Microsoft Support & Discussions

Bulletin Severity Rating:Important - This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the Remote Desktop Protocol. The vulnerability could allow denial of service if an affected system received a sequence of specially crafted RDP packets. Microsoft has also received reports of limited, targeted attacks attempting to exploit this vulnerability. By default, the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is not enabled on any Windows operating system. Read Bulletin

Bulletin Severity Rating:Important - This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in ASP.NET Chart controls. The vulnerability could allow information disclosure if an attacker sent a specially crafted GET request to an affected server hosting the Chart controls. Note that this vulnerability would not allow an attacker to execute code or to elevate the attacker's user rights directly, but it could be used to retrieve information that could be used to further compromise the affected system. Only web applications using Microsoft Chart Control are affected by this issue. Default installations of the .NET Framework are not affected. This security update is…

Bulletin Severity Rating:Important - This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Report Viewer. The vulnerability could allow information disclosure if a user views a specially crafted Web page. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force a user to visit the Web site. Instead, an attacker would have to persuade a user to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link in an e-mail message or Instant Messenger message that takes the user to the vulnerable Web site. Read Bulletin

Bulletin Severity Rating:Moderate - This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow denial of service if a user visits a network share (or visits a Web site that points to a network share) containing a specially crafted file. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force a user to visit such a network share or Web site. Instead, an attacker would have to convince a user to do so, typically by getting the user to click a link in an e-mail message or Instant Messenger message. Read Bulletin

Bulletin Severity Rating:Moderate - This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft .NET Framework. The vulnerability could allow information disclosure if a user views a specially crafted Web page using a Web browser that can run XAML Browser Applications (XBAPs). In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a Web site that contains a Web page that is used to exploit this vulnerability. In addition, compromised Web sites and Web sites that accept or host user-provided content or advertisements could contain specially crafted content that could exploit this vulnerability. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force…

By Thurrott, Paul Despite promises that we’d see new machines based on Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Windows Home Server 2011, and Windows Storage Server 2011 Essentials by the end of May or June at the latest, it’s now August, and very little in the way of hardware, new or otherwise, has appeared. Source: Win Super Site

The August 2011 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer is now available via Windows Update. This security update resolves five vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer that were disclosed in coordination with Microsoft and two publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user visits a malicious, specially crafted Web page using IE. Users who run without administrative rights are more secure in general and should be less impacted than other users you can read more about this security principle in many places. This security update is rated Critical for IE6, 7, 8, and 9 on Windows clients for more inform…

Windows 7’s share of the PC market is continuing to grow steadily, while Apple’s, Linux’s and Google’s shares are making slow inroads, according to new worldwide PC usage data from Gartner Inc. Source: All About Microsoft

Information about Microsoft’s successor to Windows Phone OS Mango (codenamed Tango) is slowly starting to leak. Source: All About Microsoft

By Thurrott, Paul Conventional wisdom has it that Apple’s Mac OS X system is more secure than Windows. And while partisans on either side of the OS fence have differing reasons for believing that to be so--Mac users believe it is because of the inherent superiority of OS X’s UNIX underpinnings, and Windows users claim that OS X’s tiny 5 percent usage share isn’t a sufficient target for hackers--this is perhaps the one area where they do agree. Source: Win Super Site

By Thurrott, Paul Well, they can’t all be home runs. After the stunning "Gmail Man" video made the rounds online recently, I guess I sort of expected more excellence from Microsoft’s internal video efforts. Sadly, this is not the case. Source: Win Super Site

By Thurrott, Paul Say what you will about Google, but the online giant’s strategy with Android has paid off: By giving away the software that powers its mobile platform, Google has quickly risen to dominance in the smartphone market, easily pushing aside industry darling Apple. But there’s a dark side to Google’s smartphone rise. Source: Win Super Site

By Thurrott, Paul My advice is to consolidate email accounts aggressively in the cloud when possible, however, since client consolidation--as you’ll see--requires a lot of configuration, and you’ll need to repeat these configuration changes each time you reinstall Windows or reset your mobile device. Source: Win Super Site

By Thurrott, Paul In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo, Mary Jo and I discuss BUILD, Google’s crazy patent attack against Apple and Microsoft, an study in IE intelligence, new tidbits about Windows 8 and Office 15, Windows Phone news, an MS-DOS anniversary, the truth about Ultrabooks, XP usage share, Paul at Big Nerd Ranch, and Mary Jo’s trip next week to SharePoint Saturday The Conference. Source: Win Super Site

By Thurrott, Paul In addition to configuring your primary email account to collect email from other, secondary, accounts, you could alternatively configure your secondary accounts to forward mail, automatically, to your primary account. There are some disadvantages to this approach, but these can be overcome if you know what to look for. Source: Win Super Site

By Thurrott, Paul I joined Andrew Zarian again this week on What The Tech to discuss the new Roku 2 players and how they stack up against the competition, Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" and why reviewers suddenly "get" that this platform is excellent, the problem with having too many choices, and why the age of dedicated portable gaming machines has passed. Source: Win Super Site

By Thurrott, Paul Microsoft on Friday provided an update on its ongoing war against spam, claiming that it has cut spam on the Hotmail web-based email services by some 90 percent and, in doing so, has also cut overall spam on the Internet by 15 percent. As important, it’s cut so-called "outgoing spam"--i.e. that spam that is sent from Microsoft’s Hotmail servers--by an impressive 75 percent as well. Source: Win Super Site

By Thurrott, Paul In this second article of my email consolidation series, I’ll move beyond abstract ideas and towards a more mechanical how-to, and examine how you can use one email service to collect email from another email service. Source: Win Super Site

By Thurrott, Paul The market analysts at comScore this week released their latest US smart phone usage share survey, noting that Microsoft’s Windows Phone was in use on just 5.8 percent of smart phones in the second quarter of 2011. That’s down 1.7 percentage points from its 7.5 percent figure in the first quarter of 2011. Source: Win Super Site

Dolby Laboratories executives shared some information about Microsoft’s Windows 8 during an earnings call this week. What are the implications of the disclosure? Source: All About Microsoft