Google Releases More Windows Bugs

An anonymous reader writes: Just days after Google angered Microsoft by releasing information about a Windows security flaw, they've now released two more. "The more serious of the two allows an attacker to impersonate an authorized user, and then decrypt or encrypt data on a Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 device. Google reported that bug to Microsoft on Oct. 17, 2014, and made some background information and a proof-of-concept exploit public on Thursday. Project Zero is composed of several Google security engineers who investigate not only the company's own software, but that of other vendors as well. After reporting a flaw, Project Zero starts a 90-day clock, then automatically publicly posts details and sample attack code if the bug has not been patched." Microsoft says there's no evidence these flaws have been successfully exploited.

Comments

Hope the trend continues.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I wish Apple would also pitch in and find and publish bugs in both Windows and Android. And Microsoft to retaliate by finding and reporting bugs in Android and Apple. In the end we as consumers will benefit. This should be come the norm. No longer minor players report possible bugs and the clock does not run till the company "accepts" that there is a bug.

Free markets! Competition!! That is what made America, what it is.

I wish such fierce competition exists in all spheres of the economy.

Cryptonomicon: Shanghai Banks

[handy_vandal]

I'm reminded of Neal Stephenson's description of Shanghai banks on the eve of World War 2:

Here you've got the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of course, City Bank, Chase Manhattan, the Bank of America, and BBME and the Agricultural Bank of China and any number of crappy little provincial banks, and several of those banks have contracts with what's left of the Chinese Government to print currency. It must be a cutthroat business because they slash costs by printing it on old newspapers, and if you know how to read Chinese, you can see last year's news stories and polo scores peeking through the colored numbers and pictures that transform these pieces of paper into legal tender.

As every chicken-peddler and rickshaw operator in Shanghai knows, the money-printing contracts stipulate that all of the bills these banks print have to be backed by such-and-such an amount of silver; i.e., anyone should be able to walk into one of those banks at the end of Kiukiang Road and slap down a pile of bills and (provided that those bills were printed by that same bank) receive actual metallic silver in exchange.

Now if China weren't right in the middle of getting systematically drawn and quartered by the Empire of Nippon, it would probably send official bean counters around to keep tabs on how much silver was actually present in these banks' vaults, and it would all be quiet and orderly. But as it stands, the only thing keeping these banks honest is the other banks.

Here's how they do it ...

Continue reading ...

Re:Playing with fire...

[TemporalBeing]

MS still holds a lot of Android patents. They can easily do an Apple and forbid use of them, which will completely paralyze Android.

What you mean all those patents that the Chinese outted and nearly the entire tech world found to be not relevant save about as many as you can count on your hands? Yeah, that's really going to stop Android...