Tag Archives: Microsoft
Microsoft says ‘no fair’ after Google exposes Windows flaw early
When the world’s biggest technology companies start playing rough with each other, it’s normally consumers who wind up suffering. This time out, it’s Windows users who are feeling the pain after Google publicly posted the details of a Windows 8.1 flaw before Microsoft could fix it. In a public response to the disclosure, Microsoft’s security chief Chris Betz says that Google’s decision to publish and be damned before his company’s scheduled patch was less about “principles” and more about getting one over on its rival.
Microsoft says ‘no fair’ after Google exposes Windows flaw early.
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Stealth “Turla” Malware Infects Unknown Number of Linux Systems
The Linux Turla is a new piece of malware designed to infect only Linux computers, which has managed to remain relatively hidden until now and has the potential of doing a lot of harm. Unfortunately, very little is known about it or how to fix it.
During the course of almost a year, the guys at Kaspersky Lab discovered a cyber-espionage operation which they called the “Epic Turla.” According to their research, more than 45 countries have been affected and that includes government institutions, embassies, military, education, research, pharmaceutical companies, and a lot more domains. It seems to be an organized effort, probably with a nation backing it up.
These problems were Windows-only and it looked like it will remain that way, but it turns out that “Turla” did not affect Windows systems exclusively. In fact, Linux systems are also vulnerable, to a different kind of code, which seems to…
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Microsoft Appeals to Developers, Developers, Developers | Linux.com
It would appear Microsoft are looking to port .NET onto Linux and Mac. Whilst Linux already has a replacement open source framework for that, this news is obviously raising eyebrows and questioning Microsoft’s long term goals.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer became infamous in 2006 after leading a Microsoft Windows meeting in a chant, “developers, developers, developers.” While the images of him clapping his hands and screaming became the target of the early social media and YouTube culture, he was right with his intention. Developers are the masters of the universe (at least in the world of software), and Microsoft gets it.
Today the company is making a rather big announcement: It is open sourcing the server side .NET stack and expanding it to run on Linux and Mac OS platforms. All developers will now be able to build .NET cloud applications on Linux and Mac. These are huge moves for the company and follow its recent acknowledgement that at least 20 percent of Azure VMs are running Linux. This struck a chord in the Twittersphere but wasn’t all that surprising when you consider how pervasive Linux is in the cloud.
Microsoft Appeals to Developers, Developers, Developers | Linux.com.
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Major South Korean Pharmaceutical Company Ditches Windows for Ubuntu
South Korea has been very friendly with Microsoft and its products, so it’s understandable why succeeding in that country with an open source product would be very difficult. Canonical is now trying to make a dent there with its Ubuntu operating system.
Canonical published some very interesting details about a South Korean company called Bukwang Pharmaceuticals, which ditched most of its Windows OSes for Ubuntu and saved a lot of money. On top of the obvious savings, it also got a lot of good press, and other businesses found out that it can be done.
“Bukwang Pharmaceuticals has been developing and manufacturing drugs and personal hygiene products in South Korea since 1960. Today, it has over 600 employees based at various sites across the country. Prior to its switch to Ubuntu, the company had 620 desktops, with 60% running Windows 7 and the remainder on Windows XP. When Microsoft’s support…
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HP Stabs Microsoft in the Back: Dumps Windows, Prepares Linux-Based Operating System
Could this be a sign of an exodus away from Windows-based environments? The cost of having to upgrade many machines to Windows 7 or Windows 8, not to mention support and licensing, or the premium support cost required to continue supporting Windows XP would not go down well at any sensible company’s finance/accounting department.
Linux is free, open-sourced (see this link for a video explanation of what the term “open-sourced” means), and if a user doesn’t like how it works, they can add/remove or tweak it completely to their liking. They can even build their own kernel to handle bespoke hardware if they wished.
It should be noted that HP teamed up with Bell Labs in the past (who developed the original UNIX OS, on which Linux was inspired from), and built HP-UX (source here), so it isn’t like HP haven’t got some *nix-like environment already under the hood. In fact, WebOS (now looked after by LG, but originally developed by Palm, which was then acquired by HP, then sold to LG) was Linux-based (source here).
HP, which was actually one of Microsoft’s key partners in the last decade, is trying to move away from Windows in a move that would clearly turn the company into a direct competitor for the Redmond-based software giant.
HP Stabs Microsoft in the Back: Dumps Windows, Prepares Linux-Based Operating System.
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Snippet: NTP Syncing (Windows/Linux)
A quick snippet for syncing your date and time via NTP. I have noticed that Windows and Linux do not follow the same convention by standard, and are always an hour out from each other, even though both claim to follow the same time zone. So, what I am having to do is sync via NTP each time I dual boot.
In Linux, this can be done using cron jobs or using the NTP daemon, but that does not do it frequently enough for my liking. So here is a bash snippet for it:
sudo service ntp stop
sudo ntpdate 0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 0.uk.pool.ntp.org 1.uk.pool.ntp.org 2.uk.pool.ntp.org 3.uk.pool.ntp.org ntp.ubuntu.com
sudo service ntp start
The first line stops the NTP daemon, since the ntpdate command does not like it when it is running (port in use). The second command uses a server in the selected list to sync with. The final line restarts the NTP daemon.
The Windows (Windows 7) equivalent is very similar. Like with linux, it has an in-built sync facility, but it again does not sync often enough for my liking. Like with the bash script, the commands must be run with elevated rights, so you must “Run as Administrator“, or run from an elevated rights command prompt, which you do as follows:
- Click Start, type “cmd” into the command window (do NOT use Windows+R)
- Hold down CTRL+SHIFT, then press ENTER
- You will be prompted (if you have UAC active), OK it and you will get a command prompt with “Administrator” in the title.
net stop "Windows Time"
net start "Windows Time"
w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:"0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 0.uk.pool.ntp.org 1.uk.pool.ntp.org 2.uk.pool.ntp.org 3.uk.pool.ntp.org ntp.ubuntu.com" /syncfromflags:ALL /update
w32tm /resync
This code starts/restarts the Windows Time service then configures it with a pool of NTP servers, before asking the service to update itself and then resync. The resync action is what adjusts the time.
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The IE flaw that Microsoft refuses to patch – Telegraph
And why are you still using Windows?
A flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which leaves users vulnerable to hackers has not been fixed, despite its discoverer giving the company six months grace to do so before publishing details.
The IE flaw that Microsoft refuses to patch – Telegraph.
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China bans the installation of Windows 8 on government computers
China believes that Windows 8 poses enough of a future security risk that it’s banning government agencies from installing the operating system on any of its new computers.
China bans the installation of Windows 8 on government computers.
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UK and US Governments Warn: ‘Don’t Use Internet Explorer’
Something I’ve been saying for a LONG time…
Don’t use Internet Explorer’ — that’s the warning being given by the US and UK governments this week after a severe security flaw affecting the browser was detected.
Both countries are advising citizens who are running Microsoft Windows to switch to an alternative web browser, such as Opera, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, until the vulnerability has been fixed.
Internet Explorer 6 through 11 — released on Windows 7 and 8 last year — are all confirmed to be affected.
For XP Users It Gets Worse
News of the vulnerability can’t have come at a worse time for those still running Windows XP.
With Microsoft officially ending support for it in April this year, even when a fix for this issue is released the update won’t be made available to the estimated 125 million hold-outs still running the aged OS.
As such the advice from the US and UK computer security agencies is even more stark: don’t use the…
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Blender Fox 
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