Will Longhorn Boost Computer Security?
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Truly trustworthy computing is still a few years off, HP exec says.
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Unpatched Windows machines are vulnerable to latest adware attack
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Glitches are nothing new to Microsoft, but could delays and confusion surrounding Longhorn be detrimental to the software giant?
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It could take months for many businesses to test and deploy Microsoft&#39;s most-secure operating system. By John Foley. Despite the promise that Microsoft&#39;s Windows XP Service Pack 2 release will make PCs more
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Also: High security built right into $100 laptop's OS. Read these stories and more from around the Web at News.com Extra.
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Longhorn needs a new name. It&#39;s not just because I&#39;m tired of the bovine references and the &quot;shorthorn&quot; jokes. No, the problem is that the future version of Windows, formerly known as Longhorn, in many ways
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Ziff Davis - Microsoft's omission of WinFS from the Longhorn version of Windows may open options for open-source competitors to the forthcoming operating system.
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TechWeb - Mozilla may be leveraging insight from Microsoft. They are considering implementing a security feature in the upcoming OS to better protect future versions of Firefox from attack.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft&#160;finally rolled its&#160;Vista operating system out the door Tuesday, billing it as its most secure operating system ever, but what are the security features that will really matter to enterprise users?
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Microsoft is offering yet another glimpse at its oft-delayed Longhorn edition of Windows. Two new concept videos have been posted to the MSDN Web site that demonstrate potential real-life scenarios for the software giant's next generation operating system. The demos -- one geared towards telecoms and the other toward governments -- take a detailed look at longhorn's core technologies and discuss its promised benefits. Longhorn is expected to ship sometime in 2006; although, pundits are questioning Microsoft's ability to deliver on its key components like the WinFS file-storage system and the Avalon graphical subsystem.
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Debate rages over whether the Mac operating system is inherently safer than Windows. Part of a series on hot security topics.
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Despite the removal of an advanced file system, Longhorn will not be short on features, Jim Allchin tells CNET News.com.
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ finally rolled itsÂ Vista operating system out the door Tuesday, billing it as its most secure operating system ever, but what are the security features that will really matter to enterprise users? To answer this question, IDG News Service asked Russ Humphries, a senior program manager with the Vista security team, to list the three Vista features that will have the biggest effect. Here's his list: 1) UAC (user account control) Before Vista, Windows automatically gave users too much power over their systems, Microsoft has said. With UAC, Windows will require a few extra steps before the user can do things such as install new programs. The feature will make it much easier for corporate administrators to lock down desktops and prevent users, or malicious programs, from messing around with the system or installing unauthorized software. UAC has been one of Vista's most controversial features with early testers complaining that they were overwhelmed with pop-up messages warning them about every little change they made to the system. But these warnings will not slow down most enterprise users because they won't be installing device drivers or software, Humphries said. "Most corporate users are going to get a corporate image that will have all their applications already installed on the image," he said. 2) Windows Defender With Vista, Microsoft has built a defense against pop-up ads and unwanted spyware right into the operating system. AlthoughÂ Defender has been criticized for not being as effective as commercial products, the fact that it will be so widely deployed is bound to improve things. "Adware is a huge annoyance, a security risk, and a bit of a machine hog, " Humphries said. "This has benefits for home users, small and medium-sized enterprises, and even large organizations." 3) BitLocker There have been more than 100 million U.S. victims of data breaches over the past two years, according to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. BitLocker aims to prevent the next 100 million from getting hit quite so quickly by giving corporate users a way to encrypt and password-protect their data. With BitLocker encrypting Vista's data, a stolen PC doesn't turn into a front-page data breach story,Â as was the case with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs last year. BitLocker can also ensure that the operating system hasn't been tampered with at boot-up time, but customers seem to particularly appreciate the fact that it will help keep their companies out of the newspapers every time a laptop is lost. "I've had a lot of thank-yous from our customers," Humphries said.
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The security features introduced in Apple&#39;s Leopard operating system need work. That&#39;s according to security experts who have been putting the new version of Mac OS X through its paces since&#160;the upgrade was introduced&#160;last Friday.Leopard introduces a number of important security features to the Mac, but they are often implemented incompletely, leaving users vulnerable to attack, said Thomas Ptacek, a researcher at Matasano Security, who Monday wrote a detailed assessment of Leopard&#39;s security.&quot;They&#39;ve done a really good job of robbing Microsoft advocates of their talking points,&quot; he said. But, &quot;I don&#39;t see anything that they&#39;ve done out of the box, where it&#39;s really any more resistant to attack than Tiger was,&quot; he added, referring to the previous update to Apple&#39;s operating system.According to Ptacek, two of Apple&#39;s key security enhancements -- Sandboxing and Library Randomization -- are great ideas that are imperfectly applied within Leopard.Take Library Randomization. It&#39;s a new feature that&#39;s supposed to make it hard for some of the most commonly used computer attacks like buffer overflows, where the attacker takes advantage of a software bug to place code somewhere in the computer&#39;s memory where he knows it will be run. Microsoft developed a similar technology for Vista, called Address Space Load Randomization. Library Randomization makes it much harder, if not impossible, for the attacker to know where to place this code, reducing the risk of attack.The problem is that Apple did not randomize all of the parts of the operating system that it should have, according to Ptacek. In particular, Apple&#39;s Dynamic Link Library has not been randomized.Security researcher Dino Dai Zovi said he&#39;s used this library in several of the Mac exploits he&#39;s written over the past few years. He has taken advantage of the fact that this library is not randomized, he agreed with Ptacek&#39;s assessment that this feature, as it&#39;s implemented in Leopard, would simply make things a little more difficult for attackers.Sandboxing is another feature that could ultimately make Mac OS X more secure. Sandboxing restricts software running on Mac OS so that even if it&#39;s hacked, it can&#39;t do things that it shouldn&#39;t, such as add new software to the computer. The problem is that Apple hasn&#39;t sandboxed many of the most commonly attacked applications such as the browser, mail client, or instant messaging software, Ptacek said.And the programs that have been sandboxed have not been walled off as thoroughly as they should be, he added.For example, the Quick Look file viewer has been sandboxed, but only to restrict network access. The software can still be misused to write malicious files where they will be automatically launched, Dai Zovi said. &quot;Most of the things that were sandboxed were network services,&quot; he said. &quot;Increasingly these days IM, e-mail and Web surfing are where most of the attacks are coming from, not directly on your network.&quot;Independent consultant Rich Mogull said that his biggest problem was with the Leopard firewall, which he said suffered from a confusing interface that made it very difficult to control access to individual services on the Mac. &quot;It was very complicated and very hard to get the right settings,&quot; he said.Worse, when he installed Leopard, he found himself suddenly without a firewall. &quot;It turned off my firewall when I upgraded, despite that being a default setting.&quot; he said.Like Ptacek and Dai Zovi, Mogull said he had been expecting more from Apple with the Leopard release, but he agreed that the new security features were a step in the right direction. &quot;I think that Apple has started down the right path but they are not as far as they communicated that they would be,&quot; he said. &quot;The firewall is the big negative; they really messed that up.&quot;Apple declined to comment in detail on its new security features. Company spokesman Anuj Nayar said via e-mail that &quot;Apple takes security very seriously and has a great track record of addressing potential vulnerabilities before they can affect users.&quot;Ptacek said that it is great that Apple has begun adding these security features even when the Mac has not been the target of a widespread worm or virus outbreak. &quot;I&#39;m impressed that when they didn&#39;t have to do it, they went after low-level features that no one will understand,&quot; he said. &quot;I like the direction they&#39;re headed. I&#39;m just saying that they&#39;ve got a long way to go to catch up with Microsoft.&quot;&#160;
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Record labels and Microsoft are in discussions about ways that the next generation of the Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn, can support copy-protected CD technology.
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After years of trying to make it easier for peripheral devices to work smoothly with computers, Microsoft is building in some difficulty. The upcoming Longhorn OS should allow companies to keep gizmos like iPod from stealing data.
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Even though Microsoftâs much-anticipated Longhorn has been stripped of its unified file system and some of its other key Longhorn technologies will be available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the next Windows release will still be worth the upgrade, according to Microsoft.