Feds Racing to Lock Down Windows XP, Vista PCs
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Federal agencies required to ensure security of their Windows XP and Vista PCs by the end of February are going to get some tools to help them.
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Legal wrangling over competing hard drive technologies continues.
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Microsoft is starting a scheme to replace pirate versions of Windows XP with legal ones.
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(InfoWorld) - Windows Vista will be the most secure operating system that Microsoft Corp. has released, a company executive said Tuesday at a Vista launch event in Washington, D.C. Microsoft has listened to feedback from users, who disagreed with the decision to have some security features turned off by default in Windows XP, said Bill Veghte, Microsoft's corporate vice president for North America. "I won't mince words," Veghte said to an audience of nearly 3,000 people. "Every single time we had a trade-off between application compatibility or security, we went with security." ButÂ Windows VistaÂ also includes a feature that shows users which applications have problems after switching from an earlier version of Windows and the fixes that are available for those issues, Veghte said. Microsoft will also submit its Office SharePoint Server 2007 for U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) certification for electronic records management, Veghte said. Microsoft, working with partner Applied Information Sciences Inc., expects to have SharePoint Service compliant with DOD 5015.2 standard in May. The DOD standard focuses on secure records handling, requiring encryption on Web-based applications, the ability to schedule records to expire, and the ability to restrict user access to documents. Applied has developed a Records Management Center add-on pack to SharePoint Server, part of the MicrosoftÂ Office 2007 suite released Tuesday along with Vista. That add-on will allow users to comply with the DOD standard and have "military-grade" records management, said Russ Stalters, Applied's chief technology officer. The add-on package will allow customers to collaborate using SharePoint without buying third-party records-management software, as SharePoint users have had to do in the past, Stalters said. By complying with the DOD standard, the software package "sets the bar" for records management for customers in highly regulated industries, he said. In addition to the DOD compliance, Microsoft's new offerings contain several new security features, Veghte said in his speech. Microsoft has the responsibility of setting the standards for secure defaults and architecture in Vista, he said. Hackers are not standing still, and "we have to keep pace," he said. Among the new security features in Vista: -- System administrators can stop PCs from allowing USB (Universal Serial Bus) drives or other peripherals to be connected. -- Vista and Internet Explorer will warn users when a Web site attempts to install dangerous code. -- An antiphishing site, updated hourly, will warn users of e-mail messages that attempt to trick them into giving up their personal information. -- If a user manages to download malware, the Windows Defender security software is designed to block it from doing damage. -- The Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Vista will allow users to encrypt hard drives. Vista's BitLocker Drive Encryption feature is an attempt to address continuing problems with data breaches, often caused by lost laptops, Veghte said. About 660,000 laptops were lost or stolen in the U.S. in 2006, he said, leading to a lot of stories about such incidents that "ended up on the front page" of major newspapers.
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Adobe Systems and Symantec are planning to ask European Union regulators to take action against Microsoft's forthcoming operating system, Vista, which the companies believe has features that undercut rivals.
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A tool has been posted online that can apparently crack Vista's activation process by applying brute force -- and lots of time -- to come up with valid product keys. But the author is now telling users it's wrong to use it.
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Computer security firms are complaining that a feature in MicrosoftÂs new operating system would cripple their industryÂs innovation.
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I can't urge you strongly enough to read the article entitled How Vista Lets Microsoft Lock Users In. It details how Microsoft has built into Vista the "trusted computing" ability to lock down Office files via DRM such that no unauthorized document reader will be able to decrypt and read them. This is perhaps one of the biggest hidden weapons Microsoft has in its arsenal that could sabotage Linux and OpenOffice.org if Microsoft succeeds in its attempt to plug SUSE and all Novell's "interoperability" bonuses.   Think of this, if you will, as the Tivoization of Office files, only with malicious intent.  Microsoft could, indeed, open up the document format completely and swear before God that it will never sue anyone for patent infringement.  However, this does not prevent Microsoft from locking Office files in such a way that only Vista users can read them.  No one else will be able to do so without the proper authorization, thus rendering the open format and Microsoft compatibility entirely meaningless.
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Microsoft said Wednesday that it plans to clamp down hard on piraters of its next-generation operating systems, crippling both Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn" if users fail to activate their copies within 30 days.
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Owners of pirated copies of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system can trade them in for the real thing as part of a bid by the software giant to fight counterfeiting.
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particularly in the Far East and Eastern Europe - that they would rather give away copies of Windows XP to people who may
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With viruses, worms, spyware, spam and phishing, running a computer this year -- especially one with Windows -- has often been a colossal headache. -Rob Pegoraro
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Microsoft Corp. plans to severely curtail the ways in which people running pirated copies of its dominant Windows operating system can receive software updates, including security fixes.
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Millions of computer users are at risk of attack because flaws in the way Windows handles some images.
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Microsoft plans to block access to some features by unlicensed versions of OS.
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Windows XP Service Pack 2 promises to raise the security bar for the sometimes beleaguered operating system. Unfortunately, one of the new features could be spoofed so that it reports misleading information
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Computer giant Microsoft has launched a pilot scheme to replace counterfeit versions of Windows XP with legal ones. The first-time initiative is restricted to the UK and to users with pre-installed copies