Presidente da Microsoft vende 12% de sua participação na empresa

URL: http://redir.folha.com.br/redir/online/tec/rss091/*http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/827092-presidente-da-microsoft-vende-12-de-sua-participacao-na-empresa.shtml

O presidente-executivo da Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, vendeu US$ 1,3 bilhão em ações da empresa, reduzindo sua fatia na companhia em cerca de 12%. O executivo comentou que sua primeira venda de ações da Microsoft em sete anos não deve ser considerada como um sinal de desconfiança na maior produtora mundial de software.Ballmer afirmou que venderá mais ações até o fim do ano, em uma medida para diversificar seus investimentos, mas a empresa procurou minimizar rumores de que o executivo, no comando da empresa desde 2000, possa estar se preparando para deixar a companhia.Acompanhe a Folha no Twitter
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Google acusa governo americano de favorecer a Microsoft

URL: http://redir.folha.com.br/redir/online/tec/rss091/*http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/tec/824205-google-acusa-governo-americano-de-favorecer-a-microsoft.shtml

A empresa de internet Google processou o governo dos Estados Unidos na Justiça, acusando-o de favorecer a Microsoft nos processos de seleção de empresas que fornecem serviços à Administração, informou nesta segunda-feira (1º) o diário "Los Angeles Times".A decisão do Google, tomada na semana passada, se enquadra na estratégia da empresa de aumentar sua presença nos negócios de software de escritório, setor dominado pelo Microsoft Office, avaliado em US$ 20 bilhões nos EUA.A empresa do buscador mais popular da internet recorreu à Justiça para denunciar que o Departamento de Interior excluiu a oferta do Google para administrar as contas de e-mail de seus 88 mil funcionários sem levá-la em consideração.Leia mais (02/11/2010 - 00h51)

Google Sues US Gov't For Only Considering Microsoft

URL: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/9AwB6BNxCoA/story01.htm

An anonymous reader writes "Late last week, Google sued the US government for putting out a Request For Quotation for the messaging needs of the Department of the Interior that specified only Microsoft solutions would be considered. Google apparently had spent plenty of time talking to DOI officials to understand their needs and make sure they had a solution ready to go — and were promised that there wasn't a deal already in place with Microsoft. And then the RFQ came out. Google protested, but the protest was dismissed, with the claim that Google was 'not an interested party.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft venderá Office "fatiado" à Prefeitura de NY

URL: http://redir.folha.com.br/redir/online/tec/rss091/*http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/tec/817989-microsoft-vendera-office-fatiado-a-prefeitura-de-ny.shtml

A Prefeitura de Nova York e a Microsoft fecharam um acordo de compra de software que deve reduzir os custos públicos em US$ 50 milhões por ano e aumentar o acesso dos funcionários a aplicações mais modernas.É que a cidade conseguiu fazer com que a empresa --sob pressão dos rivais Google e IBM-- cobre só por softwares de fato usados pelos trabalhadores.Ou seja, em vez de comprar pacotes do Office, a administração vai dividir os funcionários em categorias e pagar só pelos programas usados.Leia mais (21/10/2010 - 11h40)

Wikileaks revela plano para obstruir crescimento de software livre na União Européia

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NoticiasLinux/~3/TtMr35GMFsQ/nl1286777388.html

O documento publicado pela Wikileaks demonstra que Jonathan Zuck, presidente da ACT (Association for Competitive Technology), uma organização com fortes vínculos com a Microsoft, e fundador da "Americans for Technology Leadership", havia influenciado nas mudanças de documentos de trabalho da União Européia. Entre as modificações feitas por Zuck estão a grande insistência na mescla de software livre e não livre; a eliminação de críticas às patentes de software e as ameaças de pleitos superficiais por parte dos detentores de patentes; e a debilitação dos argumentos a favor de uma defesa dos direitos dos desenvolvedores de software livre a implementar livremente os padrões.

Confira: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/European_Commission_OSS_Strategy_Draft,_Mar_2009
Fonte: http://softlibre.barrapunto.com/softlibre/10/10/10/1518203.shtml

Upgrading to Windows 7 isn't Cheap

URL: http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2010-08-27-025-35-OP-DT-MS

IT World: "A recent Gartner report showed what many of us already knew: Moving to Windows 7 from XP is expensive."

New Windows kernel mode flaw points to future attack vectors

URL: http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/wO2zWJWEayw/new-windows-kernel-mode-flaw-points-to-future-attack-vectors.ars

A new Windows flaw that allows all current, supported versions of Windows to be crashed was published on Friday by Israeli researcher Gil Dabah. The bug allows a local user to cause a system to suffer a blue-screen of death crash. In principle, this may also allow attackers to run code of their choosing with kernel privileges, though in practice, the looks as if it would be difficult due to the nature of the flaw.

The bug is in a kernel-mode component called win32k.sys, which handles many key Windows features like window management and 2D graphics. This specific flaw is in the component's handling of the system clipboard; by placing specially malformed data onto the clipboard, the system can be made to corrupt the screen or crash outright. In the early days of Windows, the component in question did not run in kernel mode; it was moved there for Windows NT 4, as doing so made 2D desktop graphics substantially faster.

win32k.sys has remained in kernel mode ever since, and as a result, this flaw affects Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2, for both x86 and x64, both with or without Service Packs.

Microsoft is aware of the flaw but has not announced when a patch might be made available. Due to the nature of the problem, it has been assigned a "Less Critical" rating by security group Secunia. This rating is a result of the lack of remote exploitability and the difficulties in using the flaw to execute an attacker's code.

So far this year, Microsoft has patched a number of similar flaws in the Windows kernel, including bugs in the win32k.sys component. The company tends to give them an "Important" rating, again due to the requirement that the attacker be logged in to perform the attack. Researcher Tavis Ormandy went so far as to suggest that so far this year, Windows has not gone more than a few days at a time without a known, published kernel flaw of this kind.

If the flaw could be exploited in such a way as to allow arbitrary code execution, an attacker with a regular user account would be able to increase his privileges. This does not directly increase the risk of the flaw—the ability to log on is still required—but it does make the flaw more useful, as it allows attackers to break out of system sandboxes such as those used in Web browsers like Chrome and Internet Explorer. This in turn magnifies the risk of those browser flaws.

It is precisely this dual technique—a browser flaw to allow malicious code to run, coupled with a kernel privilege escalation flaw—that is being widely used to jailbreak iPhones and other Apple devices. The privilege escalation is needed because the iPhone runs software in a sandbox; merely being able to attack Safari is not enough to make the system changes required to jailbreak.

Though Internet Explorer 7 and 8 and Chrome both incorporate this kind of sandboxing on Windows Vista and Windows 7, typical attacks on Windows systems don't bother attempting to use kernel flaws to escalate their privileges. The widespread use of Windows XP and users running with full Administrator rights makes it not worth the effort. As Windows XP finally starts dying off and sandboxing becomes more common, we could start to see greater attention paid to, and exploitation of, this kind of flaw, just as we already do on locked-down phone platforms.

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