AppFabric Blog

One of the key issues this blog has covered recently is the transformation of storage.  Microsoft is focused on helping customers control the costs of storage, whether by using industry-standard hardware or simplifying existing hardware infrastructure.  To that end we have made significant investments in the SMB 3.0 protocol for file-based storage.  This helps customers use existing network infrastructure to achieve Fibre Channel-like performance, regardless of the underlying storage subsystem.

Today we’re providing advance notification for the release of eight bulletins, four Critical and four Important, for October 2013. The Critical updates address vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, .NET Framework and Windows. The Critical update for Internet Explorer will be a cumulative update which will address the publicly disclosed issue described in Security Advisory 2887505.  

​Recently Trojan:Win32/Mevade made news for being the first large botnet to use Tor to anonymize and hide its network traffic. Within a few weeks, starting mid-August, the number of directly connecting Tor users increased by almost 600 percent - from about 500,000 users per day to more than 3,000,000.

​If you’re running Java SE 6, we have some news for you: Oracle stopped providing public updates to it after February 2013.

Today we released Security Advisory 2887505 regarding an issue that affects Internet Explorer. There are only reports of a limited number of targeted attacks specifically directed at Internet Explorer 8 and 9, although the issue could potentially affect all supported versions. This issue could allow remote code execution if an affected system browses to a website containing malicious content directed towards the specific browser type. This would typically occur when an attacker compromises the security of trusted websites regularly frequented, or convinces someone to click on a link in an email or instant message. Running modern versions of Internet Explorer ensures that customers receive the benefit of additional security features that can help prevent successful attacks.

While we are actively working to develop a security update to address this issue, we encourage Internet Explorer customers concerned with the risk associated with this vulnerability, to deploy the following workarounds and mitigations from the advisory:

Today we’re publishing the September 2013 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page.  The majority of questions focused on Office bulletins, especially SharePoint Server (MS13-067). We received multiple Office related questions that were very similar in nature, so the questions have been merged, as applicable, with consolidated answers provided. We were able to answer six questions on air, and those we did not have time for have been included on the Q&A page.  

Helen Hunt Jackson famously wrote, “By all lovely tokens September is here, with summer’s best of weather and autumn’s best of cheer.” I share Helen’s clear adoration for this time of year. As a sports fan, there are so many “lovely tokens” to enjoy. The baseball pennant race is heating up, college and pro football are underway, and various soccer leagues (real football to the rest of the world) continue. As a parent, there are the “lovely tokens” of my kids returning to school, which brings a reminder of summer’s passing and excitement for another year of learning, growing, and adjusting to a new routine. For me, the routine is set: the second Tuesday of the month is here and with it comes a round of “lovely tokens” to help protect our customers.