Roger Halbheer on Security
At Blackhat we announced an important change to our Security Bulletins becoming effective during the October release. One of the requests we often heard talking to our customers is, that they would like to get better information on how hard it is to exploit a vulnerability. We will introduce an Exploitability Index by October. Basically…
DetailsYes, I am back. I was on vacation and therefore did not take the time to blog.
Just briefly: IBM published a pretty good article on the latest DNS attacks. You can read it here: Responding to the DNS vulnerability and attacks
Roger
It is not really news anymore as it broke during my vacation. However, it is important from my point of view: We are a proud sponsor (and not for the first time) of the Privacy Enhancing Technology Awards, which recognizes the work of researchers in the area of Privacy Enhancing Technologies. There was a press…
DetailsAs always: It is the second Tuesday of the months and we released the Security Updates. However, this month is special from one perspective: We released an update for the DNS resolver, which is released simultaneously by a lot of DNS vendors with the same vulnerability. Here are some technical details about this vulnerability on…
DetailsYes, I know: It is US-only at the moment but it might nevertheless pretty interesting for you: We announced yesterday that we will launch a subscription-based Office version called Equipt. Here is an extract from the announcement: Initially code-named “Albany,” Microsoft Equipt offers consumers Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, giving them the latest versions…
DetailsWe announced yesterday some additional features in Internet Explorer 8, which will be part of Beta 2. They are way cool and will help to do some additional significant steps towards a more trustworthy browsing experience. Yesterday we mainly talked about two features: The XSS Filter, which helps to protect from cross-site scripting attacks SmartScreen®…
DetailsIn the meantime I think everybody knows that Bill Gates left Microsoft. It is not uncommon at Microsoft that if somebody leaves that he or she sends a mail to people they know like “My last day at Microsoft” saying goodbye (and telling you how you can keep in touch if you want). It was…
DetailsAt FIRST in Vancouver the formation of the Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI) was announced (I love abbreviations J). This consortium addresses in my opinion an important challenge of today’s incident response which is cross-vendor collaboration. A lot of threats and incidents in today’s world are having an impact on…
DetailsWe just released Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to manufacturing. You can find more information on our Virtualization Page
Roger
A question I often get is “How does Microsoft solve the problem x in their IT?” (e.g. How does Microsoft do Patch Management). These questions are usually directed towards MSIT (Microsoft IT as we call it) and not towards Microsoft as a vendor. I guess you know that we have a site called IT Showcase…
DetailsOur Chief Security Advisor in Italy spent quite some time to collect a list of web-pages and blogs with regards to Microsoft and Security. If you are looking for something, go there and find it J
Roger
I just wanted to make sure that you have seen the Advisory (Rise in SQL Injection Attacks Exploiting Unverified User Data Input) where we added some additional information. This is especially important as we did not “only” publish guidance but tools as well: Detection – HP Scrawlr (a free scanner from HP) Defense – UrlScan…
DetailsI am very proud for the product team to tell you that Windows Vista Bitlockerâ„¢ completes FIPS 140-2 certification. If you are interested, you find the according certificate here.
Roger
There seems to be some problems deploying the latest security updates with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to SMS 2003 Agents. If you have any challenges with that or need more information, please see the just published advisory System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Blocked from Deploying Security Updates
Roger   Â
Often, when I talk to security people, they are telling me that if they would have more budget and money available, the problem would be much lower. Now, I have been in Qatar last week, one of the richest countries in my region. If you look at the GDP per capita (which is mainly the…
DetailsA question that was often raised after the launch of Windows Server 2008 was about Server Core and our Security Bulletins: How do you know whether a Server Core installation needs updating as well? We just added a statement to our Security Bulletins this month answering this question. As an example in MS08-036 we state…
DetailsI am in Qatar at the moment at the Doha Information Security Conference. They actually have a very interesting setup as they only have very short presentations (about 5-10 minutes) of approx. 2 people and from there on they are working with a panel discussion on the topic during the rest of the hour. As…
DetailsI wrote about it as we released the Beta. Now, the Solution Accelerator for Security Compliance Management is live and available. It is definitely worth looking at it: Security Compliance Management. Just to quote from the webpage: In today’s IT environment, the ability to comply with regulations and industry standards, such as the Sarbanes Oxley…
DetailsI was reading through a paper ISF wrote on the security implications of a Service Oriented Architecture and was thinking about whether this is really that difference from the “non-Service-Oriented-Architecture”. Let’s have a brief look at that: What is SOA? I do not want to elaborate on this as I guess most of you know…
DetailsFresh out of press (ok, it is out since beginning of April but I just saw it now): Brian Komar, the well-known author of several PKI books on Windows Server just released a new book called Windows Server 2008 PKI and Certificate Security. If you are planning a Windows Server 2008 PKI, this is a…
Details