Microsoft is expected to field a public beta of its new “Windows Live Marketplace” site, possibly as early as August 28.

Code-named “Agora” – the Greek term for “marketplace,” the new one-stop shop may supersede the current “Windows Marketplace” site, according to information from Liveside.Net.

Microsoft officials have blogged that the company is preparing a new version of Windows Marketplace to launch on August 28. But it’s not clear whether Windows Live Marketplace will be an adjunct to the revised Windows Marketplace site or an outright replacement for it.

Source: Yahoo

An Israeli computer science student discovered a new security flaw in Microsoft email service Hotmail.

An attack on users email is launched using Cross-Site Scripting, when a Hotmail user clicks on a special crafted link in an email message. Then the malicious code sends the user’s cookie with the session information to the attacker.

At this point the attacker can log in to the victim’s email account take control of that account, read emails and contacts ans also reset the password.

Baha Naamana, who discovered this flaw reported his finding to Microsoft three weeks ago, and got a response from Microsoft Security Response Center that they will investigate the report, and they asked him not to disclose the information. Three weeks have passed and the problem still exists, according to Naamana. After three weeks Naamana decided to go public with the information in a hope that this will make Microsoft respond faster and fix the flaw.

Gmail is headed for the office — officially.

Starting Monday, Google will offer Google Apps for Your Domain, a free package of programs for businesses, universities and other organizations.

Workers will be able to send e-mail with Gmail, Google’s two-year-old Web-based mail service, but messages will carry their company’s domain name. The package also includes Google’s online calendar, instant-messaging service, and Page Creator, a Web page builder.

Information technology administrators can make some customizations. “But really, the applications are exactly what you’d experience as a consumer if you use them,” said Dave Girouard, VP and general manager of Google Enterprise, a division of Google Inc.

The free edition of Apps for Your Domain is, like Google’s main site, supported with ads. By the end of the year, the company also plans to launch a paid version that will offer more storage, some degree of support, and likely, no ads. A price for this edition hasn’t been set.

Source: AP

Security researchers at Symantec have discovered a new proof of concept virus that targets processors AMD rather than operating systems.

The worm comes in two versions, targeting 32-bit and 64-bit processors from AMD. Symantec refers to the online pests as w32.bounds and w64.bounds. Because it involves proof of concept code, both viruses are rated as low level threats.

Although at this point it concerns harmless proof of concept code, the virus could be used as a starting point for creating malware that affects computers regardless of the operating system that they run

Source: computing

With the soon to be released Windows Vista, the new operating system overhauled a very important and usually overlooked feature, the backup.

Windows Vista provides a backup experience that is more comprehensive and even easier to use than the basic backup utility included in Windows XP. The new backup utility works in the background so you can use a simple wizard to schedule when and where you want it backed up. You can back up to CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, an external hard disk, another hard disk on your PC, or to another PC or server connected to your network.

Like commercial backup software such as Symantec Ghost, Vista backup can take a complete image of your hard drive, track changes and continue to backup only those changes, and of course backup individual files, specific file types and folders.

Just like Ghost, Vista backup lets you restore a complete hard drive from an image, which is most useful for corporations, that create a drive image which is then gets duplicated on many computers.

Maybe the most significant new feature Microsot introduced with Vista backup is the Previous Versions feature.
Have you ever accidentally saved over a file you were working on? Accidental file deletion or modification is a common cause of data loss. This feature automatically creates point-in-time copies of files as you work, so you can quickly and easily retrieve versions of a document you may have accidentally deleted, even after you emptied your recycle bin.

Amazon.com announced on Thursday a service to provide computing power on demand over the Internet.

This hosted service, called Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), is in limited beta testing and is aimed at software developers writing Web applications.

The service is offered to developers, who can tap into the server-processing service to quickly meet their application’s changing needs. Rates start at 10 cents per “instance-hour” consumed–a dime for the use of a guaranteed minimum amount of computer capacity running particular server software.

Source: News.com

Canadian regulators are looking into an apparent financial scam in which hackers cleaned out online brokerage accounts and used the money to buy over-the-counter penny stocks.

The Investment Dealers Association, the self-regulatory arm of Canada’s securities industry, said accounts at as many as four brokers have been attacked in what appears to be a modern twist on the traditional “pump and dump”, in which a cheap stock is fraudulently bid up to create artificial demand, then sold for a profit.

While the amounts stolen were relatively small — in the tens of thousands of dollars — the IDA says it’s the first instance they’ve seen of online brokers falling victim to “phishing”, or the use of e-mails purported to be from the broker to extract clients’ account information.

Source: Reuters