Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6 RTM and Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) SP1 RC are now available with the release of the Managed Desktop Optimization Pack 2010. • Download App-V 4.6• Evaluate MDOP 2010• Evaluate MED-V 1.0 SP1

TechNet Radio: Optimize Your Desktop Infrastructure with System Center Configuration Manager and Windows 7
John Baker speaks with David Feng, IT Director for Sporton International. Sporton International deployed Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2, which interoperates with Microsoft Application Virtualization and Windows 7 to help automate management chores.

Editor's Note

TechNet Flash Editor
Mitch Irsfeld

TechNet 2.0 Goes Live

With the launch of the new TechNet experience, I could spend this entire space on my favorite new features, but heck, just go to TechNet and check it out on your own.

Near and dear to my heart is the expanded Today's News section on the TechNet home page, with constantly updated news from real people (you'll want to check this every day and subscribe to the feed)...

Read more

March 2010 Bulletin Release Advance Notification

Posted Thursday, March 04, 2010 10:44 AM by MSRCTEAM

Today we are providing advance notification to customers that we will be releasing two bulletins this month affecting Windows and Microsoft Office products. Both bulletins are rated Important and address a total of 8 vulnerabilities.

We recommend that customers review the Advance Notification webpage and prepare to deploy these bulletins as soon as possible. To provide additional guidance for deployment prioritization, customers should note that both bulletins will address issues that would require a user to open a specially crafted file. There are no network based attack vectors.

We're also continuing to monitor the situation with Security Advisory 981169, the VBScript issue disclosed on Monday. There are no known attacks but we encourage customers to review the advisory and apply the suggested workarounds where possible. Customers that are running Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Vista are not affected.

As always, we will be hosting a public webcast where we will go in to details about the bulletins for March and where customers can ask questions. We will have a room full of engineers on hand to answer those questions live during the webcast. Here are the details:

Date: Wednesday, March 10
Time: 11:00 a.m. PST (UTC -eight)
Registration: http://msevents.micr...ntID=1032427711

A couple of months ago, I started including information about products that are reaching the end of their product lifecycle. It is extremely important for customers to move to supported platforms because after the dates below, those products/service packs, will no longer receive security updates.

• Windows XP Service Pack 2 will no longer be supported after July 13, 2010. Many customers are still on this version, so we encourage upgrading to Service Pack 3 or to Windows 7 as soon as possible.
• Windows Vista RTM will no longer be supported after April 13, 2010. Service Pack 1 will still be supported until July 12, 2011 but we recommend customers update to Service Pack 2 or Windows 7 at this time.
• Extended support for Windows 2000 will also be retired as of July 13, 2010. After that time, we will no longer provide security or any other updates for Windows 2000.

Hope to see you at the webcast!

Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead

*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*

Announcing the Windows Home Server YouTube channel

Posted by:
Nicole Berett
06:37 PM Friday
Mar 05, 2010

Whenever I’m confused on how to do something and am looking for some help, YouTube is one of the first places I go. Without fail, I can always find some form of video that gives me the answer I need. The Windows Home Server team has also seen the benefits of YouTube, and we thought it would be helpful and fun for our customers if we started making our own videos!

Now, with the new creation of our Windows Home Server videos, we have made our very own Windows Home Server channel on YouTube. On the channel, you will find variety of different videos including:

• Team interviews – learn about Windows Home Server’s team members and how they use the product in their day-to-day lives.
• Windows Home Server overviews – if you are still learning about Windows Home Server, watch an overview on how it can beneficial in your home or even a small business.
• Informational how-to screen casts – each how-to video will show you how to use various features of Windows Home Server.

Be sure to subscribe to the channel so that you can watch all of our newly added videos!

-Nicole

Creating a Safer, More Trusted Internet

Posted by:
Paul Cooke
12:35 PM Wednesday
Mar 03, 2010

The RSA Security Conference is underway this week in San Francisco and Microsoft's own Scott Charney, Corporate Vice President Trustworthy Computing, delivered one of yesterday's keynote addresses: Creating a Safer, More Trusted Internet. The keynote centered on Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, our End to End Trust vision, and how we have been working to further protect the security and privacy of for all the users of the Internet.

The End to End Trust vision has not changed over the last couple of years and we don't anticipate it changing for some time. We continue to make progress along this vision and Scott outlined many areas where we are actively engaged and providing thought leadership. The keynote showcased how our vision for End to End Trust applies to cloud computing, detailed progress toward a claims-based identity meta-system, and called for public and private organizations alike to prevent and disrupt cybercrime.

One of the most interesting aspects from my perspective was the notion of creating a "World Health Organization" model for the Internet. We are calling on the governments and industry to creatively help prevent cybercrime by implementing technology and policy models that assess PC health before connecting the machine to the Internet. This is an ambitious vision and one I am proud to support.

If you want to know more about the things Scott talked about in his keynote and our End To End vision, I encourage you to visit the newly revamped End To End Trust website for more details.

March 3rd, 2010

IBM creates optical device to enhance inter-processor connections

Posted by Andrew Nusca @ 12:20 pm

IBM scientists on Wednesday announced the development of a device that uses light, instead of copper wires, to allow computer chips to communicate.

The advancement is a step toward replacing the electrical signals that computer chips use to talk to each other in pursuit of more energy-efficient computing.

Called a nanophotonic avalanche photodetector, the device is the fastest of its kind and has “significant implications” for the future of electronics, IBM says.



“This invention brings the vision of on-chip optical interconnections much closer to reality,” said T.C. Chen, IBM Research vice president of science and technology, in a statement. “With optical communications embedded into the processor chips, the prospect of building power-efficient computer systems with performance at the Exaflop level might not be a very distant future.”

They key to the device is a process called the “avalanche effect” in germanium, a material used to make microprocessor chips. Like a mountain avalanche, an incoming light pulse frees a few charge carriers that, in turn, free others until the original signal is amplified many times.





IBM says current avalanche photodetectors can’t detect fast optical signals because the avalanche builds too slowly.

IBM’s device, on the other hand, is fast enough to receive optical information signals at 40Gbps and simultaneously multiply them tenfold.

Update: MS10-015 security update re-released with new detection logic

Posted Tuesday, March 02, 2010 10:11 AM by MSRCTEAM

Hi,

I am writing to let you know that we have revised the installation packages for MS10-015 with new logic that prevents the security update from being installed on systems if certain abnormal conditions exist. Such conditions could be the result of an infection with a computer virus such as the Alureon rootkit. If these conditions are detected, the update will not be installed and the result will be a standard Windows Update error. If a user receives this error, they should go to the following landing page for additional help:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/updates/015

At this time, we have resumed offering the update to all affected systems via Automatic Updates.

We have also released a Microsoft Fix It as a standalone scanning tool that reports on the compatibility of a system with the MS10-015 update. The scanning tool can also be deployed through enterprise deployment systems allowing administrators to detect compatibility with the update before deploying broadly. The Fix It and deployment information are available at Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 980966.

Customers who believe they have experienced a restart issue after installing MS10-015, are encouraged to visit our Customer Service and Support page at https://consumersecuritysupport.microsoft.com or call 1-866-PCSafety (1-866-727-2338). International customers can find local support contact numbers here: http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.

Update: note that the update will not be re-offered to those who have already successfully installed the update.

Thanks,

Jerry Bryant
Sr. Security Communications Manager Lead

*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*

Look Up Information From Your Phone

A few weeks back we went through an overview of mobility scenarios in the post Mobility in Office 2010. Today’s post describes how to search and look up information on SharePoint web sites with your mobile phones.

There are various investments in SharePoint 2010 focused on enabling mobile experiences, including using Smartphones and feature phones to access documents, lists, calendars on SharePoint 2010, performing people and document searches, and receiving SMS alerts on SharePoint content. These features are accessible from almost any phone that has a web browser or microbrowser. Some of these detailed features include:

• Lightweight interface and navigation for accessing document libraries, lists, wikis, web part pages, and LOB data
• Office 2010 mobile viewers for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents
• Mobile MySite for staying in touch with colleagues
• Mobile search experience for finding people, contact information, SharePoint content and finding data in custom databases
• SMS Alerts for changes to SharePoint content

SharePoint Home Page with Mobile View:
When you access SharePoint 2010 sites from your phone, the normal desktop view will be replaced with a mobile view, similar to the image below.

Monday, March 01, 2010 10:46 AM

Windows Server AppFabric Beta 2 Available!

The Beta 2 for Windows Server AppFabric is available for download today at http://msdn.microsoft.com/appfabric. We’re encouraging developers and IT professionals working with .NET 4 and Windows Server to download the Beta and provide feedback, as we prepare to release the final version of Windows Server AppFabric to be delivered by Q3 of 2010.



First announced at PDC 2009, Windows Server AppFabric is a set of application services focused on improving the speed, scale, and management of Web, Composite, and Enterprise applications.



To date, more than 8,000 developers have downloaded the Beta 1 version of Windows Server AppFabric. Customers, including, Associated Press, Bentley, and Jettainer are already seeing strong benefits that include significantly increased performance, simplified development and management, and improved availability and reliability for their most demanding applications.



Developers and IT Pros using Windows Server AppFabric can expect the following benefits:



Faster Web Apps Made Easy

Windows Server AppFabric helps developers improve the speed and availability of web applications through distributed in-memory caching and replication technology that works with current ASP.NET applications.



Simplified Composite Apps

Developers can simplify the development of composite applications with the pre-built application services in Windows Server AppFabric, used in conjunction with Visual Studio tools and .NET Framework capabilities (ASP.NET, WCF and WF). IT Pros can also simplify the deployment, monitoring, and management of composite applications with configuration and monitoring capabilities that are integrated with familiar tools (PowerShell, IIS Manager, and System Center).



Enterprise Performance and Availability

An enterprise’s most important and demanding applications can achieve elastic scale, performance, availability, and reliability (benefits often associated with the cloud) with the help of Windows Server AppFabric. These and countless other benefits from an unparalleled partner ecosystem utilize familiar skills from the .NET Framework and Windows Server.



Complementing these Windows Server AppFabric services for on-premises development, Windows Azure platform AppFabric delivers connectivity services (specifically Service Bus and Access Control, formerly known as “.NET Services”) for composite applications spanning to the cloud. Together, Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure platform AppFabric provide a comprehensive set of services that help developers rapidly develop new applications spanning Windows Azure and Windows Server, and which also interoperate with other industry platforms such as Java, Ruby, and PHP.



Download the Windows Server AppFabric beta 2 today and let us know what you think!

Posted by WindowsServer

HP Introduces New PCs for Businesses – Including New Tablet PC

Posted by:
Brandon LeBlanc
02:25 AM Monday
Mar 01, 2010

Today, HP has unveiled several new Windows 7 PCs targeted specifically at business customers ranging from small and medium businesses to the enterprise.

First up is their brand new multitouch enabled Tablet PC – the HP EliteBook 2740p Tablet PC.





The 2740p Tablet comes with a 12.1 LED display (at 1280x800 screen resolution) and weighs in at 3.8 pounds. It will ship with Intel Core i5 or i7 processors and support up to 8GB of total memory (DDR3). It will support standard hard drives as well as either an 80GB or 160GB SSD. Its keyboard is designed to be spill resistant with drains. The 2740p also ships with integrated HP Mobile Broadband supporting EV-DO and HSPA (a mobile carrier service will be needed of course) and also includes GPS. TPM 1.2 is also included – perfect for BitLocker user in keeping data safe and secure which is super important to businesses. HP went all out with this Tablet PC by supporting the MIL-STD 810G military standard for vibration, dust, humidity, altitude, and high temperatures. The HP EliteBook 2740p will start at $1,599 (USD) and is expected to be available next month in the U.S. For more on the specs for the 2740p, click here to read the Data Sheet (PDF) from HP.

Next up is the HP EliteBook 2540p.






The 2540p also comes with a 12.1 LED display (at 1280x800 screen resolution), Intel’s Core i5 and i7 processors, supports up to 8GB of memory (DDR3), and also supports the MIL-STD 810G military standard. It also comes with integrated HP Mobile Broadband (including GPS) just like the 2740p Tablet PC. The 2540p includes a fingerprint reader – perfect for the Windows Biometric Framework in Windows 7 – and TPM 1.2 for keeping data secure with BitLocker. In an effort to help protect natural resources – the 2540p has post-consumer recycled plastic resin in at least 12% of total plastic content on the PC. The HP EliteBook 2540p will start at $1,099 (USD) and is expected to also be available next month in the U.S. For more on the specs for the 2540p, click here to read the Data Sheet (PDF) from HP.

HP is also introducing brand new designs for their HP ProBook s-series PCs. The new design features a brushed-aluminum metal case and a matte surface which will be available in either available in “caviar” or “Bordeaux”.







The HP ProBook s-series will offer HD LED-backlit displays in the following screen sizes:



13.3 inch - HP ProBook 4320s | Click here for the Data Sheet
14 inch - HP ProBook 4420s | Click here for the Data Sheet
15.6 inch - HP ProBook 4520s | Click here for the Data Sheet
17.3 inch - HP ProBook 4720s | Click here for the Data Sheet

HP will ship their ProBook s-series PCs with Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors and include a choice of Intel HD Graphics or discrete graphics option featuring AMD’s ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4350. The HP ProBook s-series will start at $719 (USD) and also should be available in the U.S. next month.

For business customers always on the go – these new Windows 7 PCs are worth looking at.

Black Hat TPM Hack and BitLocker

Posted by:
Paul Cooke
01:08 PM Wednesday
Feb 10, 2010

Last week at the Black Hat DC conference a presenter showed how one manufacturer's Trusted Platform Module (TPM) could be physically compromised to gain access to the secrets stored inside. Since that presentation, I have had plenty of questions from customers wanting to know how this might affect Windows. The answer? We believe that using a TPM is still an effective means to help protect sensitive information and accordingly take advantage of a TPM (if available) with our BitLocker Drive Encryption feature in Windows 7.

The attack shown requires physical possession of the PC and requires someone with specialized equipment, intimate knowledge of semiconductor design, and advanced skills. While this attack is certainly interesting, these methods are difficult to duplicate, and as such, pose a very low risk in practice. Furthermore, it is possible to configure BitLocker in a way that mitigates this unlikely attack.

With our design for BitLocker in Windows 7, we took into account the theoretical possibility that a TPM might become compromised due to advanced attacks like this one, or because of poor designs and implementations. The engineering team changed the cryptographic structure for BitLocker when configured to use enhanced pin technology, discussed in the BitLocker Drive Encryption in Windows 7: Frequently Asked Questions. As a result, an attacker must not only be able to retrieve the appropriate secret from the TPM, they must also find the user-configured PIN. If the PIN is sufficiently complex, this poses a hard, if not infeasible, problem to solve in order to obtain the required key to unlock the BitLocker protected disk volume.

BitLocker remains an effective solution to help safeguard personal and private data on mobile computers. For more information on BitLocker best practices, we have published guidance in The Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs. This toolkit discusses the balance of security and usability and details that the most secure method to use BitLocker in hibernate mode and a TPM+PIN configuration. With the advancements in Windows 7, users that are worries about potential attacks such as this one should also enable the Allow enhanced PINs for startup group policy setting for their environment.