1) Redmond Report
By Doug Barney
Editor in Chief, Redmond magazine
Patch Tuesday Leads to Attack Wednesday
A day after Microsoft publicly fixed 28 holes (including four Internet Explorer flaws), a researcher found that hackers already have an attack for IE 7. The exploit delays the processing of XML tags, can crash the browser (though IE and Firefox do a great job of crashing on their own, at least on my aging Latitude D520) and can then inject malicious code upon browser restart. There may well be a fresh patch to beat back these attacks. We'll keep you posted.
MS Dips Toes in Open Waters
Microsoft may aggressively sell against open source, but it does play -- just a bit -- in this world. Redmond's interoperability efforts are well-known, and generally well-done. But Microsoft has also released a decent bit of code into the public domain. The latest installment is Oxite, a developer-oriented content management system built by Redmond code monkeys to test out ASP.NET MVC. Microsoft now wants to show the entire development world just how cool Oxite and ASP.NET MVC are.
Good News: Silverlight Rules. Bad News: You're Canned!
Netflix recently moved to Silverlight as its standard Web video player -- and the ROI was immediate. Because Silverlight is so darn good, Netflix fired 50 customer help-desk techs! I wonder if Microsoft has any software that can help U.S. banks and automakers?
U.S. Balance of Trade Great -- for Malware!
We don't export like we used to. Koreans buy Kias, the Japanese purchase Nissans, Swedes get Saabs, and the rest of the world...well, they just go for Toyotas. But there's one area where we Americans apparently shine: malware. According to WhiteHat Security, U.S. servers now host more malware than anyone else. Guess it's time to finally stop blaming Bulgaria for all our security woes!
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