technical solutions and commentary

Princeton Univeristy has recently released information on how to defeat disk encryption technology such as BitLocker, FileVault, TrueCrypt and others using what is called ‘Cold Boot Attacks’. The entire paper, ”Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys“ (PDF) is available online. 

There are major concerns about the possibilty of data getting compromised for those who are responsible for protecting sensitive data. Fortunately to successfully attack a machine using drive encryption, the attack has to occur within a set of ideal circumstances. These ideal attack circumstances can be emliminated by following specific guidlines to protect the device which is using hard drive encryption. The Microsoft Stay Safe Team has posted guidelines on how to protect BitLocker from Cold Boot Attacks. If you are running BitLocke, be sure to follow these guidlines to defend against this well known exploit.

A lot of IT departments are concerned with managing the grwoth of SharePoint resources on their network. To answer this concern, Microsoft has released a SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool, which will allow administrators to scan their network and discover SharePoint resources and data assests.

The main purpose of the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool is to give the IT administrator answers to a number of important questions through the generation of reports. These reports include information on:

• The servers running some version of SharePoint.
• The installed SharePoint features.
• The total number of SharePoint sites on each server.
• The total number of documents on each server.
• The total number of documents grouped by extension on each server.
• The time since the SharePoint assets in each server were last modified.
• The customized SharePoint sites and items on each server.
• The number of SharePoint lists on each server, grouped by the number of items on each list.

Learm more about the Tool and download it fromthe the TechNet Library.

InfoWorld reviewer Tom Yager says ” Windows Server 2008 is the host with the most, and the perfect guest. Microsoft’s slimmer and stronger server OS, bolstered by virtualization, networking, and security advances, is an upgrade that IT can’t refuse, a 200-pound gorilla that eats commercial Linux.”

Read the entire Windows Server 2008 Product Review at InfoWorld.

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 was made available for download today (February 25, 2008). The RTM build of SP1 can upgrade Operations Manager from the release code and from the SP1 RC code. A list on what’s included with Service Pack 1 can be found on these pages:

• What’s new in OpsMgr SP 1
• What’s fixed in OpsMgr SP 1

 Download Ops Mgr 2007 Service Pack 1 RTM from Microsoft Downloads.

Time left is sort for mainstream support on SQL Server 2000. The Microsoft Product Lifecycle database shows that SQL Server 2000 will be going into extended support after April 8, 2008. You can view the support data for this product at http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2852.

What this means is that SQL Server 2000 will not have anymore ‘non-security’ related updates released and any ‘no charge’ support methods will no longer be available. Visit the Microsoft Product Lifecyle page to get a better understanding of what extended support is.

Microsoft released the February CTP of SQL Server 2008 on February 8th. This is a feature complete CTP which includes all of the functionality planned for the release. Some of the most anticipated features:

Microsoft has announces that the new release of XNA game studio - a free game development environment which allows you to build games for Windows, Xbox from the same codebase - now includes support for the Zune as a gaming platform. Also being made available are XBOX Live Community developed games via Xbox Live.

• XBOX Live Community Games FAQ
• Zune Game Development FAQ

The Windows Live SkyDrive team announced that the SkyDrive has gone RTW (Released To Web) and now out of Beta. With the full release now available the online storage per acccount has been increased to 5 GB. That should be enough storage to back up most digital photo collections today. SkyDrive is also an easy way to store and share data with others around the world, openly or securely. The SkyDrive is now available in 38 countries.

Read the official post on the SkyDrive Team Blog.

You may have experienced the occasional ‘timeout’ while working in Office on Windows Vista. For example, if you get the blue spinning cursor (waiting icon) in Outlook when you click on a new E-mail message in you Inbox, or try and compose a new E-mail, our in Word or PowerPoint when you open an Office document. This is more common on mobile PC’s such as notebook PC’s that are often connected through remote means to the network or are often disconnected from a network all together.

I figured out, the workaround to this Office ‘timeout’ problem. Select a local print driver as the default printer and not a network printer. This can be a driver for an actual phyiscally direct connected printer or a ‘Print to PDF”, or similar print driver installed on the system.

Microsoft has announced a program it calling ‘DreamSpark’ which will provide free professional development software to students. The software includes Vistual Studio Professional, Expression Studio, XNA Gae Studio, SQL Server Developer Edition, and Windows Server Standard. That’s a lot of free software!

You can get the software from DreamSpark on MSDN’s Channel 8 if you qualify. Also watch Bill Gates in a Channel 8 video interview talking about DreamSpark.