rapid", with more than 140 million copies sold worldwide.
News of DRM's death has been greatly exaggerated, according to an executive with the Recording Industry Association of America. 
A federal judge is dinging the shuttered TorrentSpy service with a $111 million penalty for facilitating the infringement of thousands of copyrighted works.
Microsoft has warned users updating to Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) that they won't be able to downgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to the older IE6 without uninstalling the service pack. 
Microsoft, which trails far behind Apple in the portable media player market, tried to narrow the gap Tuesday with the release of new technology that enables Zune users to share more of their music libraries with friends. 
Microsoft on Tuesday said it is resuming two major Windows updates that had been halted because of a conflict with one of its own software products.