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Microsoft Patches Critical Flaws in Windows Graphics, Metafile Systems

While Monday's big Microsoft launch event drew the headlines, Windows shops shouldn't overlook the fact that yesterday was Microsoft's monthly patch release day. It was a light Patch Tuesday by recent measures, with only one patch, but it is a critical one. Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-053 implements patches for three newly discovered bugs in various releases of Windows that could enable an attacker to take over an affected system and launch denial of service attacks. The patches fix the Graphics Rendering Engine vulnerability, the Windows Metafile vulnerability, and the Enhanced Windows Metafile vulnerability. The graphics flaw, which carries the risk of enabling remote code execution, appears the most severe, and it garnered a critical rating across all first-release and Service Pack 1 (SP1) releases of Windows Server 2003 and its 64-bit Itanium and X64 variants, as well as Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP1 and Windows XP SP2. The two metafile flaws only affect Windows 2000 and the first releases of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003; the security-focused SP2 and SP1 releases of these products are not affected by the metafile flaws. The basic metafile flaw carries a critical remote code execution vulnerability on the initial Windows Server 2003 releases, Windows XP SP2, and Windows 2000, while the "enhanced" meta file flaw carries a moderate denial of service vulnerability on those same systems. Microsoft says it is not aware of any exploit code available on the Web for the graphics rendering engine flaw, which was discovered by eEye Digital Security, nor for the two metafile flaws, which were discovered by eEye, Venustech, and Symantec.

New Windows Defender Gets More Deeply Integrated into OS

Windows AntiSpyware didn't have the right panache, apparently, so Microsoft decided to rename it Windows Defender. According to Microsoft's anti-malware engineering team blog, Windows Defender will have more than a new name when it debuts in Window Vista, the new version of the operating system expected about a year from now. It will also work as a system service within Windows, and malware signatures will also be distributed via the Windows Update software distribution channel and Windows Server Update Services. In addition to being a built-in component of Windows Vista, Windows Defender will also be made available to Windows XP users, the anti-malware engineering team says on its blog. Windows AntiSpyware is currently available for Windows XP as a beta release.

Microsoft Furthers P2P File Sharing, VoIP Strategies with Acquisitions

Microsoft has made two acquisitions in the last week, including the purchases of FolderShare and media-streams.com. Texas-based FolderShare offers an online service that enables users to create a private peer-to-peer network for the purpose of synchronizing files across multiple devices, and accessing or sharing files with colleagues and friends. The service works with files up to 2 GB in size, and is seen by Microsoft as a way to eliminate the need for sending large files via e-mail, burning them to CDs or DVDs and mailing them, or uploading them to a Web site. Meanwhile, the acquisition of Switzerland-based media-streams.com is expected to boost Microsoft's voice over IP (VoIP) strategy. Microsoft says it plans to use media-streams.com's technology, people, and intellectual property to bolster its VoIP offering, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, and to further its goal of "breaking down the silos of communication" and unifying telephony, e-mail, instant messaging, short message service, and audio, video, and Web conferencing.

Microsoft Great Plains Integrated with Food Service App

XFormity, a Texas company that writes financial management and business intelligence software for restaurant chains, has partnered with Microsoft in the roll-out of a new version of BPx, the companies announced last week at the International Foodservice Technology Exposition. BPx combines XFormity's expertise in the foodservice industry with Great Plains, one of Microsoft's ERP suites for small and mid size companies. By offering BPx as a hosted service, small to mid size franchises will have easier access to applications and data that enable them to make better decisions. Such is the case at Family EATS, a Houston company that owns 28 Taco Bells. "For quick service restaurant franchisees, having a one-stop IT shop that can provide both an integrated view of our financials while reducing the cost and headache of IT management is a huge relief," Shawn Taylor, Family EATS CEO, said in a statement.

Sun, Microsoft Work on Java-.NET Interoperability

The love fest between rivals Sun Microsystems and Microsoft continued last week as the two companies announced they would provide substantially improved interoperability between the Java and .NET programming environments.

According to Joe Keller, vice president of marketing for integration platforms at Sun, last week's Java-.NET interoperability announcement is the third phase in the commitment that the two companies made to not just stop fighting, but to start cooperating. In May, Sun and Microsoft delivered single sign-on capabilities for Windows and Solaris platforms, and then a few months later they committed to support the WS* specification relating to systems management, which is called the WS-Management spec. With this support, Windows servers can access systems management data and features in Solaris operating systems, and Solaris can access similar features in Windows. This allows Solaris administrators working with Sun's N1 systems management tools to seek out, monitor, and control Windows servers and Windows administrators working in the Microsoft Management Console to reach into Solaris servers and do the same.

The WS* specifications include some 13 different specifications on how to create a Web service. Sun has committed to implement more WS* specifications, including those relating to SOAP-based messaging, metadata, security, and quality of service in the Java platform, and Microsoft has committed to do the same in the .NET platform. Microsoft will be implementing these specs in the Windows Communication Foundation, formerly known as the "Indigo" project, while Sun will be implementing those specs first in project "Glassfish," the open source version of its Java Enterprise System application server. WCF is one of the nifty features coming out in the future "Longhorn" Vista Server. The commercial implementation of Sun's J2EE application server with this interoperability embedded in it is expected at the JavaOne show in May 2006. Sun is also putting the support into its Java Web Services Developer Pack development tools. Sun will be up in Redmond testing the interoperability this week, in fact, using early editions of this code.

Kellner says that while the WS-I spec and the SOAP protocol allowed Java and .NET to talk to each other, this interoperability is more robust. Now, you can be sure that services built in .NET or Java can talk to each other securely, predictably, and reliably. "This allows you to build truly enterprise-class service-oriented applications," explains Keller. "And as funny as this might sound, you don't have to care if the services are built in Java or .NET. They are just exposed as services on a network, and programmers just don't have to care."

IBM Launches New Tape Drive and Tape Library

IBM recently announced the TS1120 E05 tape drive, which is a variant of the 3592 tape drive it has been selling for some time. This one has a native data transfer rate of 100 MB/sec, which is 2.5 times faster than the 3592 J1A tape drive, and at 500 GB per tape, can house 16 times as much data. The TS1120 E05 has a two-port Fibre Channel attachment to servers; it is supported with Linux, AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX as well as Windows 2000 and 2003, OS/400, and z/OS, z/VM, and VSE/ESA. The tape drive costs $6,000 or $7,500, depending on features; a 4 Gb/sec Fibre Channel switch costs $16,350. IBM also announced the TS3310 tape library models L5B and E9U, the former being a 5U tape library for LTO 3 drives and the latter being a 9U extension unit for that library so it can hold more drives and tapes. LTO 2 drives are not supported in the library. The L5B library has 30 tape slots of storage, 6 slots of storage near the drives, and up to two LTO 3 drives. The LTO 3 tapes support 400 GB of native capacity (twice that with compression on) and can move uncompressed data at 80 MB/sec. The library is supported on systems running Linux, AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX as well as Windows 2000 and 2003 and OS/400. The base L5B unit, which costs $14,000, holds about 12 TB uncompressed, and the E9U expansion unit, which costs $11,000, holds another 36.8 TB uncompressed. These prices do not include the cost of the LTO 3 drives, which cost $12,500 for a SCSI-connected unit and $14,500 for a Fibre Channel-connected unit.