Microsoft launches competition to fight hackers

Notice to bounty hunters! At the annual Salon of the Black Hat computer security, attended the Saturday, July 30 to Thursday, Aug. 4 in Las Vegas (Nevada) experts from U.S. government agencies and industries as well as the most advanced hackers of the world, Microsoft announced the launch of the Microsoft Blue Hat Contest Prize. This new award will provide 200,000 dollars (140,000 euros) to the person who will develop an anti-piracy able to withstand attacks.

With a worldwide market share estimated at 87.66%, the giant U.S. computer - and Windows - reigns supreme in the world computer. It is thus most vulnerable to pirate attacks, which have made it their main target.

The competition is open to researchers, security professionals and even young computer geeks, provided they have at least 14 years. Their proposals should be sent to Microsoft until April 2012. "This award is designed to come up with new ideas for approaches defensive computer security, Microsoft said on its website. As part of our commitment to a safer computing experience, we hope to inspire security researchers to develop innovative solutions to meet the serious security threats. "

After receipt and review of files, which will provide a prototype running on Windows and will be developed using the Windows SDK, a group of experts from Microsoft will award the prizes at the Salon Black Hat 2012. Besides the first prize in the firm Ridmond assign a second $ 50 000 and will offer a subscription service from Microsoft worth $ 10,000 that came in third place.

"The value of this award goes far beyond money, said Katie Moussouris, head of group security policy in an interview with AFP. We want to make it more difficult and costly exploitation of vulnerabilities by criminals, by inviting researchers to focus their expertise on the defensive security technologies. " Ms. Moussouris stresses that the winners retain the intellectual property of their invention, but they will have to assign the license to Microsoft without touching the royalties. The group also gives the right to use in its products, conferences and communication.

THE FAULT DETECT:

This is not the first time that new technology companies offer money in exchange for the detection of flaws in their software. Since early August, the social network Facebook, which now boasts 750 million registered users to offer $ 500 will be able to detect any flaw in its security. The sum can be increased significantly if this weakness is considered "critical".

Internet browser vendors not hesitate to introduce such measures "incentives". Mozilla now offers up to 3000 dollars for the discovery of flaws in the security of its search engine to Firefox. For his part, since 2010, Google provides a premium of at least $ 500 for detecting bugs in "Chromium" project open source Web browser of the group.

Google claims a "hostile campaign" by Microsoft, Oracle and Apple

The internet group Google has strongly denounced Wednesday, August 3, a "hostile campaign" against its operating system for mobile devices Android led by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and others, "through patent cans."

Blog on the group's legal director, David Drummond, Google's opponents accused of "fighting a sudden procedures instead of a competition based on new features or new equipment."

"A multi-function phone can cause up to 250,000 claims (largely debatable) related patents, and our competitors want to impose a 'tax' with these dubious patents, which makes the Android devices more expensive for consumers," acknowledges yet Mr. Drummond.

As an illustration of this "campaign", Mr. Drummond recalls the recent purchase of 6,000 patents from the Canadian equipment supplier Nortel by a consortium of Apple and Microsoft, two groups fighting for their best-known for their links, but as Research in Motion, a third competitor to Google in mobile telephony, Ericsson, Sony and EMC.

Microsoft and Apple have also teamed up to buy patents from Novell, and Mr. Drummond denounced the prosecutions launched against Android device manufacturers like HTC, Motorola and Samsung.

Microsoft offers 250,000 dollars to deliver to him the creators of a network of spam,technology

The story is worthy of a spy movie. In March, Microsoft announced that it had conducted an investigation called Operation B107 to dismantle the botnet Rustock, a group of one million zombie computers controlled remotely by hackers, allegedly responsible for sending 30 billion spam each day, about half of the spam world. These messages were presented in the form of fake notifications of lottery or prescription drugs.

But despite the analysis of servers, Microsoft has failed to identify its creators. After publishing two inserts in Russian newspapers last month, the software giant has upped the ante by offering the $ 250,000 dollars to anyone who will be able to share new information to identify, arrest and convict officials Rustock, Computer World book site. For from the action of Microsoft in March, hundreds of thousands of computers are still infected.

"This award shows that Microsoft is committed to tracking down those responsible for the Rustock botnet, responsible for many criminal activities. Although the primary goal of our legal and technical operation was to stop the threat represented Rustock for each person that it was affected, we also believe that those who controlled it must be held accountable for their actions, "reads the blog of the company.

The promised amount is available for information of any country, even if Microsoft thinks that the creators of Rustock hiding in Russia.

Microsoft releases an annual profit up sharply,technology

U.S. computer group was able to identify, Thursday, July 21, up 23% of its annual net profit to 23.15 billion dollars (16.04 billion euros). The fourth quarter of fiscal shifted from Microsoft, completed June 30, also exceeded expectations, with a 30% increase in net income to 5.87 billion dollars (4.07 billion euros) . The turnover has meanwhile increased by 12% during the year to 69.94 billion dollars (48.47 billion euros).

Adam Holt, analyst at Morgan Stanley, "The strong fourth quarter set the scene for a fiscal year 2011-12 full of positive factors." For his part Walter Pritchard, Citi, was looking forward to a "professional market very strong." Only the Windows, which equips the majority of personal computers in the world, registered a decline: the quarterly revenue yielded 1%, and annual revenues were down 2% to 19.02 billion of dollars (13.18 billion euros).

This erosion has been attributed in part to difficult comparisons, one year after the release of the operating system Windows 7, great commercial success, and partly to the softness of the market. "Excluding the impact of the Windows 7 launch last year, we believe that annual growth in sales was consistent with that of the computer market, from + 2% + 4%", argued Group Redmond.

STRONG GROWTH OF DIVISION GAMES:

The progression of the most spectacular results were recorded by the gaming industry and mobile, which benefited from the popularity of the game system without a controller Kinect: the annual sales jumped 45% to 8.91 billion dollars (6.17 billion euros) and operating income more than doubled to 1.32 billion dollars (915 million). Other activities, such as professional programs such as "Office", recorded a 15% increase in turnover for the year to 22.19 billion dollars (15.38 billion euros).

Online products, such as Bing, who routinely nibble market share, saw its turnover increase of 15% for the year and 17% for the quarter, but they have widened their losses , up to now $ 2.56 billion (1.77 billion euros) for the year.

The action Microsoft has fluctuated in after-hours trading following the release of these figures, eventually stabilizing at a level close to the closing price on Nasdaq, or 27.09 dollars (18.77 euros).

Baidu makes an agreement with Microsoft on the research in English,technology

Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant, announced Monday it has reached an agreement with Microsoft that will allow users to directly obtain the results generated by the English Bing, of American society. Baidu and Bing should start offering this service common in late 2011.

"The cooperation between Baidu and Bing will jeopardize the technological advantages of both partners and will provide the best search experience for users who need results in English," said Zhang Dongchen, the head of Baidu. The agreement will also allow Baidu to enter the foreign market research on the Internet, Zhang said, without elaborating. Baidu has about 10 million queries per day in English, mostly from professionals or students, a relatively low figure compared with 477 million users claimed by Baidu, undisputed leader of the research in China.

Neither Microsoft or Baidu have disclosed the exact terms of the agreement, including how search results are censored. Chinese law requires a filtering of important research results, both on the political content as pornography, this censorship, combined with a series of hacking attempts, has prompted Google to channel research through its servers in Hong Kong, where the censorship law is not in effect.

Apple, RIM and Microsoft seized patents Nortel,technology

Apple, Research in Motion (BlackBerry) and Microsoft are part of a consortium of six companies, with EMC Corp., Ericsson and Sony, which got their hands on the latest patents of the telecoms equipment maker Nortel. The acquisition represents $ 4.5 billion (3.10 billion euros), after an auction that has ruled Google and Intel.

Telecommunications giant to the Internet bubble burst, Nortel filed for bankruptcy in January 2009 and has since liquidated most of its assets, raising about $ 3.2 billion.

Nortel has just sold his latest portfolio of more than 6000 patents and patent applications related to Internet and wireless technologies, the most popular on the Internet technology mobile broadband which feature the latest models of smartphones 4G.

The sale of these patents had attracted the attention of the biggest technology groups, including Google, which opened the bidding in April by offering $ 900 million. RIM has provided approximately $ 770 million to buy bulk, while Ericsson has provided $ 340 million, the companies noted in separate statements. The sale must still be approved by the U.S. justice system and the Canadian justice system, at a joint hearing scheduled July 11.

A patent war is underway among the leading manufacturers in mobile telephony, the industry heavyweights, including Nokia, Samsung or Apple, accusing each other of patent infringement. Latest episode: in response to a complaint from Apple, Samsung has in turn filed a complaint against his rival - and partner in the chips - and requested to discontinue importing iPhone and iPad United States this weeks.

Microsoft is launching a Web version of its Office suite complete,technology

Microsoft released on Tuesday, a full Web version of its Office 2010 suite for businesses, including a product aimed at combating the presence of Google's online services for SMEs. Office suite, which includes office software (spreadsheet, PowerPoint, Word processing ...) is one of the best-selling software - and most profitable - Microsoft.

For an amount of 5.25 to 22.75 euros per month per user, Microsoft offers companies subscribe to different offers, including more or less dematerialized services and software. The company claims that this system will enable companies to achieve economies of subtantielles maintenance costs.

The division "business" of the software giant, whose main income comes from the Office suite, reported $ 5.27 billion (3.7 billion euros) in revenue to Microsoft in the last quarter results exceed by more than $ 300 million forecast.

But in this very lucrative industry, Microsoft has seen competition from Google Apps and its service business, which offers similar tools (online office, email ...) for 50 dollars (35 euros) per year per user. Intended in particular for SMEs, this offer - why Google does not share the number of paying users - is seen by Microsoft as a direct competition to one of its flagship products.

Microsoft opens up its system to developers Kinect PC

The U.S. company Microsoft has released, Thursday, June 16, codes of his video game system without a controller Kinect. Developers can design the operating system Windows 7 applications using this technology gesture recognition. This is a "free public beta for non-commercial applications," said Microsoft. A commercial version of the developer kit is expected "at a later date," the company said Redmond.

Kinect uses a camera and recognition software to allow users to play video games on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft using natural body movements and voice commands instead of the traditional controllers. The system Kinect has sold over 10 million copies between November 2010 and March, according to Microsoft.

Shortly after the release of the device, developers had already published on the Web pilot "open source", to imagine new features for the device.

Rumor: Microsoft Windows Tablet 8 end of 2012

Microsoft buying the mobile phone industry Nokia, Microsoft launching Windows Tablet 8 under its own brand ... The rumors of hardware projects abound, without any confirmation from the person concerned.

Microsoft logo Microsoft is late Prosi on smartphones and tablets, the Redmond group could take the bull by the horns by launching its own products directly? The success or failure of KINECTS Kin terminals show that the company may occasionally attempt the adventure alone or with partners.

To speed the arrival of Windows Tablet 8 / ARM on the market (and perhaps to counter a possible neglect of manufacturers engaged in launching Android ranges), it is rumored that Microsoft in Taiwan could launch its touch pads under own mark before the end of 2012.


Microsoft directly visible on the shelves segment?
It would actually be a collaboration with OEMs and Taiwanese foundry Texas Instruments, with the contribution of its own entertainment services, like other categories of products like the Xbox or Windows phone.

Microsoft might as well try to reproduce the dynamics of some of these industries activtes and propose a combination hardware / software / content as its main competitors Apple and Google.

Despite this possible direct entry, the group would continue to push its Redmond platform worm OEMs.