Microsoft officials on Thursday said the company is investigating the leak of a piece of code that is capable of generating activation keys for Windows Server 2003. The tool, known as a key generator, can be used to produce the random alphanumeric keys that are needed to activate the software upon installation.
It generates keys for both volume license and standard editions of several Microsoft products, including Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Office XP and Windows Server 2003.
The passage of the WS-Security specification by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) could signal opportunities for further interoperability between Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., at least as far as Web services are concerned.
John Shewchuk, a Microsoft architect, told eWEEK in an interview that Microsoft's work with Sun engineers on the WS-Security spec could indicate possible future interoperability between the two companies, as established in last week's landmark agreement between the two former foes to work together.
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A private security research firm on Thursday warned of a potentially critical security flaw in the RealPlayer software distributed by RealNetworks that could allow malicious hackers to hijack vulnerable computers.
According to an alert from U.K.-based NGS Software, the security flaw affects RealPlayer 8, RealOne Player, RealOne Player v2 for Windows only (all languages), RealPlayer 10 Beta (English only) and RealPlayer Enterprise (all versions, standalone and as configured by the RealPlayer Enterprise Manager).
Independent security consulting firm Secunia rates the vulnerability as "highly critical."
Microsoft is continuing to take the standards route to further spread its multimedia prowess. On Thursday, the software maker said it is joining the World DAB Forum, an industry group engaged in developing digital audio broadcasting technology, to help promote devices and services based on DAB's digital radio standard.
The forum, whose members include broadcasters and audio gear makers, is working to push the adoption of digital radio globally, aiming to achieve commercial success for the DAB transport mechanism. In addition to the promise of distortion-free audio, digital radio technology could also let broadcasters offer new services like the delivery of text, data, pictures and video over radio waves.
Microsoft and mainframe software company Micro Focus International have strengthened an alliance aimed at luring away IBM mainframe customers. At a customer event Thursday in New York, the two companies are expected to announce an extension to their existing partnership and to tout the benefits of moving mainframe applications onto Intel servers that run Windows. In particular, the partnership is designed to provide an alternative to customers who run Customer Information Control System (CICS), a widely used mainframe transaction system.
Despite claims from the office of the European Commission's Competition Directorate, the deal between Sun and Microsoft, which settled the two companies' long-running legal action, may ultimately prove to have a significant impact on the outcome of the EC's antitrust case against the Redmond company.
But some European analysts cast doubt on the significance of the statement. "It's difficult to see how the EC can make any real comment about the impact of the deal at the moment, as it's far too early in the appeals process to say much, said Neal Macehiter, research director at Ovum. "Microsoft will be able to point to the deal and to Sun's comments about it in the appeals process."
Here's a news flash: Steve Ballmer has some good things to say about the open-source model. "There are some advantages to [it]. You can peek through the door if you can't figure out how something works," the Microsoft CEO told a few hundred association executives gathered in Washington Thursday morning.
But Ballmer quickly returned to Microsoft's message that "integrated innovation" leads to lower cost of ownership and less complex computing.
MSN is working to add horoscopes, lottery results, movie times and more to the service that powers the SPOT watches. Microsoft's MSN Direct service is only a few months old, but the company already is expanding rapidly the content available via the SPOT smart watches. The next MSN Direct channels Microsoft is slated to add include "daily diversions" (horoscopes, lottery results, etc.), local traffic conditions, dining information and movie times, sources said.
Everyone, from computer users to software vendors to government agencies, is responsible for cybersecurity, Microsoft's chief executive officer (CEO) told a crowd in Washington, D.C., Wednesday. "Security is absolutely the -- I was going to say 'a,' but I'll say 'the' -- top priority at Microsoft," Ballmer said.
Microsoft is also working on ways to block viruses and worms before computers execute their code, he added. "The computer can look at (the code) and say, 'It doesn't smell right to me. I won't execute this without asking the user for permission,'" Ballmer said of the behavior-blocking initiative he called "active protection technology."
The likely fate of the game console's storage medium--the subject of ongoing speculation as Microsoft closely guards details on the planned successor to the current Xbox--got a new twist this week from a patent granted to the software giant.
The patent specifically references "a gaming system (that) includes a hard disk drive for storing applications and other data," indicating Microsoft may be more committed to equipping future Xbox configurations with onboard storage than previously thought.