Windows TCO and Microsoft Antitrust Issues
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You patched yet? Years-old Microsoft security holes still hot targets for cyber-crooks
It's generally accepted that security flaws in Microsoft's products are a top magnet for crooks and fraudsters: its sprawling empire of hardware and software is a target-rich ecosystem in that there is a wide range of bugs to exploit, and a huge number of vulnerable organizations and users.
And so we can believe it when Qualys yesterday said 15 of the 20 most-exploited software vulnerabilities it has observed are in Microsoft's code.
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Microsoft Keys
Below the fold I update this sorry state of affairs, which I first started cataloging a decade ago.
The technology used to secure Internet communication, for example via TLS, the basis for the HTTPS protocol, and for protecting the software supply chain, is based on public key encryption. For example, to start an HTTPS connection between Alice and Bob using Diffie-Hellman-Merkle key exchange, they each use their private key and the other's public key to compute aa shared secret key used to encrypt the communication.
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U-M requiring password reset for all UMICH (Level-1) accounts
The University of Michigan has mandated that passwords for all UMICH (Level-1) accounts be rest by the end of Sept. 12.
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Zoom's CEO thinks the US government should look into Microsoft's bundling of Teams
Last week, Microsoft announced it would offer its Teams online conferencing and collaboration service as a stand-alone product in much of Europe starting on October 1. This was in response to the European Commission's announcement that it was launching an investigation into whether or not Microsoft's bundling of Teams with Microsoft 365 was an anti-competitive move.
Now, the head of the company that offers a competing product to Teams believes that a similar investigation should happen in the US as well.
Bloomberg reports that Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, during a presentation at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference, was asked about Microsoft breaking off Teams from Microsoft 365 in Europe. Yuan stated, "You should ask this question to the FTC as well”.