News: cloudcomputing congress Europe 2010

Submitted by kakroo on Mon, 2010-03-01 23:42.

Well for quite some time I’ve been thinking about whether to attend the conference. As per the website the advantages of attending the conference are:

Microsoft

News: Beware of Fake MS Security Essentials

Submitted by kakroo on Sun, 2010-02-28 08:55.

Microsoft has warned Windows users to be on their guard against a piece of rogue antivirus software passing itself off as Microsoft Security Essentials. Security essentials 2010 is a piece of software Microsoft said installs a fake virus scanner on your machine and]monitors and blocks processes it doesn't like. The software will also block access to websites of antivirus and malware companies and flag up a warning message. You can see the list of blocked sites here.

Security essentials 2010 blocks access by downloading a Win32/Alureon component and another Layered Service Provider component, Microsoft's David Wood wrote on the company's Malware Protection Center blog. "This LSP monitors the TCP traffic sent by various Web browsers that the user might have installed, and blocks any traffic to certain domains," Wood said.

News: Cryptome will take actions to court.

Submitted by kakroo on Fri, 2010-02-26 12:43.

Microsoft Corp. today withdrew its demand that Cryptome.org yank the "Microsoft Global Criminal Spy Guide" document from its site and said it had never intended for the whistleblower's domain to be knocked off the Web. "In this case, we did not ask that this site be taken down, only that Microsoft copyrighted content be removed," said a Microsoft spokeswoman in an e-mailed statement early today. "We are requesting to have the site restored and are no longer seeking the document's removal."

The document, a 17-page guide that Microsoft prepared to show law enforcement how to obtain information about users of its online services -- including Windows Live Hotmail, the Xbox Live gaming network and the Windows Live SkyDrive storage service -- was published by John Young, who runs Cryptome.org, on Feb. 20.

"Security Essential" Is It Really Essential ???

Submitted by kakroo on Tue, 2009-12-22 01:02.

Microsoft patent of the day

Submitted by Kai on Mon, 2008-09-01 06:32.
On August 19, 2008, Microsoft was granted a US-Patent:

"a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed”.

Dave Lewis claims this means that Page-up and Page-down is hereby patents owned by Microsoft. I think Microsoft now also have patented using arrows to navigate - if you use your arrow-up or arrow-down in MS Word, you are taken one line up or down - or you are "scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document...".

The same happens using the elevator shafts - moving left/right, or up/down. It may also apply to the shortcuts to jump forward/backward to pages, columns, tables and images.

I agree with Dave that the US Patent system is long overdue for a revision. If it continues like this, anyone with a bit of cash and a way with text can claim patents for anything and everything.

What does this mean to your business? You may risk that someone shows up one day and ask you to pay a license fee for using things you take for granted - like your keyboard. But the most likely scenario is for someone to take your technology - the technology you have spent time, money and effort on developing - and register a patent on it. Using that patent, they own the rights to the technology you developed, and they will cash in on it.

How can you avoid this scenario?

Be sure to register your patents as you go. Spend the money - as it is the only way to ensure that no-one else does it. To SME's the cost of patents may seem high, but consider it an investment - if you fail to register, the whole value of your development is gone (since if your technology have any chances for making money, someone will register it as a patent, and you will pay them to use your own technology...).

What are your experiences with patents?

Sources:
ZDNET
Liquidmatrix (Dave Lewis)

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Microsoft Password Policies

Submitted by Kai on Tue, 2007-12-11 09:00.

Just came about this KB at Microsoft.

Excerpt:

Your password must be at least 18770 characters and cannot repeat any of your previous 30689 passwords.

This no longer is an issue, after the Windows 2000 Service Pack 3.

Let's just conclude that this must have been a pretty secure password policy! What a brute forcer would have been required to break this password?

The biggest risk here would be to remember the password, the second biggest would be to type it correctly! Perhaps this is one of those times you really wished you had one of those password-saving smart-cards?

And with regards to the part that you are not to repeat the last 30 689 passwords? My bet is that there is easier to get the full Lotto payout than to be able to come up with the same 18 770 character password twice (or 30 689 times).

Only too bad Microsoft decided to remove this security from their Windows 2000 server with the Service Pack 3!

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