Commission concerned about Vista security
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Countdown faceoff Microsoft has fallen foul of the European Commission yet again over plans for its Vista operating system.â¦
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Software security companies and US-Cert, the US government&#39;s computer monitoring body, have issued warnings about security vulnerabilities in Oracle software.
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Microsoft must comply with behavioral remedies imposed by the European Commission, but observers are skeptical of the difference they will make.
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Calls concerns over undercover updates to Windows XP and Windows Vista a tempest in a teapot.
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(InfoWorld) - Four European Parliament members warned the European Commission that its actions toward Microsoft could endanger the competitiveness of European businesses by delaying the release of Vista, Microsoft's next operating system. In a strongly worded letter submitted Thursday to Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, the legislators said Microsoft regards the E.U.'s regulatory actions as a "risk factor." Microsoft used the terminology in its annual report filed Aug. 25 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). "This effectively means that the Commission's actions are endangering the ability of European business to compete globally," the legislators wrote. The letter is signed by U.K. representatives Chris Heaton-Harris, Sharon Bowles and Peter Skinner, plus Michal Kaminski of Poland. Microsoft wrote in the SEC filing that its ongoing appeal of European Commission's March 2004 antitrust decision means there's uncertainty over the legal principles regarding product design in the European market. "These uncertainties could ... delay release dates for Windows or other products," the SEC filing read. Microsoft has provided copies of Vista to the Commission along with technical information, said spokesman Tom Brookes. The Commission, he said, has raised concerns regarding complaints by competitors. In March, the Commission sent a letter to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, saying it was concerned about certain functions in Vista and how compatible the OS would be with products from other software companies. European Commission representatives were not immediately available for comment regarding Thursday's letter. Brookes said Microsoft was unaware of the letter until this morning. Two of the legislators said their letter is based on information contained in the company's SEC filing. Heaton-Harris referred questions to Microsoft, regarding why the company thought the E.U. might cause a delay Vista's shipping date. Microsoft has said Vista will be ready for corporate customers in November and consumers in January. Bowles said she has participated in informal sessions where Commission members have acknowledged they are watching Microsoft's development of Vista closely. She said she had no specific information on what the Commission is currently doing, as few details are publicly released. However, the Commission's actions have prompted concern among small to medium-size businesses in Europe, worried that the E.U. could potentially delay Vista's release, putting them at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world, Bowles said. "That climate of uncertainty caused through competition policy and actions already taken ... are meaning that Europe is being deprived," Bowles said. Europe is in the middle of a 10-year plan, called the Lisbon Agenda, to increase the continent's competitiveness in technology. The legislators wrote that they are concerned the Commission's actions toward Microsoft are undermining Europe's moves to become a knowledge-driven economy. Microsoft and the Commission have locked horns over how the company is complying with the March 2004 antitrust decision. TheÂ Commission fined MicrosoftÂ â¬280.5 million ($357 million at the time) in July for failing to provide technical documentation for certain protocols used by its server products. The Commission required disclosure of the protocols to allow competitors to develop compatible products.Â Microsoft is appealing. Microsoft is also appealing the entire March 2004 decision, in which it was fined â¬497 million ($613 million at the time), before the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg.
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Microsoft  raised the  possibility on Thursday that it might delay the introduction of  its new Vista Windows operating system in Europe, saying it  depended on the European Commission's antitrust requirements.
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EC probe extended, McAfee puts boot in More bad news for Microsoft's delayed operating system Vista - the European Commission is widening an investigation into whether or not it breaches competition law.â¦
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In a story for the Associated Press this afternoon, one of the directors of Microsoft's Windows Client Product Planning team is quoted as saying that a Black Hat security conference demonstration last August scared Microsoft to the point where the company seriously considered removing virtualization capability from Vista entirely.
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(InfoWorld) - Any attempt to incorporate its own security software in Windows Vista, Microsoft Corp.'s next generation operating system, could spark a new antitrust spat with Europe's top regulator, the European Commission, spokesman Jonathan Todd warned Tuesday.Todd told Microsoft not to shut out security software rivals. Diversity and innovation could be at risk if Microsoft bundles its own security software with its dominant OS, he said. Microsoft warned last week that Vista, due to launch early next year, may be delayed in Europe because of the regulator's concerns. Earlier Tuesday the company said it hoped the Commission would not demand the removal of important security features from Windows Vista in Europe. "One of our principal concerns is that European consumers have access to the same new security features in Windows Vista as everyone else," said Erich Andersen, vice president and associate general counsel for Europe. "We want to launch Windows Vista in a fully lawful manner and we want to avoid regulatory decisions that could increase security risks for European consumers."The spat over Vista's security features is similar to the disagreement over bundling Media Player, Microsoft's audio and video playing software, into Windows XP. Two and a half years ago the Commission found Microsoft guilty of foreclosing the market for audio and video players by attaching Media Player to its operating system. It ordered the company to offer a second version of Windows with Media Player stripped out and fined Microsoft â¬497 million (US$610 million at the time) for abusing its dominant position in the market. The remedy Microsoft proposed is widely seen as a failure. Sales of the unbundled version of Windows, dubbed Edition N, are almost nonexistent. Nevertheless, Todd said last week that the remedy's true value is as a precedent for future bundling issues that could arise from the launch of future versions of Windows, including Vista. Microsoft was misleading people by implying that a possible delay to Vista's launch in Europe would be due to the regulator, he said "It is not up to us to tell Microsoft what it has to do to Vista. The onus is on Microsoft to design its product in conformity with European competition laws which it is well aware of," he said.
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Ben Fathi, now the chief of development in the Windows core operating system group, would like Vista to have half the first-year security flaws of its predecessor, XP. Security analysts offer their thoughts.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft tried to dazzle the antitrust regulators in Brussels on Thursday with new research that illustrates how immense the effect of Windows Vista will be next year on Europe's IT industry and the broader economy. Microsoft warnedÂ earlier this week that the launch of Vista might be delayed in Europe because of the regulators' concerns about its impact on competition. On Thursday it used research conducted by IDC -- and sponsored by Microsoft -- to illustrate how much Vista is set to benefit Europe in terms of revenues and jobs next year. Within a year of going on sale, IDC said, Windows Vista will be installed on more than 30 million computers in the six E.U. countries included in the study: Germany, France, the U.K., Spain, Poland and Denmark. More than 100 million computers worldwide will run Vista within a year of its launch. The predictions come from a research paper titled "The economic impact of Microsoft Windows Vista." Vista-related employment will account for more than 20 percent of all IT jobs within a year of its arrival, IDC predicted. That translates into around one million IT professionals in the six countries, including 100,000 new jobs by the end of 2007, assuming that Vista is launched on time at the beginning of next year. The European Commission, Europe's top antitrust regulator, is concerned that new features planned for Vista, like its improved security software, willÂ fall foul of the same antitrust rulesÂ the company was found guilty of breaching two and a half years ago with its bundling of Windows Media Player. Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, said the impact of Vista will be much greater than the direct benefits to Microsoft. "The economic opportunity Windows Vista creates for small and large companies across the region is clearly much more significant," he said at a press conference to unveil the study. But some commentators saw the unveiling of the IDC research as a way of pressuring the Commission to back off. Last week, four members of the European Parliament wrote to competition commissioner Neelie Kroes warning her not to scupper the launch of Vista. "It looks like operation shock and awe," said one person following Microsoft's antitrust travails in Europe, who asked not to be named. Microsoft is "losing the legal argument, so it's turning to political means to maintain its abusive monopoly," said the person, who is close to some of Microsoft's nearest competitors. For every euro ($1.27) Microsoft generates in its own revenues from Vista, other firms in the six countries that are involved in distributing the OS, building applications for it or servicing computers using Vista will generate â¬14 (17.76) in sales, IDC said. These companies should sell "over â¬32 billion ($40.6 billion) in products and services revolving around Windows Vista," IDC said. "Rapid and widespread adoption of Windows Vista means that its launch ... will have a pronounced positive impact on local economies throughout Europe," IDC said. The six countries in the study account for over 65 percent of all IT spending in the European Union, Croatia, Norway, and Switzerland. (IDC is owned by International Data Group, the parent company of IDG News Service.)
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After suffering embarrassing security exploits over the past several years, Microsoft Corp. is trying a new tactic: inviting some of the world's best-known computer experts to try to poke holes in Vista, the next generation of its Windows operating system.
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(InfoWorld) - When Windows Vista ships next year, customers might have a tougher time getting their security software to work properly, executives from Symantec said Wednesday. At issue are two new features being introduced with Vista: an enhanced Windows Security Center as well as a feature in the 64-bit version of Vista called PatchGuard. Microsoft says it is adding these features to lock down the operating system, but Symantec believes that they will be harmful to customers by making it harder for them to use third-party software. "There's no question that they're leveraging a monopolistic position to limit customer choice," said Chris Paden a Symantec spokesman. While Symantec executives did accuse Microsoft of being more difficult to work with on Vista than with previous operating system introductions, they stopped short of accusing Microsoft of antitrust violations. "It's not anti-competitive behavior, because Vista hasn't even hit the market yet, " Paden said. Security vendors like Symantec are in a state of heightened sensitivity these days as they've begun to compete with Microsoft head-on, and the specter of further antitrust actions looms over Microsoft's every move in the security space. Last week the European Union's spokesman on competition, Jonathan Todd, warned that theÂ market could be threatenedÂ if Microsoft doesn't allow security vendors a fair chance of competing. Symantec and other security vendors dislike PatchGuard because it prevents them from accessing the Windows kernel. They say it will stop them from delivering important features like Symantec's "anti-tampering" technology, which prevents malicious programs from modifying Symantec's own software. PatchGuard will also make it more difficult for security vendors to protect against malicious software that takes advantage of kernel-level bugs, said Eric Sites, vice president of research and development with Sunbelt Software. "There are a lot of new exploits coming out that exploit kernel-level drivers, " he said. "If we're able to get into the kernel, we can watch for things like that, but with what Microsoft is doing we can't do that." Microsoft declined to be interviewed for this article, but in an interview with IDG News last week a Microsoft executive said that PatchGuard was simply an effort toÂ prevent the kernel from being misused. "We think that there's a significant amount of confusion around... certain security features in the product that we think raise the foundation," said Stephen Toulouse a senior product manager in the Security Technology Unit. "What we're doing is we're walling off the kernel from attackers, because the functionality that is currently there was never meant to be used by anybody -- by software vendors or attackers." But PatchGuard is enabled only in the 64-bit version of Windows. Because there are few 64-bit applications written for Vista, most of Vista's initial users are expected to run the operating system in 32-bit mode, and their security software will still be able to access the kernel. A more immediate issue for Symantec is many Vista users will find that both the Windows Security Center and Symantec warnings will pop up simultaneously. This doesn't happen with Windows XP because Symantec's software is able to automatically disable the Windows warnings, but with Vista users will have to turn off the Security Center themselves. This will make things unnecessarily complicated for many customers, said Rowan Trollope, Symantec's vice president of consumer engineering. "Most users can't figure out how to do that," he said. With two warnings popping up, each with different wording, users will be confused at best, and may simply begin ignoring security warnings altogether, said Sites. Some observers have speculated that Symantec may press the EU for action against Microsoft in this matter, but Trollope and Paden wouldn't say what Symantec planned to do to address these problems. "We're looking at all the possibilities now," said Trollope, "And none of them are good for customers."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.
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Symantec and Adobe complain to the European Commission about Vista security and electronic document features.
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The key security update for Windows XP looks set to cause trouble for thousands of firms reveals a survey.
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The User Account Control built into Windows Vista is supposed to help make the new operating system safer. But it can be spoofed, undermining the very mission for which it was created, according to Symantec.
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What was not supposed to happen in Windows Vista apparently has: Despite a layer of protection that was supposed to prevent against processes elevating their own privileges, Microsoft now says someone found a way to do it.