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Microsoft to Preview Monthly Security Bulletins

Last week Microsoft announced a new program to begin notifying users via e-mail of pending security bulletins every month. Starting with next month's security bulletin, people will be able to obtain a general summary of the planned security bulletin release three business days before its scheduled publish date, which is currently the second Tuesday of each month. The company says the advanced notification will include the number of bulletins that might be released, the anticipated severity ratings, and the products that might be affected. Details of specific vulnerabilities will not be released in the advanced summary. Microsoft says it created the advanced notification program in response to customer feedback. The program will begin on Thursday, December 9, when users will get a sneak peek at the upcoming security bulletin for Tuesday, December 14. Microsoft says users will be able to start signing up to receive the advanced notification via e-mail sometime in early December. At that, users should be able to sign up on Microsoft's site.

Microsoft Issues Patch for Security Vulnerability in Firewall

Yesterday was the second Tuesday of the month, which means it was time for Microsoft's monthly security bulletin release. The lone security flaw disclosed in yesterday's release concerns a problem in Microsoft's firewall, called which the company calls its Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000, as well as in its Proxy Server 2.0 product, that could let Internet attackers spoof users of the products. Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-039 details the vulnerability, which it considers "important," and directs users of Proxy Server Service Pack 1 and ISA Server SP1 and SP2 users to install the patches to fix the problem.

Microsoft May Act on Internet Explorer Flaw Being Exploited by MyDoom Variants

Security researchers are warning of variants of the MyDoom worm that target an unpatched flaw in Microsoft Internet Explorer. In late October, the MyDoom.AF, MyDoom.AH, and MyDoom.AG worms began to appear. The worms travel by e-mail but exploit a recently found buffer overflow in the way that Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser handles frames. Users most susceptible to the worm are those who aren't running firewalls. Computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2 are not susceptible. Microsoft is reportedly aware of the problem and is considering a response to it.

Mozilla Launches Firefox 1.0 Web Browser As Internet Explorer Marketshare Continues Decline

Users who are frustrated with the ongoing security problems of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser (and from the looks of IE's declining market share, many are) will be interested in learning about new alternative that became available this week. Mozilla Foundation yesterday announced the general availability of its Mozilla Firefox 1.0, an open-source Web browser that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems and is available in a dozen languages. Firefox contains useful features such as pop-up blocking, fraud detection, and tabbed browsing, which allows users to open many Web pages with a single window. The software can be freely downloaded from the Mozilla Web site or purchased on a CD-ROM for about $15. Recent studies have shown that about 6 percent of the world's browsers are from Mozilla, which develops its flagship Mozilla browser as well as its new Firefox browser. Microsoft's IE is still by far the dominant browser, but its market share has slipped from about 96 percent in June to about 93 percent in October.

Shareholders Approve Microsoft's One-Time $32 Billion Dividend

Microsoft shareholders yesterday officially approved management's plan to issue the special one-time $3-per-share dividend to return some of the company's cash hoard to shareholders. Shareholders that are on record as of November 17 will be paid on December 2, the company says. Microsoft announced a three-part plan this summer to return $75 billion to its shareholders by 2008. The bulk of that value was in the special one-time $3 dividend, which accounts for $32 billion. The remainder of the plan called for the doubling of the annual dividend to $.32 per share, which would put $3.5 billion in shareholders' pockets per year, and a $30 billion stock buy-back program through 2008. In other actions taken at the annual shareholder meeting, Deloitte & Touche will remain as the company's independent auditor for fiscal year 2005, and shareholders elected nine Microsoft board members, including Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect; Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer; James Cash Jr., former Harvard Business School professor; Raymond Gilmartin, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Merck & Co.; Ann McLaughlin Korologos, chairman emeritus of The Aspen Institute, and senior adviser with Benedetto, Gartland & Co.; David Marquardt, general partner at August Capital; Charles Noski, corporate vice president and chief financial officer of Northrop Grumman and former vice chairman of AT&T; Helmut Panke, chairman of the board of management at BMW; and Jon Shirley, former president and chief operating officer of Microsoft.

VERITAS Delivers Improved OpForce Server Provisioning

Storage software specialist VERITAS Software has aspirations elsewhere in the IT market, and that is one reason why it bought server provisioning software maker Jareva Technologies last year. This week, VERITAS has upgraded the OpForce 4.0 Enterprise Edition server provisioning tool so it can remotely install unattended instances of Microsoft Windows Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003, as well as Red Hat's Enterprise Linux AS 3, on bare iron. The software had already supported provisioning for IBM's AIX and Sun's Solaris, as well as Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. It stands to reason that support for HP-UX will soon be added to OpForce. OpForce 4.0 is set to be available in mid-November, and costs $7,500 per management server and $500 per managed processor.

Server Shipments in Eastern Europe Booming

Shipments of servers into Central and Eastern Europe exploded in 2003, with shipments up 17 percent compared with 2002, according to researchers at IDC. However, the rapid shift to low-cost X86 systems in that market, away from proprietary and Unix systems, meant that total revenues in this important region of the world's IT community were up only 1.1 percent. However, this year things look to be better for the server makers (and presumably for the customers in the region), since IDC is predicting that server shipments are expected to climb by 20 percent in 2004 and revenues are expected to climb by 15 percent. This will significantly increase profit margins among the server makers that play in Eastern and Central Europe.

The Russian IT market is the juggernaut of this region, but server sales in Poland and the Czech Republic are not too shabby, either. These three together accounted for 64 percent of server shipments in 2003. IDC added that Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania are the fastest growing server markets in the region. IDC says Hewlett-Packard was the dominant vendor in the region in 2003 and will probably hold that position in 2004; IBM is number two, and Dell is number three. Two Russian server makers, Aquarius and Kraftway, held the fourth and fifth positions in the market. X86 machines accounted for 97.6 percent of shipments in 2003, and Windows was installed on 80 percent of the machines. Unix and NetWare sales were small and contracting, according to IDC. However, Linux server sales were up 72.2 percent in 2003.