VOGH Exclusive: Xbox Live Outage Caused For Networking Misconfiguration, Not Hacker Attack

Microsoft Said Xbox Live Outage Caused For Networking Misconfiguration During Routine Maintenance, Not Hacker Attack 

Xbox Live -one of the world's most popular and usually very reliable gaming network which rarely has unexpected outages, nor does Microsoft ever take it down for any extended period of time. But accident occurs, and it happened in last Sunday. The software giant and the developer of Xbox - Microsoft has reported a significant Xbox Live outage, rendering the service unavailable since earlier last 13th afternoon, smack in the middle of the peak weekend usage period. The outage is preventing users from signing in to Xbox Live, blocking access to the online services normally available through the console. While acknowledging the issue, on their official Xbox Live Status page Microsoft said “There is still an issue members are having signing in to Xbox LIVE, we greatly appreciate you sticking it out with us while we work as hard as we can to get this problem fixed. Keep checking back here every 30 minutes for another update on our progress.” This update came from Microsoft at 3:30 Pacific time on 13th of April. As soon as this story get spotted, several hikes rises. Among this buzz, it was a few unnamed hacker who took credit of the Xbox outage, while declaring that a cyber attack. Another buzz which just got spread so quickly, was that the outage of Xbox Live network has been caused by hacker collective Anonymous.  Here we must have to say that those buzz have some solid reasons as couple of months ago Windows Azure faced an organized cyber attack which effected the service of Azure storage, Xbox Live and 52 other. And that outage or in other word service interruption stays for 12 long hours. But unlike earlier, this time the issue get resolved immediately. Within one hour all the service get restored and came back to its normal order. On the same Xbox Live Status page Microsoft said “If you were one of the members who was having issues signing in to Xbox LIVE, good news! This issue has been fixed! Thank you so much for your patience during this time, feel free to go enjoy your favorite games and content!”

So far we have discussed about the story of the outage and it's restoration. Now we will talk about the cause of this interruption. As I have said earlier that the rumor of hacker's attack was there which was claiming responsibility of the Xbox Live outage. But in reality it was not due to cyber attack but some internal network problems. In their official respond of the situation and those buzz Microsoft completely dines all those rumors and said  "The Xbox Live service outage on 13 April resulted from networking misconfiguration during routine maintenance and was in no way related to false claims of hacking the service." 

While talking about Xbox outage, we would like to remind you that - another world famous gaming console 'PlayStation' had fallen victim to cyber attacks. It was Anonymous who hit Sony PSN and caused massive outage, data leak and many other devastating damages. 

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Hackers Hit Microsoft Windows Azure Causing 12 Hour Outage, Affecting Xbox & 52 Other Services

Hackers Hit Microsoft Windows Azure Causing 12 Hour Outage, Affecting Xbox & 52 Other Services 

Windows Azure the cloud computing platform of Microsoft for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters  faced an unwanted disaster due to organized cyber attack which interrupted its service world wide. While looking at the scenario the Redmond based software giant sincerely apologize for the interruption and any issues it has caused and declared that they will  refund Windows Azure customers impacted by the said outage last week caused by an expired SSL certificate. The Windows Azure Storage outage affected at least 52 services, including Xbox Live on Thursday night and Friday. 

In a blog post while describing the situation Microsoft said - "HTTP traffic was unaffected but the event impacted a number of Windows Azure services that are dependent on Storage.  We executed the repair steps to update the SSL certificate on the impacted clusters and availability was restored to >99% worldwide by 1:00 AM PST on February 23.  At 8:00 PM PST on February 23, we completed the restoration effort and confirmed full availability worldwide. Given the scope of the outage, we will proactively provide credits to impacted customers in accordance with our SLA. The credit will be reflected on a subsequent invoice.  Our teams are also working hard on a full root cause analysis (RCA), including steps to help prevent any future reoccurrence."

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Registration Open For Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2013, Prize Money Boosted

Registration Open For Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2013, Prize Money Boosted 

After the success of  'Blue Hat' Security Contest, now it is the time for Microsoft’s Imagine Cup. Redmond based software giant Microsoft has been organizing its Imagine Cup student technology competition for the last 10 years and today, the company opened registration for the 2013 edition of this event. Students ages 16 and older can now register for their national events and the winners of these local events will be flown to St. Petersburg, Russia, where the worldwide finals will take place from July 8 to 11. For this edition of Imagine Cup, Microsoft has doubled the prize money to $300,000. Since the first Imagine Cup in 2003, says Microsoft, over 1.65 million students across the globe have participated in Imagine Cup and a number of the teams that made it to the finals (and many that have not) went on to create startups.

Here is Microsoft’s description of the new core competitions:

• World Citizenship: Honors the software application developed on Microsoft platforms with the greatest potential to make a positive impact on humanity. For example, a project might address education-, social- or healthcare-related problems.
• Games: Honors the most engaging and entertaining games targeting teens and youth, built on Microsoft platforms (Windows 8, Windows Phone, Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit, and Xbox Indie Games).
• Innovation: Honors apps that give consumers inspiration and innovation at their fingertips, whether it be a new spin on social networks, online shopping or search, built with Microsoft tools and technology.

The winners of each of these competitions will get $50,000. In addition to the core competitions, students can also compete in a number of online challenges focused on specific technologies and platforms, including Windows 8, Windows Azure and Windows Phone. For detailed information click Here.

-Source (Microsoft, Imagine Cup & TC)

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Microsoft Fixes & Apologizes Embarrassing 'Big Boobs' String (0xB16B00B5) From Linux Code

Microsoft Fixes & Apologizes Embarrassing 'Big Boobs' String (0xB16B00B5) From Linux Code

Buried in the software that connects the Linux kernel to Microsoft‘s HyperV virtualization program was the following code string: '0xB16B00B5'. The string was spotted by programmer Paolo Bonzini, who posted about his discovery to the Linux Kernel mailing list saying “Somone (sic) was trying to be funny, I guess”.

The string was used every time the Microsoft program ran a virtual version of Linux. Linux developer Dr Matthew Garrett is upset by what he sees as “straightforward childish humour”. He points out that previously Microsoft used the string 0x0B00B135 (or “BOOBIES” to non-programmers) in a previously submitted piece of code. Dr Garrett points out that the string may be used to connect Linux system to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, making the problem even tougher to fix. “So, full marks, Microsoft,” says Dr Garrett. “You’ve managed to make the kernel more offensive to half the population and you’ve made it awkward for us to rectify it”. Microsoft was made aware of the code quickly issued an apologetic statement, saying “We thank the community for reporting this issue and apologize for the offensive string. We have submitted a patch to fix this issue and the change will be published in a future release of the kernel.”  The software giant then immediately issued a patch that corrected the string. In early June, Microsoft suffered another embarrassment over '"vulgar" language used during a song and dance routine at a company conference.

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Microsoft Azure Cloud Starts Supporting Linux (Hybrid Cloud)

Microsoft Azure Cloud Starts Supporting Linux (Hybrid Cloud)

If you love both Microsoft and Linux parallely then we have a great news for you and that is Microsoft is now offering Linux-based operating systems on its Windows Azure cloud service. The software giant has announced the release of a new preview version of the platform which will add Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) capabilities to it. As well as Windows Server 2008 and the release candidate of Windows Server 2012, Microsoft will be supporting openSUSE 12.1, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, Ubuntu 12.04 and CentOS 6.2 on the Hyper-V virtual machines that power Azure.

Some of the Highlights:- 

• Windows Azure Virtual Machines— Virtual Machines give you application mobility, allowing you to move your virtual hard disks (VHDs) back and forth between on-premises and the cloud.   Migrate existing workloads such as Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft SharePoint to the cloud, bring your own customized Windows Server or Linux images, or select from a gallery.    As a common virtualization file format, VHD has been adopted by hundreds of vendors and is a freely available specification covered under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise.
• Windows Azure Virtual Network— Virtual Network lets you provision and manage virtual private networks (VPNs) in Windows Azure as well as securely extend on-premises networks into the cloud.  It provides control over network topology, including configuration of IP addresses, routing tables and security policies and uses the industry-standard IPSEC protocol to provide a secure connection between your corporate VPN gateway and Windows Azure. 
• Windows Azure Web Sites —Build web sites and applications with this highly elastic solution supporting .NET, Node.js, and PHP while using common deployment techniques like Git and FTP.  Windows Azure Web Sites will also allow easy deployment of open source applications like WordPress, Joomla!, DotNetNuke, Umbraco, and Drupal to the cloud with a few clicks. 
• New tools, language support, and SDK—Windows Azure SDK June 2012 includes new developer capabilities for writing code against the latest service improvements with updated support for Java, PHP, and .NET, and the addition of Python as a supported language on Windows Azure.  Additionally, the SDK now provides 100% command line support for both Windows and Mac.
• Availability in New Countries— Availability of Windows Azure is being expanded to customers in 48 new countries, including Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, and Ukraine.  Roll-out will be complete later this month, making Windows Azure one of the most widely available cloud platforms in the industry with offerings in 89 countries and in 19 local currencies.  

These new capabilities simplify building and bringing applications of all kinds to the cloud and enable flexibility in the following areas:

• Increased datacenter capacity through secure VPN connections to the cloud
• Easy operations and management from an improved Windows Azure Management Portal, with powerful operational capabilities for deploying and managing your cloud applications – with similar management support from the command line
• Cloud scale for building websites with ASP.NET, PHP, and Node.js
• Support for additional Operating Systems and OSS language libraries for building cloud applications
• Scale on demand by migrating existing applications to the cloud using portable, industry standard VHDs -- delivering global scale with maximum control
• Secure connectivity between cloud and on-premises applications
• Ability to develop, test and configure new applications in the cloud, and then deploy on-premises for production

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Microsoft®SQL Server 2012 Released & Available To Download

Microsoft®SQL Server 2012 Released & Available To Download 

The software giant Microsoft announced the availability of SQL Server 2012. The product will be generally available on April 1st but you can still download the evaluation version on today itself. The Big Data features in SQL Server 2012 include new storage options and tools that help with analysis of large workloads. For example, the new version includes an in-memory column-oriented database to improve analytics performance. In addition, Microsoft is developing a Windows-based version of Hadoop (the Hortonworks edition) for the Azure cloud environment which should be ready for prime time by July 1. 

Key Features:-

•     AlwaysOn Availability Groups

•     Support for Server Core

•     Power View

•     SQL Server Data Tools

•     Data Quality Services

•     Hadoop Integration

While there been a lot of exciting changes to the product there’s also been changes to the editions and licensing. SQL Server 2012 will provide the Enterprise, Business Intelligence, Standard and Express editions. Notably the older Datacenter and Workgroup editions have been dropped. A new core based licensing scheme has been added as well. 

To Download Microsoft®SQL Server 2012 Evaluation Click Here

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Firefox 7 For Windows, Mac, Linux and Android

The latest Mozilla Firefox Beta is now available for testing on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. This beta includes performance enhancements that improve the browsing experience for users and enable developers to create faster Web apps and websites.

New in Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux:

• Optimized Memory Use: Reduces memory use and improves performance areas including responsiveness, startup and page load time, even in complex websites and Web apps
• Improved memory management: The JavaScript garbage collector works more frequently to free up memory and improve performance when you have many tabs open or keep Firefox running for a long time
• Enhanced Firefox Sync: Your data syncs faster when a bookmark or password is added or changed
• Azure Direct2D for Canvas: Helps Firefox speed up HTML5 Canvas-based animation rendering
• Web timing spec: Enables developers to measure page load time and site navigation so they can identify how to make website performance improvements
• CSS 3 Text-Overflow: ellipsis: Additional way for developers to display CSS 3 text that overflows the layout area
• Telemetry: Install this add-on and opt-in to report browser performance data and help improve future versions of Firefox

New in Firefox Beta for Android:

• Optimized Memory Use: Reduces memory use and improves performance areas including responsiveness, startup and page load time, even in complex websites and Web apps
• Enhanced Firefox Sync: Your data syncs faster when a bookmark or password is added or changed
• Copy and paste: Copy and paste selected text from mobile websites
• Restored session history and tabs: Firefox restores browsing history and tabs so users can easily return to their previous browsing session
• Language selection: Firefox can detect the language setting on your Android device or allow you to select from more than 10 languages during initial set up

If you already have Firefox Beta installed, you will receive an automated update notification. You can also go to the “About Firefox” menu to apply the update manually.

For Downloading Firefox 7 Beta Click Here

-News Source (Mozila) 

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