Microsoft slates IE9 beta for September

Microsoft slates IE9 beta for September
MIcrosoft will ship a beta of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) in September, a company executive said today.

If the timeline is accurate, the IE9 beta release will come a month later than earlier speculation, which had settled on August, a pick based in large part on PowerPoint slides purportedly from a Microsoft MCTS Training presentation that focused on Windows 8 , the next iteration of the company’s OS.
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Today, Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, said that IE9 would reach beta this fall. “We’re really excited about IE9, which will be beta and coming out in September,” said Turner during the company’s annual day-long presentation to Wall Street analysts.

Turner also boasted of Internet Explorer’s recent turnaround, claiming that it had gained usage share the last two months.

According to Web analytics company Net Applications, IE did increase its global share by a record six-tenths of a percentage point during June. However, Net Applications had IE losing, not gaining, ground worldwide in May.

As of June 30, IE accounted for an estimated 60.3% of all browsers used during the month.

Since March, when the company debuted a rough-around-the-edges IE9 developer preview, the company has updated the bare-bones browser twice, most recently in late June .

After Turner’s announcement of a September beta for IE9, Microsoft declined to answer additional questions, including when during the month users could expect the more stable preview, or whether the beta would be open to everyone, as the developer previews have been.

“We do not have any additional specifics to share at this time about when Internet Explorer 9 Beta will be available,” a company spokeswoman said.

Microsoft has also refused to name a release schedule for the final build of IE9. Most pundits now believe Microsoft won’t wrap up the browser until 2011.

That will be the case if Microsoft MCITP Certification mimics the timeline it used for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), which reached the beta milestone in March 2008 but didn’t ship until March 2009 .

Using IE8’s schedule as a guide, users can expect to see the final version of IE9 in September 2011.

IE9 will run on Windows Vista and Windows 7 , but not on Windows XP, the nearly-nine-year-old operating system that still accounts for 68% of all versions of Windows still in use.

Microsoft to issue patch for dangerous USB rootkit hole

Microsoft to issue patch for dangerous USB rootkit hole
Microsoft on Tuesday will release a rare out-of-band patch to fix the highly dangerous zero-day vulnerability  that has caused multiple researchers to issuing warnings earlier this month. The patch will be for all supported versions of Windows and will require a restart.

As I previously wrote about, the exploit is a whopper on all levels. It comes into the enterprise via hidden files on USB sticks or via shared network files. It requires no user interaction to infect the system (simply viewing the icon is enough to trigger it). It propagates itself. It loads as a rootkit infection. It affects all Windows operating systems, even full-patched Windows 7 systems. It seems to target extremely sensitive information — researchers say it seems to have been made for espionage. If all that weren’t scary enough, a researcher has already published proof-of-concept code.

The attack exploits a vulnerability in Windows Shell, a component of Microsoft MCTS Training Windows. Although many anti-virus software makers claimed that they were able to update their wares to detect the rootkit, security experts remained highly concerned about the hole, as did Microsoft. In a blog post today, Christopher Budd, Sr. Security Response Communications Manager at Microsoft, explained, “we’re able to confirm that, in the past few days, we’ve seen an increase in attempts to exploit the vulnerability.”

Microsoft MCITP Certification will also hold a special edition of the bulletin release webcast on Monday, August 2, 2010 at 1:00 PM PDT. If you are interested in attending the webcast, click here to sign up.

Other articles Network World has published that discusses the attacks include: