Adobe, Symantec press EC to remove Vista tanks from their lawns
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The feature creeps Symantec and Adobe have raised objections to the inclusion of security software and electronic document technology in Windows Vista. Adobe has asked the European Commission to prevent the bundling of PDF document creation and reading tools that compete with its software.â¦
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'Secure Development Lifecycle' only goes so far Microsoft on Tuesday issued two security updates, one of them rated critical that fixes nasty bugs in Windows Vista that could allow an attacker to gain complete control over a user's machine.â¦
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Adobe has patched two bugs in its Acrobat Reader application that could allow an attacker to take over a user&#39;s system via a malicious PDF attached to an e-mail message.
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(InfoWorld) - Although some widely used applications from top software vendors haven't been certified for use with Windows Vista, they may nonetheless work with the MicrosoftÂ OS. Major applications from Symantec, Adobe Systems, Apple, and IBM aren't included on an official Microsoft list of applications that qualify for a "Certified for Windows Vista" or "Works with Windows Vista" logo. However, chances are they could currently be involved in the testing process to achieve those logos, Microsoft and its partners said. That's the case with Symantec's security products, according to a company spokesman. Though Symantec's software is not listed on the site as having achieved either of those designations, company spokesman Mike Bradshaw said Wednesday that Symantec's Norton 360, Norton Antivirus, and Norton Internet Security are already compatible with Vista. "It's just a matter of paperwork," he said. The products are going through a lengthy certification process and should be eligible for the label soon. Adobe's Acrobat Reader 8.0 also runs on Vista even though it is not listed on Microsoft's site as one of those applications certified for or working with Vista, according to Adobe spokesman Matt Rozen. Tom Caputo, group product manager on the Windows Vista partner team, said the list of vendors that have applications that have achieved either the "Certified for" or "Works with" Windows Vista designations is by no means the entire list of applications that actually work on Vista now. There are about 800 applications on that list, but "tens of thousands of applications" already can run on Vista, he said. "The goal of the logo programs is to give ISVs the opportunity to indicate to their compatibility status to the market using those two logos," he said. That said, there are still applications from top vendors that aren't available in a full compatible version for Vista, such as iTunes from Apple and Lotus Notes from IBM, among others. And according to some, this lack of compatibility is making it difficult to use Vista as their full-time OS. Microsoft blogger Chris Pirillo, founder of the Lockergnome technology portal, described the lack of compatibility with applications and hardware devices in a humorous blog entry "Windows Vista: Why I'm Breaking Up With You." The entry describes how Pirillo will "upgrade" from Vista to XP because he couldn't get some devices and applications he needs on a daily basis -- such as the software for his HP Laserjet 3052 scanner or his IPFax software-- to work on the new Windows client OS. "I gave Vista a real chance," he wrote. "I just can't use it as my primary OS anymore.... I'm still more than willing to help Microsoft improve Windows and get the message out to users, but I simply can't sacrifice my own time and productivity without benefits in clear sight. I'm begging Microsoft and all of my hardware and software vendors to make Windows better for me."
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Symantec Corp., the global leader in information security, today announced that its Norton Personal Firewall and Norton AntiVirus solutions will be preinstalled on all new HP Pavilion and Presario desktop PCs, expanding protection to consumers across the
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Blog: Symantec technology creates new protection for Internet Explorer users.
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Bot software that turns PCs into zombies spreads via holes in Symantec and Microsoft products.
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As part of a request to help modify its apparent stance on the upcoming removal of Group Policy Management Console from Microsoft's Windows Vista Service Pack 1, a company spokesperson told BetaNews, "The removal of the GPMC tool with Service Pack 1 is not significant to the majority of Windows Vista users."
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InfoWorld - Microsoft Corp. released tools to help companies deploy Windows Vista, acknowledging that there are deployment and application-compatibility pains enterprise IT managers face when updating business desktops to the new OS.
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Because of a bug in Windows Vista's antipiracy technology, some users are being told that they need to reactivate the operating system after installing new device drivers or software.
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Hackers have come up with a way to get around one of Microsoft's antipiracy mechanisms for Vista.
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A new Trojan horse program that attacks and removes troublesome advertising software, known as "adware," is circulating on the Internet, according to antivirus company Symantec Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - Top executives from the security firm McAfeeÂ went on the offensive Monday against Microsoft, saying Vista will be even less secure for customers than previous versions of Windows. The day after McAfee took out a full-page advertisement in the Financial Times to publicly air its grievances over the security of Vista, McAfee Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) George Samenuk, Vice President and Chief Scientist George Heron and Chief Security Architect John Viega delivered the same message in person in New York. "We are disturbed by the fact that with Vista, end customers will be less secure," Samenuk said. "Customers trust us ... To erode that trust would hurt all Internet users, all PC users. I don't think Microsoft wants that, nor does McAfee want that." Two security elements in Vista fare chief among McAfee's concerns, executives said. In Vista, Microsoft is locking down the kernel of the OS through a feature called PatchGuard on 64-bit versions. Microsoft's argument is that this will keep miscreants out of the OS and prevent the incidence of attacks, and it is something for which customers have been asking. "Fooling around with the kernel while it's running is like changing the sparkplugs on your car when the engine is running," said Stephen Toulouse, a senior product manager at Microsoft. "It's never been a good thing for users." But McAfee said since PatchGuard also prevents third-party security companies from getting inside the OS, they can't activate crucial security measures in their software to protect the OS from intruders. PatchGuard is not new in Vista, said Bruce McCorkendale, a distinguished engineer with McAfee competitor Symantec Corp., which shares McAfee's consternation over the feature. He said Symantec has been petitioning for Microsoft to change the feature since the company introduced it in its 64-bit version of Windows XP, but the company will not budge. "If you ask any security vendor that offers advanced protection, you'd get the same answer [about PatchGuard]," McCorkendale said. "It's just inhibiting the way security vendors do their jobs." However, according to Jupiter Research, only 5 percent of companies with 100 employees or more are running Windows XP in its 64-bit version, and that adoption is not supposed to ramp up significantly anytime soon, said analyst Joe Wilcox. "If this new [feature] affects 64-bit only and nobody is using 64-bit, what's the problem?" he said. The other big concern with Vista for McAfee lies in a new security interface called Windows Security Center (WSC). Microsoft will not allow this interface to be turned off, so McAfee and other third-party users can't install their own security-management consoles on Vista machines, executives said. McAfee's argument is that third-party security products can better detect potential or existing security problems that Vista inherently can, and unless those can be surfaced through the interface, users will not be alerted to them, Viega said. Some believe security vendors are crying foul over Vista because Microsoft's ability to control security features of the OS is a threat to their livelihood. Companies such as McAfee and Symantec have all but built their businesses on the fact that Windows is inherently insecure, and add-on security software is needed to protect it from intrusion. "Historically, when Microsoft has gotten into a market, the number of competitors goes down," Wilcox said. However, he said there is a legitimate concern, supported by precedence, that not only will vendors be pushed out of the market, but there will be less innovation in Windows security products and more problems will arise. Wilcox cited Internet Explorer as an example of an area in which Microsoft beat competitors, but then did not innovate on the product until it faced competition once again. "Microsoft won the browser war and for years abandoned the territory," Wilcox said. If Microsoft successfully reduces the number of competitors by building security into Windows, it might also become lackadaisical about security improvements, thus opening the OS up to more attacks.
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Blog: The software maker quietly dumps its consumer photo-editing program, noting that elements of the technology did make their way into Windows Vista.
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Two U.S. software firms are asking the   European Commission to take action against Microsoft's MSFT.O   new Vista operating system, the Wall Street Journal reported on   Thursday.
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The flaws disclosed last week in Adobe System&#39;s Reader and Acrobat programs have been used to exploit computers since at least January via malicious banner advertisements, security analysts are reporting.Adobe issued patches&#160;last Wednesday for Reader and Acrobat, but the company did not detail the flaws.Problems with Adobe&#39;s software can potentially affect millions of PC users, since the company&#39;s software is widely used to read PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Most people regard PDFs as harmless.&quot;From our standpoint, it appears that this PDF-based attack has been quite successful, affecting many thousands of users throughout the world,&quot; wrote Hon Lau on Symantec&#39;s Security Response Weblog.Greg McManus of iDefense Labs, the security arm of VeriSign, reported one of the vulnerabilities to Adobe in October, according to a post by the SANS Institute, a computer security organization.Since hackers have been apparently using the Adobe flaws since January, it raises the question how they discovered the flaw.Lau wrote that the &quot;swiftness of the exploit appearing in the wild suggests that leaks had occurred.&quot;However, it appears that the vulnerabilities in Reader and Acrobat were disclosed in a responsible way, Lau wrote.The flaws in the programs allow a hacker to create a malicious PDF document. If opened by a victim, that document downloads a malicious Trojan that Symantec calls &quot;Zonebac.&quot;Zonebac was first detected in 2006. It shuts off a user&#39;s security software as well as downloads other bad software. The latest version also appears to taint search engine results, Lau wrote.In January, iDefense noticed that the malicious PDF document was being delivered through malicious banner advertisements. Symantec&#39;s Lau wrote that it&#39;s not immediately clear how the PDF file is delivered, but that the banner ads could be redirecting people to other harmful Web sites with the file. Also, spam messages may be carrying the bad file as an attachment.Malicious banner ads can be particularly dangerous since the ads can show up on legitimate Web sites. Online advertising companies have struggled to keep these ads off their networks. Sometimes, hackers will approach the networks with what is a legitimate ad and then substitute it for a malicious one. Many of those bad ads have exploited vulnerabilities in Adobe&#39;s Flash multimedia technology.Adobe&#39;s Reader and Acrobat are designed to regularly look for updates, but users are advised to upgrade to the patched version, 8.1.2.&#160;
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(InfoWorld) - Two engineers at the computer security firm Symantec are coming to Brussels next week to discuss theÂ antitrust threatÂ posed to their company by the upcoming version of Microsoft's Windows, dubbed Vista, a Symantec spokesman said Thursday. Vice President for Consumer Engineering Rowan Trollope and a senior engineer in the technology strategy office, Bruce McCorkendale, will press their case to the European antitrust regulator, the European Commission. Vista is due to launch at the beginning of next year. The Commission hasÂ warned MicrosoftÂ about the possible impact on competition ofÂ Vista's built-in security software. The regulator fears that by including a sophisticated antivirus program into Vista, this could have a similar effect to the bundling of Media Player with Windows XP. Two and a half years ago the Commission ruled that the bundling of Media Player into Windows was anticompetitive and ordered Microsoft to launch a second version of Windows without Media Player. It alsoÂ fined the companyÂ nearly â¬500 million ($634 million). Meanwhile, Adobe Systems has told European Union regulators that Microsoft should be banned from bundling in free competing software for reading and writing electronic documents into Vista, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal Europe. The paper cites unnamed people familiar with the situation. Adobe's and Symantec's lobbying moves will come as no surprise to the Commission. Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes wrote to Microsoft in March expressing concern about Vista's impact on competition, and cited the computer security and document reader and writers sectors as examples of where Microsoft's bundling strategy might pose competition problems. However, earlier this week Kroes insisted she wasn't calling for Microsoft to launch Vista without any security system. "I have seen it suggested that the Commission may seek to prevent Microsoft from improving the security of its operating system. This is categorically not the case," she wrote in a letter to the Financial Times newspaper.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.