cybersecurity

Google Releases Windows 8.1 Exploit Code – After 90 Days Warning to Microsoft

Google Project Zero has debuted with the aim of solving the vulnerabilities problem by identifying zero-day vulnerabilities, notifying the company which owns the software, and giving them 90 days to solve the problem. After 90 days they publish the exploit. And they just did it to Microsoft. I remember quite a while ago when we decided at the cyber labs at Ben-Gurion University to adopt such a policy following our discovery of a vulnerability in…

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innovation

Can Microsoft afford to ignore Linux?

Microsoft completed the acquisition of Sybari Software, their new anti-virus and anti-spyware line of business – The Windows Observer–Antivirus, Anti-Spyware Strategy Moves Forward for Microsoft. One line from the news caught my eye as something that makes immediate common sense but may not be right strategically after all “Not surprisingly, Microsoft will discontinue new sales of Sybari’s products for the Unix (Solaris and AIX) and Linux operating systems. It will, however, continue to sell and…

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cybersecurity

Is Microsoft the Big Bad Wolf?

I am writing many times on strategies and competition related to Microsoft and I wanted to clear the reason why I relate to this company a lot and why I am not on their side with my advice especially when it comes to competition with new ventures: 1) To put it up front I think that Microsoft is an excellent company with many strong core capabilities and deep strategic thinking that makes them a very…

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cybersecurity

Thoughts on The Russians Intervention in the US Elections. Allegedly.

I got a call last night on whether I want to come to the morning show on TV and talk about Google?s recent findings of alleged Russian sponsored political advertising. Advertising that could have impacted the last US election results, joining other similar discoveries on Facebook and Twitter and now Microsoft is also looking for clues. At first instant, I wanted to say, what is there to say about it but still, I agreed as…

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cybersecurity

Is It GAME OVER?

Targeted attacks take many forms, though there is one common tactic most of them share: Exploitation. To achieve their goal, they need to penetrate different systems on-the-go. The way this is done is by exploiting unpatched or unknown vulnerabilities. More common forms of exploitation happen via a malicious document that exploits vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader or a malicious URL that exploits the browser in order to set a foothold inside the end-point computer. Zero-Day is…

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cybersecurity

To Disclose or Not to Disclose, That is The Security Researcher Question

Microsoft and Google are?bashing each other on the zero-day exploit in Windows 8.1 that was disclosed by Google last week following a 90 days grace period. Disclosing is a broad term when speaking about vulnerabilities and exploits – you can disclose to the public the fact that there is a vulnerability and then you can disclose how to exploit it with an example source code. There is a big difference between just telling the world…

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startups

What does cross platform mean?

Cross-platform is tricky. It seems like a small “technical” buzzword but actually, it is one of the biggest challenges for many technology companies and has different aspects for different people in the organization and outside of it. Developer Point of View It all starts with the fact that applications can potentially be targeted towards different computing devices. To get more people to use your applications you would like it to run on more and more…

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innovation

The web is changing

I have been reading about the whereabouts of News Corp., Google, and Microsoft in recent two weeks and I noticed something weird happening here about but could not put my finger on it. To those who do not know the storyline here is a short description posted on Hitwise today: Two weeks ago we posted on Rupert Murdoch’s threat to block Google from Indexing News Corp. content. While at first it seemed as though Murdoch…

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startups

The Web Crawls Silently into the Desktop

Recently I got deeply interested in rich Internet technologies such as Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight and it is hard to not see the trend of returning to good old desktop applications with one big twist – the web included. These rich desktop applications are naturally integrated into the web with its rich services, content while enjoying UI breakthroughs achieved by browsers and site designers. It is great to see unique and smooth UI concepts…

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startups

Thoughts on application development and setup in windows vs. linux

After many long years of development to both MS Windows platforms and Linux platforms and especially lots of frustration in recent days trying to install/uninstall software on my WinXP to solve a problem I have few conclusions on proprietary vs. open source development. One of the nice things about development in Microsoft world (or at least seems so until you get into trouble) is that everything wraps up so nicely as if you were in…

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innovation

What does Google Browser means to me?

Google having their own browser is a move I did not anticipate and is actually a brilliant idea in terms of os replacement for other proprietary operating systems, hence Microsoft. I think it will actually be very successful for two reasons: – being open source – is powered by a web state of mind (and no one is such as google is) The fact it is open source I think means a killer for IE…

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innovation

Google is the 21st Century Mainframe!

All the big guys are rushing these days to launch as many web applications as possible to “captivate” web surfers in their “club”. Google in a dramatic and maybe a little bit panicked response to Microsoft‘s threats and Yahoo‘s renovated website started launching an application a day. It doesn’t matter anymore what it is, as long it is new and it does something at all then it should be launched – that seems to be…

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innovation

Google?s Aspired Hegemony

After writing yesterday about the launch of Google Pages Beta at Should Google Lead the Web Development Tools Market? I realized that Google has changed profoundly from what they were at first. At the beginning, Google was an enabling technology by really making the world wide web “matter” accessible to everyone. They have contributed immensely in making the web a useful and enjoyable place to be. Ever since Google raised their head towards direct competition…

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blogging startups

A Product Roadmap in a Feed

Strategic Board was initially an idea about a new competitive intelligence/market intelligence tool for enterprises in the IT sector. Since then many things have changed including our concept and vision and probably the only permanent thing here is me and Strategic Board the name itself:) One of the building blocks a competitive intelligence tool is required to have in order to be effective is comparisons and more specifically product comparisons. Product comparisons, whether it is…

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innovation

Web-based Apps Offline Capability

It seems that web-based applications can accomplish today the most extensive and complex tasks that were possible before only by locally installed software. One aspect that has not been addressed by either Microsoft IE or Firefox, the leading web browsing software, is working offline. Although Microsoft has mentioned it in the past under the hat of Smart Client architecture still current products do not show any sign of support. Offline capability is something not trivial…

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innovation

Suggested Innovation in Structured Feed Publishing and Aggregation

Yesterday I wrote about the news that Microsoft opened their tech support knowledgebase via RSS feeds Structured Corporate Feeds? with a new concept of structured RSS and I thought to elaborate on it further to make the idea more useful. RSS feeds in the perspective of infrastructure tools enable today an efficient mechanism for detecting changes in distributed content and it mainly serves for personal publishing via blogging tools serving publishers and news reading tools…

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