Microsoft warned users Thursday of a zero-day flaw affecting Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, occurring ironically in the Windows Help and Support Center, that could enable hackers to launch malicious attacks. Specifically, the security flaw, first detected and published by Google researcher Tavis Ormandy, occurs in the Windows Help and Support Center. The bug is accessed through the protocol handler and can be...
Today, we’re announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible...
In recent posts we’ve talked about the new Messenger and the re-invention of Hotmail. Today, we’re going to spend time on the new Windows Live Essentials. Windows Live Essentials – the essential software for Windows Windows Live Essentials includes Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Sync and Family Safety. Essentials is available for free and in many cases may already be installed on...
The keyword for the introduction of Mozilla Firefox 3.5 was speed. That helped start a whole new race in which Firefox led early, but fell soon behind Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and later even Opera. Now with even Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 looking to erase the speed gap, and then some, a newly published Mozilla developers’ page characterizes Firefox 4 — whose first public...
Microsoft has already started building Windows 7’s successor, a release referred to as Windows 8, but the company is keeping all details under a tightly closed lid. This is, of course, of no surprise, especially considering that the company is mum on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), which, by all accounts, is much closer. Market analysis firm Gartner is telling business customers not...
In mid-March 2010, Microsoft started the discussion on the first service pack for Windows 7. While announcing that the successor of Windows Vista was poised to get nothing more than a minor upgrade with SP1, the Redmond company did indicate that new features would be introduced, but focused on Windows Server 2008 R2. Because they share the same core, Windows 7 and Windows Server...
Microsoft said it will deliver 10 security updates next week to patch a record-tying 34 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, and SharePoint. The patches will also quash two bugs that Microsoft acknowledged in February and April. “I’d actually call this a moderate month,” said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security. “Looking at the criticality of the bulletins, and the fact...
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware has been an excellent anti-malware application since it was first released to the public in January of 2008. Previously you had to purchase a license online. But now, that’s changing. Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware is now being sold in retail stores for around $29.99. A few of the benefits of the paid version over the free version are is that the paid version provides...
The developers of the open-source cross-platform video player VLC have released a version that supports the new WebM video format, which Google open-sourced at its developers conference last week. VLC 1.1.0 Release Candidate 1 also comes with support for hardware-based decoding of H.264-encoded video on some platforms. The new version of the software can be downloaded here (hat tip to The H). The release...
Half of the enterprise computers running the aged Windows XP operating system are still relying on the soon-to-be-retired Service Pack 2 (SP2), a researcher said today. According to security risk and compliance management provider Qualys, 50% of the several hundred thousand PCs it monitors for its clients are still running Windows XP SP2. “The normal thing for IT is not to muck around with...
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