CybserSecurity News

Tag: Microsoft

  • After the acquisition is completed, GitHub is indeed Microsoft’s

    On the 26th, Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub was completed, and the new GitHub CEO Nat issued a message announcing the news.

    Nat said in the article that he wants to make GitHub better, he reiterated the GitHub principle in the new era:

    • GitHub will operate independently as a community, platform, and business. This means that GitHub will retain its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility. We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud.
    • GitHub will retain its product philosophy. We love GitHub because of the deep care and thoughtfulness that goes into every facet of the developer’s experience. I understand and respect this, and know that we will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love.

    Regarding the future of GitHub, he has several priorities:

    • Ensuring GitHub is the best place to run productive communities and teams
    • Making GitHub accessible to more developers around the world
    • Reliability, security, and performance

    More specifically, he pointed out that the next step will be to focus on the daily experience of using GitHub, and to improve the paper cuts of UI/UX and other problems in the workflow; the core solutions will be improved, such as search, notification, issues/projects and mobile Experience. He also hopes that the new project GitHub Actions will be widely used.

  • Microsoft will disable Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 & 1.1 by default next year

    The official blog of Microsoft just released the latest blog post saying that the company will disable the early obsolete version of the TLS transport layer security protocol by default on January 19, 2019.

    This change will apply to Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge browsers, and the old version of the protocol will not link correctly.

    At present, the TLS transport layer security protocol has been officially released version 1.3. The new version brings better transmission performance and can also improve overall security.

    Microsoft: Most websites and users will not be affected

    The legacy TLS transport layer security protocol is very rare because most significant browsers no longer support this protocol.

    For web developers, if you are still using the legacy TLS protocol, you will need to migrate immediately, as most users will not be able to access the site properly.

    According to Microsoft’s statistics, the percentage of TLS versions 1.0 to 1.1 is less than 1% on websites that use Microsoft browsers to access all encrypted connections on a daily basis.

    Statistics from the SSL lab show that more than 94% of websites have migrated to TLS version 1.2, and a few have upgraded version 1.3.

     

    Even if the user is disabled, it can be turned on manually:

    For some specific industries, individual enterprises may still use the old protocol internally, which is also okay because users can also manually open the agreement.

    For users who need access to the old protocol, open the IE browser settings and check TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 in the advanced level and save.

    Microsoft did not mention when it will completely disable the TLS 1.0 & 1.1 version of the transport protocol, but obviously, this is an early change and will be completely disabled.

  • Microsoft has become a member of the Open Invention Network community

    Microsoft announced that it has officially joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) community. Open Invention Network can be understood as a shared defensive patent pool, which was established in 2015 to protect Linux and its related open source projects. OIN has several industry leaders including Google, IBM, NEC, Philips, Red Hat, Sony, SUSE and Toyota. Any company, project, or developer working on Linux, GNU, Android, or any other Linux-related software development can join OIN and get thousands of patents or copyrights for free through cross-licensing.

    Linux Microsoft Azure

    For the advantages of Linux and other open source technologies, Microsoft has brought OIN a valuable and in-depth product portfolio of more than 60,000 published patents. Open Invention Network CEO Keith Bergelt said: “Open source continues to expand into new products and markets to create an unparalleled level of innovation. By participating in OIN, Microsoft recognizes the importance of open source software for its future development, and Microsoft’s participation in OIN has enhanced us. A strong community reduces the patent risk of core technologies through its breadth and depth.”

    Erich Andersen, vice president and chief intellectual property consultant at Microsoft, also admitted: “Now, as we join OIN, we believe Microsoft will be able to do more than ever to help protect Linux and other important open source workloads from patent assertions. We bring a valuable and deep portfolio of over 60,000 issued patents to OIN. We also hope that our decision to join will attract many other companies to OIN, making the license network even stronger for the benefit of the open source community.“

    Also, Microsoft also announced on October 4 that it had joined the LOT Network. LOT Network is an evolving non-profit community founded by several technology companies such as Google and Dropbox. It is an organisation dedicated to combating patent hooliganism. The tax-free right to use any patent leaving the LOT Network will be given to all participants in the organisation, which will help them avoid many patent litigations. The addition of Microsoft means that it is aligned with other industry leaders on this topic and is committed to taking more steps to address intellectual property risks in the future. By joining the LOT Network, Microsoft promises to license its patents to other members for free, while the LOT Network covers approximately 1.35 million patients.