Adobe, Symantec press EC to remove Vista tanks from their lawns
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The feature creeps Symantec and Adobe have raised objections to the inclusion of security software and electronic document technology in Windows Vista. Adobe has asked the European Commission to prevent the bundling of PDF document creation and reading tools that compete with its software.â¦
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Raw image editing and cataloging software gets support for Windows Vista and Adobe file formats.
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Updates pushed out last week by Microsoft to Windows Vista users to prep PCs for next month's release of Service Pack 1 have crippled some machines, according to messages posted to the company's support site.
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Day after Adobe patches Acrobat, Russian exploits target vulnerable systems.
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By Tamara Chuang, The Orange County Register, Calif.  Jan. 30--The anticipation is over. Windows Vista is finally here.
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Botnet surprise A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe's Acrobat and Reader software which affects Internet Explorer users.â¦
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By MAY WONG  SAN JOSE, Calif. - For nearly a year, television and Internet audiences have been seeing a familiar string of ads from Apple attacking rival Windows-based computers. With this week's release of Windows Vista, the newest jabs aren't any friendlier.
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This week, Symantec released public betas of Norton Internet Security and Norton AntiVirus for Windows Vista. The betas work on both 32- and 64-bit versions of Vista, itself in beta until Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, formally unveils Vista on Friday at an invitation-only event in New York.
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ on Thursday released an update to Windows Vista that will shut down unauthorized versions of the OS that allow users to skip the product's activation system. The move comes asÂ pirated copies of Vista are already making the rounds, mere weeks after the product was released to business customers. The update, which Microsoft has dubbed "frankenbuild," detects tampering of Windows Vista code that would allow users of the OS to work around the product's built-in activation system, which requires users to validate their copy of Vista with a product activation key to use the full version of the product after 30 days. Frankenbuild mixes files from various test and final versions of the software. It will require only systems in which it detects specific tampering to go through a validation check for authenticity, according to a posting on the Windows Genuine Advantage blog. If a version of Vista that has used a workaround to avoid product activation is detected, a user of that software will have 30 days before the OS goes into a reduced functionality mode, Microsoft said. In this mode, all users can do is access their existing files and surf the Web for an hour before having to log back on to the software. The pirating of Windows has been a perennial problem for Microsoft, particularly in developing countries. The company began coming down hard against piracy last year withÂ a widely criticized systemÂ it called Windows Genuine Advantage, which initially required users to validate their copies of Windows if they wanted to use Microsoft's update services. Microsoft took its antipiracy campaign one step further with Vista by building the validation system directly into the OS. This system requires a Windows Vista user to validate the software through a product activation key within 30 days of using the OS to avoid having the software go into reduced functionality mode.
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Adobe (Quote, Chart) issued a patch this week that helps prevent multiple flaws found in its products. The fixes clear up problems in Windows and Macintosh systems running Adobe Reader and Acrobat Pro versions
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Symantec Corp., the global leader in information security, today announced that its Norton Personal Firewall and Norton AntiVirus solutions will be preinstalled on all new HP Pavilion and Presario desktop PCs, expanding protection to consumers across the
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Microsoft urged Windows Vista users to download a new security tool that automatically disables suspicious or malicious "gadgets," the small applets that mimic the "widgets" popular on Mac OS X.Dubbed "Windows Sidebar Protection," the 1MB download was added to Windows Update on Tuesday and classified as a "high-priority" update. Microsoft customers running Vista RTM -- the initial version that launched in late 2006 to businesses and early 2007 to consumers -- saw the update on the list starting Tuesday. The update is optional, but depending on what settings have been selected in Windows' Automatic Updates, it may be downloaded and installed without any additional user interaction.Windows Sidebar is a Vista-only panel that holds the miniature applications known as gadgets -- small single-purpose tools that, for instance, display the time and date or RSS feeds. The Windows gadgets are composed of HTML and various scripts.And there's the rub, said Microsoft."Vista treats gadgets like it treats all executable code," said the advisory that accompanied the update. "Gadgets are written using HTML and script, but this HTML is not located on an arbitrary remote server as Web pages are. HTML content in the gadget is downloaded first as part of a package of resources and configuration files and then executed from the local computer."In other words, gadgets could be dangerous, even malicious. The small applications are crafted not only by Microsoft but also by third-party developers and users; Microsoft distributes gadgets on its Web site, but it doesn't vet them."The update gives us a mechanism to prevent a malicious gadget from being installed first of all, and if it's installed, to block the gadget [from running]," said Austin Wilson, a director in the Windows client product management group. "We're being proactive here. We looked at the [security] landscape and wanted this in place in case a problem arises in the future."There are no known vulnerabilities in any existing gadgets, Wilson claimed, stressing that Microsoft knows of no purposefully malicious gadgets, either.When it detects a flawed, suspicious or malicious gadget, Microsoft will create a "kill bit" file that it will then push to users through Windows Update on the regular once-a-month patch day, said Wilson. Yesterday's update included no kill bit, stressed Wilson, but instead is the tool that generates a unique ID for each gadget, accepts the list from Windows Update and then blocks existing gadgets from running or newly-downloaded gadgets from installing.After a gadget has been identified as bad, its icon gets swapped out with one labeled "Bad Gadget." The icon also can't be dragged, and the tool tip shows it as a security risk.The Sidebar security update is already integrated in the bits that were distributed as Vista Service Pack 1's release candidate last month, said Wilson, and it will be included in the final when that launches in the coming weeks.Microsoft has posted a pair of documents on its support site that go into more detail: KB943411 includes the download links to the 32- and 64-bit versions of the tool; KB941411 walks users through the various dialog boxes they will see when the tool tries to bar or block a gadget.
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A false positive in company's antivirus products leads to quarantine or deletion of some Windows users' copies of explorer.exe.
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Microsoft has released a list of 800 applications it has officially verified as running  bug-free on Windows Vista.
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Security software vendor Symantec claimed this week that Microsoft is withholding information about its new Vista operating system in an attempt to create an unfair advantage for its own security software.
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InfoWorld - Adobe Systems on Wednesday rolled out its LiveCycle Policy Server, which lets enterprise users apply policies to PDF documents to improve regulatory compliance and information privacy efforts.
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The User Account Control built into Windows Vista is supposed to help make the new operating system safer. But it can be spoofed, undermining the very mission for which it was created, according to Symantec.