IT Masala

 Microsoft released the feature-complete, third beta for Windows Server "Longhorn" on April 25, which is also the first public beta of the software.

New and improved features in Beta 3 include the following:

• Windows PowerShell is now included in the product.
• Active Directory Federation Services improvements allow customers to implement new policies and make it easier to set up a relationship between trusted partners.
• The Server Core installation option now comes with additional roles and enhanced functionality, such as print services and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services.
• The Server Manager console includes additional remote administration tools to provide a more integrated management environment.
• Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, now on by default, provides a persistent and more secure environment beginning at installation.
• NAP is integrated with Microsoft Update and Windows Update to enable administrators to decide which updates are critical and set policies accordingly. It also has a new administrative interface for simplified setup, scalability and better performance.

AMD Recommending Windows !!

"AMD encourages customers to download the beta and begin their evaluations today. As a next-generation operating system, Windows Server 'Longhorn' is designed to take advantage of the innovative features of the AMD Opteron processor, including 64-bit, multicore, virtualization and power management," said Joe Menard, the corporate vice president of software strategy at AMD. 

The product remains on track for release to manufacturing in the second half of 2007, and the beta code can be downloaded here.

[ Longhorn ] [ Download ] 

The company will offer a complete software package built around Windows and Office for $3.

The software bundle, called “Microsoft Student Innovation Suite,” (MSIS) includes Windows XP Starter Edition, Office Home and Student 2007, Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office, and Windows Live Mail desktop. According to Microsoft, the software is part of a “new commitment to help close the digital divide” and an effort to “bring social and economic opportunity to the estimated 5 billion people who are not yet realizing the benefits of technology.”

“All human beings deserve a chance to achieve their full potential,” commented Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, in a prepared statement. “Bringing the benefits of technology to the next 5 billion people will require new products that meet the needs of underserved communities; creative, new business approaches that make technology more relevant, accessible and affordable; and close collaboration between local governments, educational institutions and community organizations.”

Microsoft will also offer the $3 package for high income countries, if those governments agree to sign up for the firm’s Partner in Learning program and limit the (MSIS) software to “underserved communities.”

Visit [ Microsoft Student Innovation Suite ] 

This is a nice way to hook up everybody onto Windows.. We should see how far they will be successful in this new venture !! All the Best Micro$oft !

Note : We can use Gnu/Linux (which is FREE,open source and highly secure) rather than accepting some weird offers from Micro$oft. 

Microsoft Corp., as part of its outreach to the open-source community, has released a new official Windows Media Player plug-in for Firefox 2.0 that resolves problems with the older one.

The plug-in enables Windows Media Player to work on Firefox for Windows Vista and resolves known issues with the old one, wrote Hank Janssen, the program manager for Port 25, Microsoft's software lab that works with open source, on a company blog Monday.

The plug-in, available on Firefox's add-on site, is compatible with the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the XP SP2 and Vista OSes.

Note : Microsoft is working on another plug-in for Firefox.

There is however one known issue with the new plugin as noted on the Port25 site:

There is a known issue if you are using Firefox version 2.0.0.3 on Windows Vista with the installer failing with error code -203. To work around this simply restart Firefox (you will get a notification that Windows Vista will be changing the Firefox compatibility settings) and then install again - the second time should succeed.

I did not experience this problem and in fact had no problems at all installing the plug-in on Firefox 2.0.0.3 on XP. 

A video from MSNBC.com playing perfectly well inside the WMP 11 Plug-in for Firefox. I often had trouble viewing videos on sites who stream in Windows-based formats.

"Is Microsoft competing with Linux and OSS" Janssen writes. "You bet they are. Is Microsoft working to better interface with some of the Linux and OSS products? …

It took a long time for this to happen but finally their is a WMP plugin for Firefox. !

[ Mozilla Plugins Page ] [ Download Plugin ] [ Microsoft Software Labs ]

Long Live Open Source ! 

Give a refreshing look to your desktop. Download the new set of icons from VistaIcons.com. They provide high quality icons in the PNG and ICO formats. Icons have a maximum size of 256 x 256 pixels, making them suitable for high-DPI displays.

Some of the packages :

VISTA STYLE ICONS ( Download )

ALPHA VISTA PACK ( Download )

IVISTA ICON PACK ( Download )

AEROVISTA ( Download )

VISTAICO AERO PACK ( Download )

So ever wondered to get your name instead of your hardware provider in the Windows System Owner Name and Informationin the System Properties. Go through the steps below and you are done !!

This hack involves the modification of your system Registry, so make sure you backup your Registry before continuing further :

1. Click ‘Start’ , Click ‘Run’ , type regedit.
2. Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion node.
3. Look for the values RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganization. Edit their values to you username and company name of choice.
4. Exit the Registry Editor

njoy ! 

Cybercrooks are using a yet-to-be-patched security flaw in certain Windows versions to attack computers running the operating systems, Microsoft warned late Thursday.

The attacks target Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 systems through a bug in the domain name system, or DNS, service, Microsoft said in a security advisory.

What is the vulnerability: 

The vulnerability is believed to be caused by a stack overflow error in the Windows DNS Server's RPC interface implementation when processing malformed requests sent to a port between 1024 and 5000.

This means that remote unauthenticated attackers can execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges by sending specially crafted requests to vulnerable systems. 

"An anonymous attacker could try to exploit the vulnerability by sending a specially crafted RPC packet to an affected system," Microsoft said in the advisory.

What is RPC?

RPC, or Remote Procedure Call, is a protocol that applications use to request services from programs on another computer in a network.

Red Alert : The French Security Incident Response Team deems the Windows DNS vulnerability "critical," its highest rating.

Which OS's are Affected : 

Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 are vulnerable, Microsoft said.

Caution to be taken : 

Security experts are advising that users for the time being disable remote management over RPC capability for DNS Servers or block unsolicited inbound traffic on ports 1024 to 5000.

via [ Microsoft security advisory ]

If you think of any reasons that are missing, let us know  — via [ FSF ]  

There are problems with the patch Microsoft released Tuesday for a critical .ANI vulnerability, and hackers have launched a new spam campaign to take advantage of the flaw.

There are problems with the update Microsoft released Tuesday for a critical .ANI vulnerability, and hackers have launched a new spam campaign to take advantage of the flaw by promising nude pictures of Britney Spears to lure users to malicious sites.

Deborah Hale, a handler with the Internet Storm Center, reported in the site's daily diary on Wednesday that researchers there are receiving reports of users having problems with the patch, which Microsoft pushed out a week earlier than its normal monthly Patch Tuesday release. Microsoft confirmed a problem with the patch and provided a hotfix, or a patch for the patch, when the patch was first released.

Hale noted that other issues have arisen, as well, and Microsoft is investigating them.

Sophos reported in an advisory that the malicious site contains the Iffy-A Trojan that points to another piece of malware, which contains the zero-day .ANI exploit. Sophos detects this Trojan as Animoo-L.

"The message is simple: You must patch your computers against this vulnerability now or risk infection," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, in a statement. "Hackers are exploiting people's tardiness in rolling out updates and looking to infect as many PCs as they can. Microsoft issued a patch for the problem yesterday, but the hackers will continue to take advantage of the critical security loophole for as long as they can."

Problem :

The .ANI vulnerability involves the way Windows handles animated cursor files and could enable a hacker to remotely take control of an infected system. The bug affects all the recent Windows releases, including its new Vista operating system. Internet Explorer is the main attack vector for the exploits.

Effects of that Problem : 

Users are being infected after visiting a malicious Web page that has embedded malware designed to take advantage of the flaw. They also can be infected if they open a specially crafted e-mail message or if they open a malicious e-mail attachment sent by a hacker.

Solution :

Meanwhile, security firm eEye Digital Security Inc. has brought out an unofficial and temporary fix for the problem.

Who is spreading the attack code :

It is suspected that several websites, including at least two hosted in China, are offering the attack code that exploits the bug. 

via [ IW ] 

Microsoft has started private testing of the next version of Office for the Macintosh, which is due out in the second half of the year.

According to apcmag.com, Microsoft's Office 2008 for Mac has proceeded into private beta stages of development. Microsoft has detailed several new features. One is a program called My Day, which gives users quick access to calendar information without requiring them to first go into the Entourage e-mail program.

Screenshots : (apcmag.com)

 

  Artful charts

"Part of our mission with Office 2008 is to expose all the things that are already there and make the product easier to use" says Jones. "We wanted to make it more discoverable, to bubble up the features that people didn't always find. We also have an opportunity to have a simple UI and a more intuitive interface.

"We got a lot of customer feedback (on the UI), we've kept the menus and embedded toolbars, but I can hide rid of embedded toolbars to have a really streamlined interface."

Parts of the redesign are peeking through almost every application, as well as application modules such as the notebook view in Word, and Jones promises that there's plenty to share in the months ahead.

Also on tap are improved page layout controls in Word and new Excel templates, called ledger sheets, which allow users to handle tasks like producing invoices without having to create or understand the underlying formulas.

Microsoft has taken longer than its normal 18 to 24 months to come out with a new version of Office for the Mac. The current version, Office 2004 for Mac, debuted in April 2004.

The first thing i can say about this is ' ROFL '. In a report that surprises even the PC lovers around here (me), Symantec has listed Microsoft Windows as the most secure OS out there. They claim that Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest patch development time of any OS, including Mac, Red Hat Linux, Solaris, and HP-UX.

The information was a part of Symantec's 11th Internet Security Threat Report (PDF). The report, released this week, covered a huge range of security and vulnerability issues over the last six months of 2006, including operating systems.

Anuj Nayar, manager of Apple's Mac OS X and developer relations, would only say "Apple takes security very seriously and has a great track record of addressing vulnerabilities before they affect you."  — he is right ! 

Analyst Charles King with Pund-IT said Microsoft has had to be aggressive about dealing with security issues because it's such a big target. In that regard, the company has met the challenge.

PS — > can't believe this !

Also Note : Microsoft issued a security report for the first 90 days from the release of Windows Vista and gave it an A-plus.
 

Are they making a fool out of us.. . What do they think.. Everybody knows how Windows is. Yeah..No doubt Its one of the best user friendly OS but not the secure one..No No… If you say Gnu/Linux are excellent at security , then everybody accepts , due to its opensource community of the GnuLinux most of the vulnerabilities get rectified as soon as they are brought to notice. Apple Mac is no less, its on the top too.. We can rate then as - first comes MAC , GnuLinux, Solaris,HP-UX ..these top ratings can vary among themselves but will not include Windows in the list of top-5 .. No way.not in the top secure OS list ! ( maybe included in the top good looking OS 's ).

Why such misguiding information to the people ! What will Symantec get out of it ! 

PS : On May 19,2006 Symantec Sues Microsoft to Halt Vista  — How can such a difference in opinion occur so quickly !

Comments from the blog sphere :

Frankly, the rate at which you *patch* bugs is not an indication of the security of the system. A higher patch rate does not mean the system is less secure - according to that metric I could simply patch fewer bugs and look better. Without providing useful details, Symantec can spin the 'results' any which way. — slashdolt

Of course they want to Windows to be perceived as the most secure. They want people to use it. - s5

Since Symantec gets approximately zero sales from Macs and Linux users, of course they would promote Windows  - Belayman

Am I blind? - dpff

I'm getting a headache… nothing seems real anymore -  s0crates82

via [ Internet News ]