Posted 11/20/09 at 03:46:07 PM by Bart Salisbury

Someone was bound to connect the dots, even if the dots weren’t intended to make a pattern. With Microsoft working with the National Security Agency (NSA), the nation’s biggest, most top-secret spy agency, some suspicious were bound to be raised. But, not to worry, Microsoft assures us: It did not plant deep in Windows 7 code a backdoor for the NSA to spy on you.

Microsoft’s story is the NSA helped Microsoft with the “Security Compliance Management Toolkit.” The toolkit, which rolled out after Windows 7, allows enterprises, government agencies, and large-scale organizations the ability to manage levels of security risk beyond those of regular users. The NSA is a happy partner in such ventures because of its concerns for cybersecurity.

But there lurks behind the story the NSA’s need for gathering intelligence, which a backdoor into an OS would greatly aid. Cisco, for example, has built into it’s products, such as its Internetworking Operating system (ISO) and VoIP lines, lawful intercept capabilities. (Which require a court order.) It’s not a big leap to conclude that perhaps Microsoft might have done the same.

Some have questioned the wisdom of Microsoft’s working with the NSA, including Marc Rothenberg, the executive director of the Electronics Privacy Information Center (EPIC). Said Rothenberg: “The key problem is that NSA has a dual mission, COMPUSEC, computer security, now called cyber security, and SIGINT, signals intelligence, in other words surveillance.” He added that it might be tough for any company, even Microsoft, to turn down an NSA “suggestion” for a backdoor.

Roger Thompson, chief research officer of AVG, sides with Microsoft. “I can't imagine NSA and Microsoft would do anything deliberate, because the repercussions would be enormous if they got caught,” said Thompson.

For now, Microsoft says it isn’t there. Whether that curbs your paranoia or not is another matter entirely.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 02:24:59 PM by Bart Salisbury

Attendees at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles got a sneak preview of IE9 yesterday. From what was presented it’s not really clear what type of personality IE9 will take on.

Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, stated Microsoft want’s IE9 to be “a good balance between things we know and have to do and moving the whole notion of browsing forward.” The task of delivering the “most world class browsing experience we can develop,” he added, has to be done “in the most responsible way.” Which suggests IE9 will be brought into line with existing browser potential, but won’t be pushing any cutting-edge technology.

Changes and improvements are plenty. First off, IE9 will use the Trident rendering engine, running on DirectX instead of GDI. DirectX will shift graphic processing from software to hardware, which will boost the display of graphics and text, and provide smoother rendering of animation and video.

While DirectX adds advantages, apparently it also tosses up some roadblocks. Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team, says DirectX is hard to get right: “there's a huge benefit but it takes a lot of work to get all of the details right – like how do controls like Flash work and what about printing?” Being best positioned to “get all the details right”, DirectX helps Microsoft, but may not help out cross-platform browsers, which may not want to make the commitment.

Sunspider JavaScript benchmarks put IE9 about five times faster than IE8. And IE9 scores 32 out of 100 on the ACID 3 test. That’s faster than IE6, but still seems a bit pokey. I’m using my PC-inferior Mac to write this, and Firefox 3.5 scores 92, while Safari 4 hits 100. Steven Sinofsky, Windows senior vice president, concedes: “that’s a test we need to do a better job on.”

IE9 will better support standards, such as CSS, including CSS3. IE9 scores 574 out of 578 on the CSS3 selectors test--much better than the 330 out of 578 scored by IE8. (Again, Safari and Firefox on my Mac both score perfect 578s.)

IE9 is at best a work in progress. Right now there is no canvas or SVG support, and no real commitment to HTML 5 standards. But, with no release date yet announced, and a technical preview not available until sometime next year, it’s a good bet IE9 will evolve into something a bit different than what we’re seeing today.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 10:45:44 AM by Paul Lilly

Up to 1 million Xbox modders were pretty pissed to find that they had been banned from Xbox Live following the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the biggest launch in entertainment history. The mass ban was intended to prevent pirated copies of the highly anticipated game from spreading, a notion Microsoft will now have to defend in a class action lawsuit filed against the company.

"Although modification of Xbox consoles is arguably against he terms of use for Xbox/Xbox Live, Microsoft 'conveniently' timed the Xbox console ban to coincide with the release of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfar 2 game and less than two months after the release of the very popular Halo 3: ODST game," says AbingtonIP, the Texas-based law firm who filed th suit.

According to the lawsuit, the timing of Microsoft's widespread ban may have resulted in more Xbox Live subscription sales than if the bans had taken place before the release of Halo 3: ODST and CoDMW2. The lawsuit also claims that some of the bans locked out users who had modded their consoles for reasons other piracy.

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Posted 11/19/09 at 08:36:26 PM by Ryan Whitwam

If you run a Windows Home Server, you can look forward to November 24th when Microsoft will be releasing Home Server Power Pack 3. It will be pushed out to all current users via Windows Update. While it is a somewhat major update, it will install automatically if you have Windows Update configured to install patches itself.

Power Pack 3 makes a number of improvements to the system. Users can expect Windows 7 enhancements relating to backup and restore of Windows 7 PCs, Windows 7 Libraries integration, enhancements for Windows 7 Media Center. There will also be better support for netbook computers.

Most of the upgrades seem to Windows 7 related, but some improvements to TV recording are there as well. Recorded TV can be automatically archived on Home Server Power Pack 3. Microsoft is also including an improved console view. Overall, it looks to be a nice update. Let us know how it goes when you get it.

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Posted 11/18/09 at 07:54:36 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Microsoft today announced the (official) launch of the Office 2010 beta. The official launch has come a week after the beta was leaked onto torrent sites. Microsoft first announced the beta on its website and Kurt DelBene, Office unit senior vice president at Microsoft, later confirmed the launch at the ongoing Professional Developers Conference (PDC). The beta can be downloaded from the official Office 2010 website.

The beta of Office Mobile 2010 is also now available from the Windows Mobile Marketplace. However, it is only meant for Windows Mobile 6.5. The consumer version of Office Web Apps – the online version of Office - is yet to bid adieu to the technical preview stage, however, the enterprise version has safely reached beta.

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Posted 11/18/09 at 04:09:38 PM by Bart Salisbury

Microsoft is doing some chest-thumping over the advantages of it’s 64-bit operating systems. According to Joe Faulhaber, who works at the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, the 64-bit versions of Windows and Vista are less likely than their 32-bit counterparts to be infected with malware.

According to Faulhaber, who relied on information gathered by Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRC), during the first half of 2009 64-bit XP was 48 percent less likely to be infected, while 64-bit Vista was 35% less likely to be infected. No information was available for Windows 7 for the obvious reason it hadn’t yet been released, but it is expected the same would hold true for it. Faulhaber suggests the reason 64-bit versions are more secure is that malware, written mostly for the 32-bit world, is confused by 64-bit.

Not so fast, chicken Marengo! Alfred Hunger, vice president of engineering at the security firm Immunet, and formerly of Symantec, says there’s plenty of 64-bit malware out there. In fact, its a pretty easy thing for malware creates to whip up 64-bit versions if and when they desire. The low levels of 64-bit infection, he says, is more due to the low levels of 64-bit penetration in the market. If there aren’t all that many people using it there’s no incentive for malware makers to pay attention.

Microsoft’s own bi-annual Security Intelligence Report offers up another possibility: 64-bit users are smarter than 32-bit users. Being technologically more savvy they are less likely to bring malware onto their machines. The report concludes that as 64-bit spreads from the provenance of techno-geeks the current difference in infection rates between 32-bit and 64-bit will evaporate.

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Posted 11/18/09 at 02:31:51 PM by Bart Salisbury

One might be tempted to think that Ray Ozzie, chief software architect for Microsoft, spent a prior life at Apple. In a chinwag with technology developers at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference he maintained that the number of applications available for a smartphone platform isn’t all that big a deal. After all, he says, “All the apps that count will be ported to every one of them.” Wasn’t that the Apple mantra about  ten years ago?

The crux of the matter, says Ozzie, is that mobile apps are pretty simple to crank out. “Mobile apps require very little development, so it’s much easier to bring them onto every platform,” he told his audience. If a particular app isn’t available now it probably will be in the future, so that shouldn’t be a crucial factor in deciding which smartphone, or smartphone platform, to buy into.

Ozzie’s comments suggest Microsoft is keenly aware of the all the apps currently available for the iPhone. It would hard not to be aware, the way Apple touts this as an advantage. A cynic would conclude that Ozzie is dismissive of app numbers because of Windows Mobile’s current disadvantage in this respect. An optimist might counter that Ozzie has a point: do you really need ‘an app for that’?

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Posted 11/18/09 at 11:15:01 AM by Paul Lilly

With the release of its latest OS, Microsoft appears to have put security at the forefront of the design phase. So much so that the National Security Agency (NSA) had a hand in helping the software maker lock down its operating system, a senior NSA official said on Tuesday.

"Working in partnership with Microsoft and [the Department of Defense], NSA leveraged our unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide without constraining the user's ability to perform their everyday tasks," Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's Information Assurance Director, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a statement prepared for a hearing held in Washington. "All this was done in coordination with the product release, not months or years later in the product cycle."

The NSA and Microsoft working together is not exactly a new venture. Back in 2007, NSA officials confirmed they had also lent a hand during the development of VIsta, but the collaboration goes even further back. In 2005, the NSA and other government agencies assisted Microsoft in securing Windows XP and other programs.

Of course, the NSA is probably best known for its electronic eavesdropping operations, and we can't wait to see what the conspiracy theorists have to say about the organization's involvement with Windows.

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