Microsoft says IE updates possible
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Hedging slightly on its vow not to update browser before releasing Longhorn, Microsoft says it could release add-ons to freshen up IE.
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Microsoft has a technical work-around for users who found IE crashing after recent security update.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is using the same tactic for its online services that made its Internet Explorer browser ubiquitous among Internet users. With new beta technology it's releasing Wednesday, Microsoft is tying its Windows Live services directly to its Windows OS. A new unified installer for Windows Live services will help users download Wednesday's updates of photo-sharing, mail, instant messaging, online safety, and other services, the company said on its Windows Live Wire blog. The new installer also will automatically update those services on Windows Vista and XP going forward. "This new suite of applications is a new way that we can make connecting, communicating, and sharing anywhere a terrific experience on your Windows PC," according to a blog post by Chris Jones, vice president of the Windows Live team at Microsoft. "Together with our Web services, we have a complete suite that combines the best of the Web and the best of Windows and works the way you want." As Microsoft tries to catch up to rivals Google and Yahoo in building out a portfolio of online services so it can sell more advertising, it's no surprise the company is tying those services to what remains its most popular product, Windows. Most people probably don't need more than one set of free online services just as they don't need more than one browser, and the strength of tying IE to Windows was that people used the browser over Netscape just because it was there. But what worked for IE may not work so well in the world of Web 2.0, where things move much faster than they did 10 years ago. When Microsoft cut the frequency of IE upgrades and enhancements, customers became restless for a better product; enter the Mozilla Firefox browser two years ago, which now has a nice niche for itself. Microsoft also is fighting two well-respected and entrenched competitors that started their businesses on the Web and have loyal followings in their own right. Creating user-friendly Web-based clients for everyday applications also is more complicated than creating a browser --Â and not so easily commoditized, said Matt Rosoff, analyst with Directions on Microsoft. "With Internet services, there is a lot more differentiation possible," he said. Using the Windows Live unified installer also is still an option -- not a requirement -- of the OS, so the services are not as tightly linked to Windows as IE was, Rosoff said. While he would not be surprised if Microsoft eventually made integration between the OS and Windows Live services even tighter, the company must be wary of inciting the antitrust gods with such a move. "They have to be careful with that sort of thing," Rosoff said. In addition to tying Windows Live to Windows, Microsoft also added new features to specific services in Wednesday's beta refreshes. Windows Live Photo Gallery now allows users to share photos directly on its Windows Live Spaces social networking site and its Soapbox on MSN Video video-sharing service, the company said. It also enables people to import photos from digital cameras and have them automatically organized into events based on date and time within the service. In other enhancements, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 includes additions to security and performance, while the Windows Live OneCare Family Safety update extends support to its Mail, Messenger, and Spaces services. More information about the updates and the ability to download them is available on Microsoft's Windows Live services Web site.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has rolled out its monthly security updates for December, patching critical flaws in Internet Explorer, Windows Media Format, and the Visual Studio 2005 development software. The seven security patches address 11 bugs, including two in the Windows Media Player software. However, no fixes were provided for two Microsoft Word flaws that have been used in a small number of attacks during the past week. Microsoft had said it would release only six patches on Tuesday, but the company added the Windows Media Format update at the last minute, after reports of attacks based on this vulnerability began surfacing. The Windows Media Format is used by Microsoft's Windows Media Player software. In late November, security vendors warned that a buffer overflow error could occur when the Windows Media Player processed ".asx" (Advanced Stream Redirector) media files, meaning that users would first need to be tricked into opening a malicious media file for the attack to work. In its update Tuesday, Microsoft also patched a similar bug in the way the media player processes ".asf" (Advanced Systems Format) files. The Internet Explorer patch fixes four bugs. It is also rated critical, and is noteworthy because some of these bugs will probably begin to be exploited by hackers by week's end, said Gunter Ollmann, director of IBM Corp.'s Internet Security System's X-Force threat analysis service. Enterprise administrators should also pay close attention to an SNMP (Simple Network Monitoring Protocol) patch issued Tuesday, Ollmann said. Microsoft has rated this patch as "important," rather than critical because SNMP is normally blocked at the firewall and turned off by default on Windows systems. However, it is widely deployed as part of the network monitoring infrastructure in the enterprise, and is often used on critical servers, Ollmann said. Ollmann believes this SNMP patch is the "most important" update for enterprise customers. "Since the service is widely deployed in the enterprise and since it's commonly deployed on servers, we think this would be an important attack vector for enterprises," he said. The remaining updates include a "critical" fix for Visual Studio 2005, and "important" updates for Windows and Outlook Express, Microsoft said. Microsoft defines "critical" flaws as bugs that could allow the propagation of an Internet worm without any action on the part of the victim. The company's next set of security updates are due Jan. 9.
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Update to "critical" Internet Explorer patch repairs a serious security flaw introduced by the original version.
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Microsoft just swears that it hasn&#39;t given up on Internet Explorer and that it&#39;s really, really important to the future of Microsoft, to the next version of Windows, etc.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is not planning to release any security updates on Tuesday, one of only a handful of times the company won't have security patches available since its monthly security updates began in 2003, Microsoft said Thursday. Microsoft is currently working on patches for known vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 7, Office 2007's Publisher 2007, and the Windows Vista OS, but they are not ready for release at the moment, said a spokesman from Microsoft's public relations firm Thursday. The last time Microsoft had no security updates on "Patch Tuesday" was September 2005, he said. Patch Tuesday is the name researchers use for Microsoft's monthly updates, which come on the second Tuesday of the month. Though there will be no security updates, Microsoft will release two nonsecurity high-priority updates for Windows Update and Software Update Services and four nonsecurity, high-priority updates on Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services. Microsoft also will release an updated version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool on Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services, and the Download Center. The tool will not be distributed using Software Update Services. More information can be found on the Web site for Microsoft security updates. Because there are no security updates for March, the company will not hold its usual news conference next Wednesday.
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Users and admins who have been avoiding Microsoft's upgrade from version 6 to version 7 of Internet Explorer are going to have to try a little harder: The long-expected automatic upgrade is due to push out on Feb. 12.
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Microsoft Corp.  on Tuesday  released a security patch to fix a "critical" hole in its  Internet Explorer Web browser that the world's biggest software  maker said could allow an attacker to take control of a user's  computer.
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Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O on Tuesday   released a security patch to fix a "critical" hole in its   Internet Explorer Web browser that the world's biggest software   maker said could allow an attacker to take control of a user's   computer.
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Speculation is mounting over what will be in the next version of Windows and when the update will take place.
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Microsoft is asking a handful of beta testers what they'd like to see in its next Web browser, Internet Explorer 8, which is due out in late 2008 or early 2009. The survey was posted to the company's Connect beta site and largely focuses on RSS feeds.
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A newly found vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser could allow an attacker to take over a targeted machine -- even one with all its patches up to date.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has released its monthly set of security patches , fixing problems in Windows, Internet Explorer and in the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) software used for secure Web browsing. In total, Microsoft released six sets of patches, called updates, fixing 15 flaws in its products. Four of these updates are rated critical and administrators should patch them as soon as possible, security experts said Tuesday. Many of the flaws that Microsoft patched on Tuesday can be exploited via the Web. In particular the MS07-033 update, which fixes bugs in Internet Explorer and MS07-031 , which addresses a critical flaw in the SSL libraries used by Windows. The SSL flaw is particularly interesting because it affects users who are visiting supposedly trustworthy Web sites, and because it could also affect non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Opera, said Amol Sarwate, manager of Qualys, Inc.'s vulnerability research lab. "It will affect all the browsers that call the libraries that are in the Windows operating system," he said. Although Microsoft warned that this flaw could be used by attackers to run unauthorized software on the victim's computer, this would be hard to do. "Attempts to exploit this vulnerability would most likely result in the Internet Web browser or application exiting," Microsoft wrote in its MS07-031 bulletin. "The system would not be able to connect to Web sites or resources using SSL ... until a restart of the system." The two other critical updates are MS07-035 , which fixes a bug in the core Windows operating system's Win32 API (application programming interface), and MS07-034 , which fixes bugs in Outlook Express and Windows Mail. Because MS07-035 could be exploited via the Web, it should also be patched as soon as possible, Sarwate said. The other updates released Tuesday fix less-critical flaws in Windows Vista and Microsoft's Visio drawing software. The Vista update is noteworthy because it marks the first time that Microsoft has patched a flaw that was introduced in the Vista operating system, Sarwate said. Previous Vista patches have repaired "legacy" code that was written for earlier versions of Windows, and then reused in Vista. But the MS07-032 update applies to Vista only. This flaw, rated "moderate" by Microsoft, could allow an attacker to gain unauthorized access to information such as administrative passwords stored within Windows.
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Microsoft Corp. released four critical patches Tuesday to plug security holes in several versions of its Windows operating system, Internet Explorer Web browser and other programs.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft has released its monthly set of security patches , fixing problems in Windows, Internet Explorer and in the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) software used for secure Web browsing.
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Microsoft plans to release three security updates for Windows and Office next Tuesday. One of these is rated critical.