Pc News

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Microsoft warns of "critical" Office security flaw

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday warned of a "critical" security flaw in its Office application that could allow attackers to take control of a computer.



Microsoft, the world's top software company whose Windows operating system runs on 90 percent of the world's computers, issued a patch to fix the problem as part of its monthly security bulletin.

The company also issued one other security warning it rated at its second-highest level of "important" for Microsoft Windows.

A vulnerability defined as "important" is one where an outsider could break into a machine and gain access to confidential data but not replicate itself to other computers, Microsoft said.

It defines a flaw as "critical" when the vulnerability could allow a damaging Internet worm to replicate without the user doing anything to the machine.

Microsoft has been working for more than three years to improve the security and reliability of its software as more and more malicious software targets weaknesses in Windows and other Microsoft software.

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Microsoft Thinks Small

Microsoft will hold its first Small Business Summit Tuesday as a way to increase communications between the software vendor and its small and mid-size business (SMB) customers.

Microsoft is due to officially unveil its Windows Small Business Server 2003 Release 2 along with a special financing deal targeting SMBs, according to a Microsoft executive.


"This is the first time we've done anything of this kind," said Doug Leland, general manager for small business for the Worldwide Small and Midsize Solutions & Partner Group at Microsoft. "We're opening up a dialogue really about how we can work together."


Microsoft is keen to facilitate cross-industry and international relationships between SMBs, who tend to talk more to their peers in specific vertical markets or local regions.


The company defines SMBs as those employing up to 49 staff and using up to 24 PCs. Microsoft has its roots in the SMB market and has sharpened its focus on this area over the last three years, according to Leland. He estimates that there are 40 million SMBs worldwide.

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Faulty McAfee Update Wreaks Havoc

Executives at McAfee are adding new testing procedures after thousands of customers downloaded faulty software last week.

Instead of identifying only malicious worms and viruses, the software flagged many popular programs as threats. That prompted users to delete utility files from software such as Adobe Update Manager, Google Toolbar Installer, Macromedia Flash Player, and Microsoft Excel.


The faulty software is no longer posted, so users can now safely download the latest antivirus definitions for McAfee's VirusScan product, says Joe Telafici, director of operations for McAfee AVERT Labs.


The mistake affected customers who downloaded the consumer version of the latest McAfee software during a four-hour window on Friday and then used it. The faulty enterprise version was posted for five hours.


By Friday night, the company had fixed the problem, Telafici says.

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Microsoft seeks broad appeal with 'Viva Pinata'

LOS ANGELES - In its quest to expand the audience for its new Xbox 360 video game console beyond young, male "hard-core" gamers, Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday unveiled its new "Viva Pinata" product collection, which will hit the ground this year with a cartoon TV show, a video game and toys.



"This is the first property that we've ever created that has this comprehensive of an approach from the start," said Shane Kim, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios.

The characters in "Viva Pinata" are animals inspired by Latin American papier-mache figures, called pinatas, which are stuffed with candy and baubles and then broken by blindfolded, bat-wielding children.

The Saturday-morning animated "Viva Pinata" television series is set for a fall U.S. premier on FOX's 4Kids TV, the producer of television shows such as "Pokemon," "Yu-Gi-Oh!" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

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Broadband Video

WASHINGTON-- The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and a group of broadband providers today announced a set of principles that would allow consumers to attach devices to broadband video networks.


The series of principles, designed to ensure the commercial availability of devices that attach to Internet Protocol-enabled video networks, was endorsed by large broadband providers AT&T, Verizon Communications, and BellSouth. They call for open standards for consumer electronic devices such as set-top boxes and digital recorders, and the broadband providers said that they will strive for "enough nationwide commonality" in their video networks to permit nationwide compatibility.

Net Neutrality

The telecom providers are rolling out IP video networks to compete with cable television. These new networks will "provide consumers across the nation with a revolutionary new way to access their favorite video programs when and where they want," Gary Shapiro, CEA president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. "In order to realize the full potential of this brave new world, consumers must be able to choose from the exciting array of innovative new devices being developed by consumer electronics manufacturers."

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Sony Plans Camera, GPS for PSP

TOKYO-- Sony Computer Entertainment this week outlined new software and hardware features that it plans to add to its PlayStation Portable (PSP) during 2006.
The company is planning three software updates during the year, said Ken Kutaragi, president of SCEI, at a briefing for software developers here. Previous updates have added things like an Internet browser.


The first update will come during the "spring" when a software update will be offered that adds support for Macromedia's Flash, the ability to download audio podcasts, a Chinese font set, and software support for a camera and GPS (Global Positioning System) unit.


The camera and GPS unit themselves will be launched in September and October respectively, but by adding the software support earlier developers will be able to write software to make use of the new hardware, said Kutaragi.

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Virus Encrypts Data, Demands Ransom

A virus that encrypts documents and demands a ransom to get them back is circulating on the Internet, but at least one security company has released the password needed to recover the files.

The Trojan horse virus encrypts the contents of a user's Word documents, databases, or spreadsheets, and then leaves a file demanding $300 in exchange for the password to access the information, said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant with security company Sophos. A text file directs victims to transfer money to one of 99 accounts run by e-gold, a company that runs a money transfer site.


Similar "ransomware" schemes have been traced back to Russia, and occurrences of this type of attack appear to be growing, Cluley said. This latest one is notable because it is the first attempt in English, Cluley said.


It's unclear how the virus is spreading. It doesn't appear to have been widely sent via spam e-mails, Cluley said, so it may be embedded in a Web page and spread through a so-called drive-by install, a method that doesn't require users to actively click on and download an attachment.

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888 says US anti-Web-gaming bill to fail

LONDON - A U.S. bill aimed at stamping out the $12 billion Internet gambling industry is doomed to fail, the chief executive of 888 Plc, one of the companies it is aimed at, said on Thursday.

A U.S. House committee on Wednesday approved a bill attempting to stop businesses such as 888 from accepting credit cards, hitting UK online gaming shares by up to 5 percent on Thursday after similar falls the day before.

But 888 Chief Executive John Anderson told Reuters: "We feel confident it won't get through the next stages, and we'll be okay."

888 shares fell 3 percent to 174 pence by 0936 GMT, even though the group announced a 16 percent increase in annual profits and a slight reduction in its U.S. exposure.

Profit before tax rose to $50.2 million in 2005 from $43.1 million in 2004, and the company said current trading was in line with expectations.

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Google launches financial news, data, blog site

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. is introducing a financial news, stock quote and chat service that seeks to shake up the online finance information market now dominated by Internet media rivals and online brokers.



The Web search leader said late on Monday that it has begun offering a trial version of the service called Google Finance that uses a keyword search system to help consumers target information on public and private companies and mutual funds.

Google Finance primarily provides financial news, stock quotes, charts and data. In its trial form, the site is far less comprehensive than established financial sites such as those from Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft Corp.'s MSN America Online's Money & Finance and TheStreet.com.

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"Mission" movie going mobile first

LOS ANGELES - Only mobile gamers will have the ability to be a virtual Ethan Hunt when mobile game giant Gameloft unleashes "Mission: Impossible 3" across 150 carriers in May, coinciding with the worldwide rollout of the Tom Cruise thriller.



This marks the second consecutive summer that distributor Paramount Pictures' sister company Viacom Consumer Products has bypassed consoles and opted instead to work with the French firm.

Gameloft CEO Michel Guillemot said that the mobile initial game "War of the Worlds," also starring Cruise, was one of the publisher's top-selling titles last year. The actor has not allowed his likeness or voice to be used in any video game to date.

"As handsets become more sophisticated, the gaming capabilities will continue to exceed most people's expectations," Guillemot said. "There's all this talk about the next generation of consoles, but the next generation in gaming is in the mobile platform."

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Microsoft Admits Internet Explorer Mistakes

LAS VEGAS-The browser isn't everything when it comes to Microsoft's platform strategy for next-generation Web applications, but it remains key, Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates made clear Monday at MIX 06.

Microsoft made a mistake in waiting to build new innovations in its own browser technology, Internet Explorer, he admitted.


"In a sense we're doing a 'mea culpa' in saying we've waited too long for a new browser release," Gates said during his talk to kick off Microsoft's first show for designers and developers of high-impact Web sites. "We are very immersed in the browser as a platform."


Microsoft's lackluster attention to the browser allowed competitors like Firefox maker Mozilla and Opera Software to challenge IE's dominance in the browser space.


Now Microsoft is answering that challenge, Gates said. The company is building innovations into IE to improve the user experience, enhance security, and add next-generation technologies such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication), he said. Microsoft already is looking ahead to the next two releases of IE, and expects the next version, IE 7, to be broadly adopted once it is released later this year.


IE 7 will be included in the Windows Vista operating system, which will ship later this year. Microsoft also will offer a version for Windows XP at the same time.

Wooing Web Designers

As expected, Gates announced a new test version of IE 7 at MIX 06, which drew a solid attendance for a first-time show.


Attendees, the bulk of them Web designers and developers, said Microsoft is hard at work wooing creative Web design firms in order to establish credibility among this sector, which traditionally has favored a combination of Adobe/Macromedia software and Apple Computer hardware to build Web sites and applications.


One Web designer from Washington, who asked not to be identified, said Microsoft is courting his company and even paid the way for him and his colleagues to attend the show. Microsoft also is dangling big-name customers in front of the Web design shop to lure them to use its tools and platforms, including the forthcoming Microsoft Expression set of design tools, which competes with Adobe software.


MIX 06 attendee Lynn Langit, founder and lead architect for her own company, WebFluent, said Microsoft in part is using its renewed focus on IE to "establish its dominance on the Web." She said she was particularly impressed with the IE 7 compatibility lab at MIX 06, where developers can test their Web sites to see how they will perform in IE 7.


The browser wasn't the only focus of Gates's talk. He spoke of going "beyond the browser" with tools for providing Web-connected applications on myriad devices, like the new Windows-based ultramobile PCs. Microsoft and partners unveiled the devices, code-named Origami, at CeBIT earlier this month.


"We can't be device centric--we have to be user centric," he said. To do this, Microsoft is poised to offer an easy-to-use platform with tools--and within Vista--for developers to build next-generation Web applications.

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Put Your Antispyware Apps to the Test

Does your antispyware software really work? With security experts warning of "rogue" antispyware products that sometimes do more harm than good, two security researchers have decided to take matters into their own hands.

They're working on a new software product, called Spycar, that will test the effectiveness of antispyware applications. "We decided the best way to do that would be to write a suite of tiny custom programs that each do a tiny spyware-like thing," says Tom Liston, a senior security consultant with Intelguardians, based in Washington, DC.


Liston is developing the software with Ed Skoudis, also an Intelguardians security consultant.


Spycar will contain about 25 small programs, each of which engages in the kind of nasty behavior normally associated with spyware. For example, it will add favorites to Internet Explorer, or add a file to the machine and change the computer's Registry so that the file launches at startup. The software will then undo all of the changes it has made after the testing has been completed.

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Yahoo launches instant message phone in US

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) on Tuesday said it is launching a service in the United States that lets people make phone calls through the company's instant messaging software.


Available in several other countries since December, the service allows people to make calls from their computers for 2 cents a minute or less to the top 30 national phone markets, including the United States.

The "Phone Out" service also allows calls from computers to regular phones at varying rates to a total of 180 countries.

Using instant messaging for phone calls is one of the latest ways that technology companies are finding cheaper ways to allow people to talk all over the world without relying on traditional phone networks.

"Right now the competition is just about cheap voice calls," Forrester Research analyst Maribel Lopez said.

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Google launches financial news, data, blog site

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. is introducing a financial news, stock quote and chat service that seeks to shake up the online finance information market now dominated by Internet media rivals and online brokers.


The Web search leader said late on Monday that it has begun offering a trial version of the service called Google Finance that uses a keyword search system to help consumers target information on public and private companies and mutual funds.

Google Finance primarily provides financial news, stock quotes, charts and data. In its trial form, the site is far less comprehensive than established financial sites such as those from Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft Corp.'s MSN America Online's Money & Finance and TheStreet.com.

"We are going to provide quick, easy access to financial information ... by taking complex financial data and making it more digestible," Katie Jacobs Stanton, product manager for Google Finance, said in a phone interview.

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Game on for Online "Jeopardy!" tests

LOS ANGELES - What is the online contestant test, Alex? The answer is, the innovative method "Jeopardy!" has devised for potential participants to take the first step toward appearing on the long-running game show.

Fans will be able to take the 50-question preliminary general knowledge exam online from March 28-30 at http://www.jeopardy.com/onlinetest. Each day is designated for a specific time zone and will get different questions from the other two.

"Jeopardy!" executive producer Harry Friedman said the contestant coordinators evaluate more than 25,000 hopefuls every year. About 400 of those get to sign their name on the podium's screen as an actual contestant.

This new secure online testing method will reach out far beyond the cities his team can visit in person. It also will be more convenient and less intimidating, Friedman said.

"Our online testing process allows our many viewers the opportunity to take the test from their very own computer, at home, at the office -- virtually anywhere," he said.