Microsoft Outlook could be affected by the Spectre-Meltdown bug

Microsoft Development, News Items
Microsoft Outlook could be affected by the Spectre-Meltdown bug The February updates address security flaws in Internet Explorer, Edge, Microsoft's ChakraCore JavaScript engine, Windows, and Office. Two worrying bugs fixed this month affected Outlook. One, a memory-corruption flaw, identified as CVE-2018-0852, could allow an attacker to run arbitrary code.   Microsoft says exploitation of this flaw is "less likely" and that an attacker would need to trick a victim into opening a file or visiting an attack site. However, it also notes that an attack vector is the Preview Pane. The second Outlook bug that could be worth patching immediately is elevation of privilege vulnerability CVE-2018-0850, which stems from Outlook insufficiently validating the formatting of incoming messages before processing them. An attacker could send a specially crafted email that forces Outlook…
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Apple April 2018 will force all Apps to be built with iOS 11

News Items, Software Releases
Apple April 2018 will force all Apps to be built with iOS 11. Beginning in April 2018 all new iOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with the iOS 11 SDK.  This is the method Apple uses to force developers to fall into line otherwise your app will not be in the store. For the average developer using either Rad Studio or Visual Studio they will have to hope their IDE's can be used and sent to the store.  There could be issues with the IDEs that Apple tends to wait until a few weeks prior to releasing the final version.  This alone may break the development cycle with your IDE. iOS 11 has brought innovative features and the redesigned App Store to hundreds of millions of customers…
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Microsoft announces new startup program, to invest $500M over the next two years

Microsoft Development, News Items
Microsoft announces new startup program, to invest $500M over the next two years Microsoft is investing into startup companies that use Microsoft products as well as future enhanced product lines that will be ready for the population.  When a large company such as Microsoft shells out money to smaller firms it is a "win-win" for everyone that is involved with the project.  Microsoft has done this in the past and it has worked extremely well.  This is a boost to the economy with this type of Monetary  backing.  For future information click on the link below to go to the Microsoft web site.   Microsoft today announced a new startup program called “Microsoft for Startups” that will provide product, technical, and go-to-market benefits to help accelerate the growth of startups.…
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Russian nuclear scientists arrested for ‘Bitcoin mining plot’

News Items
Russian nuclear scientists arrested for Bitcoin mining plot Russian security officers have arrested several scientists working at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility for allegedly mining crypto-currencies. The suspects had tried to use one of Russia's most powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoins indicated by news sources. Reported by the BBC News, the press service said: "There has been an unsanctioned attempt to use computer facilities for private purposes including so-called mining." The supercomputer was not supposed to be connected to the internet to prevent any type of intrusion and once the scientists attempted to do so, the nuclear center security department was alerted. They were handed over to the Federal Security Service (FSB), Crypto-currencies like Bitcoin do not rely on centralized computer servers. People who provide computer processing power to the…
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Critical SQL Server Patches for Meltdown and Spectre

Microsoft Development, News Items, SQL Tips
Critical SQL Server Patches for Meltdown and Spectre There are two new possible viruses Meltdown and Spectre that can lead to dangerous situations on your SQL server by attacks. The following summary allows you to review and decide how to patch your systems.  All SQL DBAs need to take action to make sure that they have backups as well as protecting the current systems.   SQL Server Versions Affected This is a hardware issue, so every system is affected. SQL Server running on x86 and x64 for these versions: SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2008R2 SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2014 SQL Server 2016 SQL Server 2017 Azure SQL Database It is likely that SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 7, SQL Server 6.5 are all affected. No…
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