Cody Taylor

Microsoft was in panic on Wednesday after a prototype phone loaded with top-secret software created to rival Apple’s iPhone was stolen, prompting fears of industrial espionage.

nickull writes “Microsoft is tracking incompatible Web sites for its upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser and has posted a list that now contains about 2,400 names — including Microsoft.com. Apparently, even though Microsoft’s IE8 team is doing the ‘right’ thing by finally making IE more standards-compliant, they are risking ‘breaking the Web’ because the vast majority of Web sites are still written to work correctly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE.”

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nandemoari writes “Microsoft yesterday released a trial version of new file-sharing software intended for use with its upcoming and highly-anticipated operating system. The new software allows PC users to swap files with the computers of friends, family, and trusted colleagues along safe, secure channels. Dubbed “Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant 6.5,” the beta connects the Windows Live IDs of individual users with a Windows 7 account, essentially building a secure link between data stored on a hard drive and information accessible via Windows Live online.”

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Windows users are being urged to get the latest Microsoft security update or risk getting attacked via a hole in IE 7 that can be exploited to install a backdoor.

CWmike writes “Microsoft has denied that it makes money when users ‘downgrade’ Windows Vista to XP, as a lawsuit filed last week alleges. The lawsuit, submitted last week, stems from the .25 fee that a California woman was charged in mid-2008 when she bought a Lenovo laptop and downgraded from Vista to XP. In fact, it’s computer makers, not Microsoft per se, that charge users the additional fees for downgrading a new PC from Vista to XP at the factory. For example, Dell Inc. adds an extra to the price to downgrade a PC. However, Microsoft may profit from the way it structures downgrade rights.”

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CWmike writes “Attackers are already exploiting a bug in Internet Explorer 7 that Microsoft patched just last week, security researchers warned today. Although the attacks are currently in “very, very small numbers,” they may be just the forerunner of a larger campaign, said Trend Micro’s Jamz Yaneza. ‘I see this as a proof-of-concept,’ said Yaneza, who noted that the exploit’s payload is extremely straightforward and explained that there has been no attempt to mask it by, say, planting a root kit on the victimized PC at the same time. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to see this [exploit] show up in one of those Chinese exploit kits,’ he added. The new attack code, which Trend Micro dubbed ‘XML_Dloadr.a,’ arrives in a spam message as a malicious file masquerading as a Microsoft Word document.”

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