Microsoft

For all of you who’ve been asking (and patiently waiting) for a version of OneNote for your Android phones, we have great news: OneNote Mobile for Android is now available! Download it from the Android Market app store today! Mobile versions of OneNote are currently available on Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, and now Android. No matter which platform you prefer, OneNote Mobile lets you easily capture and access all of your notes and ideas on the go. ...

Mashable: Skype for Windows version 5.8 is out, bringing several interesting features, including full HD video-calling, group screen sharing and Facebook integration. Full HD video calls will be most useful to those who own a HD webcam, for example Logitech C920 which does the video encoding itself thus improving HD video quality on older computers. Video calling for Facebook works even with users who don’t use Skype. To start a video call with a Facebook buddy, select the person in your list and click “video call.” ...

The H-Security: Unknown attackers have tried to use an invitation to a prestigious conference to inject a Trojan into companies in the defense sector. The security firms Seculert and Zscaler report that opening an attached PDF flyer caused recipients’ computers to be infected with spyware via a previously undisclosed hole in Acrobat Reader. According to the report, the attack mainly targeted government-related organizations, including military and aerospace contractors, in Europe and in the US. The security firms said that the attacks started back in 2009 and peaked in autumn 2010. Talking to The H’s associates at heise Security, Seculert CTO Aviv Raff added that compromised computers, some of which had been infected for two years, were only discovered a few weeks ago. ...

SophosLabs: Microsoft’s Ryan Gavin announced a new strategy to keep the web safe… Keep your Internet Explorer up to date. It is great news for Windows users who don’t appreciate the importance of staying up to date. Microsoft has been struggling with browser stragglers for years. They even ran their own campaign comparing IE 6 to spoiled milk including shameful infopr0n. Old versions of IE leave a considerable number of users vulnerable to old exploits, or in their parlance easy targets. ...

The H-Online Security: Microsoft has confirmed a report from Budapest-based Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS), which claimed that the Duqu bot spreads by exploiting a zero day vulnerability in the Windows kernel. How it spreads had previously been unknown. CrySyS discovered the Windows vulnerability whilst analysing the installer. The bot, which anti-virus software firm Symantec believes is related to Stuxnet, infects target systems using a specially crafted Word file which injects the malware into the system using a kernel exploit. Microsoft is already working on a patch. ...

MSDN: One of the things we talk quite a bit about with Windows 8 is making sure Windows is a safe, secure, and reliable computing environment. We have always provided a broad range of solutions for achieving these goals and work closely with a broad range of industry partners. We continue to enhance these capabilities with Windows 8 while making sure you always have choice and control over how to protect and manage your PC. With Windows 8 we are extending the protections provided by Defender to address a broader range of potential threats. Jason Garms, the group program manager of our reliability and security team authored this post that represents work across several teams. –Steven ...

The H-Security: Microsoft has released two updates for Windows and three for Office to close various security holes. All five updates have only been rated “important” by the company. A hole in WINS enables local attackers to escalate their privileges on a system. Another patch prevents a new variant of binary planting, or DLL hijacking, attacks that can cause Windows to load DLLs from shared network volumes without the user’s permission. This allows attackers to execute code on a computer via specially crafted DLLs. Microsoft has been struggling to contain the insecure DLL loading problem with numerous patches released since mid 2010. ...

Business Insider: A new poll in France says 7 out of 10 people think Microsoft did more to change the world than Apple. We think we would have similar results in other countries, if only because a lot more people (still!) use Microsoft products than Apple products, at least for personal computing which is (still!) the most important part of computing. It’s hard to see a mention of Steve Jobs without the worlds “change the world” or “changing an industry.” And let’s give him his due. Let’s give him his due as one of the greatest entrepreneurs in history, as an amazing entrepreneur and visionary who left many “dents” in the universe. And he did change many industries, like music, film, and yes, personal computing. ...

Microsoft Malware Protection Center: We’ve had reports of a new worm in the wild and that generates increased RDP traffic for our users on port 3389. Although the overall numbers of computers reporting detections are low in comparison to more established malware families, the traffic it generates is noticeable. The worm is detected as Worm:Win32/Morto.A and you can see a detailed description of at http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Entry.aspx?Name=Worm%3aWin32%2fMorto.A. Morto attempts to compromise Remote Desktop connections in order to penetrate remote systems, by exploiting weak administrator passwords. Once a new system is compromised, it connects to a remote server in order to download additional information and update its components. It also terminates processes for locally running security applications in order to ensure its activity continues uninterrupted. Affected users should note that a reboot may be required in order to complete the cleaning process. ...

Windows 8 News Blog: The recently created Building Windows 8 blog seems to be up in full swing, with new articles about the upcoming operating system being released regularly. Steven Sinofsky revealed in “Improving our file management basics: copy, move, rename, and delete” that Microsoft intents to improve file management processes under Windows 8. According to Steven, Microsoft had three goals to improve the copy experience: One place to manage all copy jobs: Create one unified experience for managing and monitoring ongoing copy operations. Clear and concise: Remove distractions and give people the key information they need. User in control: Put people in control of their copy operations. Consolidating the copy experience is a great idea. This means that you won’t have to deal with multiple copying windows when you run multiple copy or move operations in the operating system. All copy jobs are now consolidated in one screen. ...