Microsoft.com Operations Team Blog

In this edition of Weekend Reading, we’ve got stories on Microsoft’s role in protecting customer data, how 150,000 students, administrators and staff members in Canada have started using Office 365 and Microsoft Research’s first Artist in Residence.

The following is a post from Richard Domingues Boscovich, Assistant General Counsel, Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit.

Today we’re providing advance notification for the release of 11 bulletins, five Critical and six Important, for December 2013. The Critical updates address vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Windows, Microsoft Exchange and GDI+. The Critical update for GDI+ fully addresses the publicly disclosed issue described in Security Advisory 2896666.  

Today, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), in partnership with law enforcement and industry partners, announced the successful disruption of the Sirefef botnet, also known as ZeroAccess. This dangerous botnet is responsible for hijacking people’s search results and taking them to potentially dangerous websites that could install malware onto their computer, steal their personal information, or fraudulently charge businesses for online advertisement clicks. ZeroAccess also commits click fraud. According to the latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, by the end of 2012, malicious or compromised websites had emerged to become the top threats facing enterprises as well as consumers.  This botnet specifically targets search results on the major online search and advertising platforms including Google, Bing and Yahoo!, and is estimated to cost online advertisers $2.7 million each month. Read more

The following post is from Brad Smith, General Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft.

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced it will invest in the development of a new Windows Azure region in Brazil. The investment represents an important step in the company’s cloud expansion strategy and its commitment to the country and Latin America.

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that Canada’s second-largest public school board – the Peel District School Board – has deployed Microsoft Office 365 to more than 150,000 students, administrators and staff members.

The following post is from Roger Capriotti, senior director of product marketing, Microsoft. It was originally published on The Fire Hose.