Stories by Gregg Keizer

Microsoft gives Vista security an A-plus

A Microsoft executive Wednesday said Windows Vista's first 90 days was a huge security success when compared to the opening three months of Windows XP, the current Apple Mac OS X, and three flavours of Linux.

No Vista 'pop' on 2007 PC sales, predicts Gartner

The launch of Windows Vista won't do much for PC sales this year, a research firm said Tuesday, with the new Microsoft operating system giving "at best, a limited boost" to PC units shipped during 2007.

Firefox hit by fewer flaws than IE in 2006

Mozilla's Firefox suffered from 26 percent fewer vulnerabilities in the second half of 2006 than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, a security company's research said Monday.

New QuickTime exploit hits MySpace, steals passwords

A Trojan horse exploiting a flaw in Apple's QuickTime that was patched two weeks ago is infecting MySpace.com users' computers, collecting confidential information, including passwords, several security companies said Monday.

'Wiki' finally legit, says OED

Six years after Wikipedia.org debuted, editors at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) have finally deigned to add the word "wiki" to the OED's online version.

Microsoft guru wants Vista bugs rated less serious

Microsoft's own bug hunters should cut Windows Vista some slack and rate its vulnerabilities differently because of the operating system's new, baked-in defenses, according to the developer who is often the public persona of the company's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) process.

Run Vista legally without activation for a year

Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end run around one of Microsoft's key antipiracy measures, according to Windows expert, Brian Livingston.

Apple patches Mac OS X, updates OS to version 10.4.9

Apple Tuesday made up for Microsoft's patch sabbatical by releasing a security update that featured fixes for 45 vulnerabilities, a third of which addressed flaws first made public during a pair of bug-a-day projects in late 2006 and early this year.

Mozilla wrestles with Firefox 3.0 security moves

Mozilla is still wrestling with adding a security feature to Firefox that its browser rival, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, uses on Windows Vista to keep malware from hijacking computers.

McAfee maps risky Web domains

A map unveiled this week by McAfee and based on data from its SiteAdvisor service paints Russia and Romania deep red as the countries whose domains are most likely to host "drive-by" exploits.

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