Microsoft Office Security Team Enlists Bots, Pen Tests

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Storm, Srizbi, and... Microsoft? Microsoft’s Office application security team actually runs its own internal botnet, which, among other things, “fuzzes” for vulnerabilities in Office applications. Microsoft’s botnet isn’t anywhere near the size of Srizbi (over 300,000 bots at last count) nor any of the other mega-botnets -- it’s just a couple ...

Posted in Internet, Privacy, Security, Windows | No Comments

Live Mesh Connects Folders and Desktops Across Windows PCs

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Windows only (for the moment): Microsoft has thrown open the doors to a "tech preview" of its Live Mesh service, a kind of web-boosted version of Lifehacker favorite folder-syncing tool FolderShare, with a bit of remote desktop connection thrown in. Signing up with a Windows Live ID gets you 5 ...

Posted in Hardware, Internet, Linux, Networking, Software, Windows | No Comments

Four ‘important’ Microsoft patches due Tuesday

Friday, July 4th, 2008

Microsoft will release four security patches for its Windows, Exchange, and SQL products next Tuesday, all rated "important."The Exchange and SQL flaws are "Elevation of Privilege" bugs, meaning that an attacker could theoretically exploit them to get administrative access to a PC. One of the Windows flaws is labeled a ...

Posted in Internet, Security, Software, Windows | No Comments

Vista Service Pack Patched

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Microsoft has released a reliability update for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) that fixes several bugs in the OS update, including one that threw off errors when users tried to run large applications, such as Microsoft's own Excel 2007 and Windows Media Player. The update, which Microsoft posted Tuesday to ...

Posted in Security, Windows | No Comments

New tools to block and eradicate SQL injection

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

The MSRC released an advisory today that discusses the recent SQL injection attacks and announces three new tools to help identify and block these types of vulnerabilities. The advisory discusses the new tools, the purpose of each, and the way each complements the others. The goal of this blog post is ...

Posted in Coding, Internet, Security, Software | No Comments