Microsoft News Tracker

As Yogi Berra said, it’s like deja vu all over again. If you don’t follow any of the links in the next paragraph, it reads like the WMF exploit of two months ago, but it actually is the latest Internet Explorer nasty. Here’s the plot:

There’s a gaping drive-by Internet Explorer security exploit that cropped up without any prior warning and is now appearing all over the Web. Microsoft unhelpfully says don’t surf in any sleazy areas and we’ll have a patch next month on our regularly scheduled Patch Tuesday. Commentators note that with hacked web servers, exploits are appearing in the nicest neighborhoods and as a result, security companies are coming out with their own patches ([1], [2]) of which Microsoft disapproves. Nonetheless, Microsoft says they may well ship their own patch early if things look really, really serious.

This exploit has somewhat less potential for damage than the one of two months ago because simply turning off Active Scripting will immunize those clever enough to know to do it and to know how, but it leads one to wonder how many times we’ll get to relive this story. Robert McMillan reports at InfoWorld that the point isn’t lost on Microsoft, but they claim they are hard pressed to provide fixes any faster citing quality and compatibility concerns among other reasons. One quote I liked:

Microsoft’s practice of holding security fixes until the second Tuesday of each month, called “Patch Tuesday” by administrators, can sometimes hurt home users because they may not have the benefit of the “layers and layers” of protection that are typical in corporate environments, said Todd Towles, a security consultant based in Austin, Texas.

“In the past, I wouldn’t have a problem with the Microsoft delay, but this is happening too much,” he said. “Microsoft waits for Patch Tuesday to make corporate patch management teams happy, but this is only hurting the millions of home users that live at a higher security risk.”

And that’s the nut. It wasn’t so long ago that Microsoft patches were delivered “as needed” on what seemed to be a fairly timely basis, but the monthly “Patch Tuesday” was instituted to regularize the process and channel the apparent flood. I can’t believe that the Microsoft teams have really gotten any slower. Would it really be more disruptive to have a two tier system with the mundane patches coming on one Tuesday a month and the really serious ones coming as needed? That’s effectively what’s happening anyhow when patches get released early as was the one for the WMF exploit two months ago. As it stands now, it looks like Microsoft is being dragged unwillingly to participate.

Yes, it’s plural. The first showdown is coming up this Thursday when Microsoft faces an administrative hearing where they will appeal the fines imposed last December because they are deemed to have unduly delayed documenting server protocols as ordered. David Lawsky at Reuters:

Microsoft has a last chance to convince EU regulators this week that the software giant should not be fined up to 2 million euros ($2.4 million) daily for failing to carry out antitrust sanctions.

A European Commission hearing officer will listen to the company’s defense on Thursday and Friday — behind closed doors — against charges Microsoft has dragged its feet in the two years since a landmark antitrust decision found it used the dominance of its Windows operating system to damage competitors.

The “behind closed doors” is a reference to Microsoft’s refused request to make the hearing public.

However, the hearing is really a sideshow on the way to the big Microsoft appeal in April of the original March 2004 judgement against them before before the European Court of First Instance. David Lawsky and Sabina Zawadzki report at Reuters that as part of the preparation, Microsoft hired some former EU judges for a mock trial:

In a sign of how meticulously Microsoft is planning its antitrust battle against the European Commission next month, it hired three former EU judges to stage a mock trial, a source close to the situation said.

The software giant has appealed against a March 2004 ruling by a European court that it abused the dominance of its Windows operating system.
…
The mock trial was held in January in New York and one of the judges was a former Belgian justice minister, Melchior Wathelet, who worked for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) — Europe’s highest court, the source said on Tuesday.

The names of the other former judges were not known.
…
Microsoft would not confirm or deny that it had hired the former judges.

“As is typical for an important case, we have our counsel present our case to a variety of different lawyers in private practice. We have found this helps ensure that the highly technical material is presented clearly,” it said in a statement.

If you are finding it difficult to keep the all the threads of this case separate, Reuters has also prepared a useful chronology.

MSN is still in the ISP business, and lest you forget, they’ve announced a new marketing campaign to snag AOL customers. Juan Carlos Perez has the story at InfoWorld:

Microsoft Corp. is offering an almost 20 percent discount on its MSN Dial-Up service’s regular price, plus a free month of service, partly to nab America Online Inc. dial-up subscribers unhappy with a recent price hike, Microsoft announced Tuesday.

U.S. residents who sign up between now and June 30 will get their first month free, and for the next 12 months they’ll be charged US$17.95 per month, instead of $21.95. The offer doesn’t require subscribers to commit to a full year of service. After the first 13 months of service, the discounted rate will lapse and the subscriber will thereafter be charged the regular monthly fee. The offer doesn’t apply to current MSN Dial-Up subscribers.

The move comes little over a month after rival AOL announced its decision to increase the price of its most popular unlimited dial-up access plan to $25.90 per month in order to nudge subscribers towards adopting its new High Speed broadband service.

Microsoft claims they were planning a promotion anyhow, so it just happened to worked out nicely. More by following the link including a reminder that MSN is a dial-up only ISP while AOL also offers broadband.

Joining the parade to 2007, Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) has slipped to early 2007. Stephen Shankland reports at CNET:

The SP1 (Service Pack 1) update to Virtual Server 2005 R2 will include support for two chip features, Intel’s Virtualization and Advanced Micro Devices’ Virtualization, that ease the task (of running multiple OS images simultaneously). Previously it had been scheduled to arrive in the fourth quarter, but a Microsoft representative confirmed the slip on Tuesday.

Earlier in the week, Alessandro Perilli had been trying to figure out why Microsoft’s virtualization efforts were moving so slowly and had a rumor to the effect that the already bargain priced Virtual Server Enterprise Edition might be given away free.

Elinor Mills at CNET:

Google is increasing its lead over Yahoo and Microsoft in the U.S. Web search market while a rebranded Ask.com is inching up, according to the latest statistics from ComScore Networks.

Google’s domestic market share rose to 42.3 percent in February, up from 36.3 percent a year earlier, ComScore said.

Yahoo’s search market share in the United States fell to 27.6 percent from 31.1 percent a year ago, while MSN fell to 13.5 percent from 16.3 percent and Time Warner’s America Online fell to 8 percent from 8.9 percent.

IAC Search & Media’s Ask.com, which unveiled a new brand and interface last month, rose to 6 percent from 5.3 percent.

More by following the link including a financial analyst prediction that Google will have eventually have a 70% share. I would point out that comScore now has a business arrangement with Google, but their numbers aren’t wildly different from those before the deal. They are somewhat different from those from other sources, but the story is the same - Google seems to be running way with the bulk of the market.