Joshua

This week, Microsoft unleashed new security-oriented service pack
betas for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP, products that won't ship
until sometime in 2004. Microsoft has redesigned the XP Service Pack 2
(SP2) beta to include pervasive safety technologies, such as an
improved firewall, enhanced memory protection, and Web pop-up
prevention. The Windows 2003 SP1 includes a new Security Configuration
Wizard, an IP version 6 (IPv6)-compatible firewall, and other
security-related features. Both are currently available only to beta
testers, but Microsoft will release the XP SP2 beta to Microsoft
Developer Network (MSDN) members later this week.
A Microsoft representative told me, "The Windows XP SP2 beta is
intended to provide developers and IT professionals an opportunity to
conduct early testing and to allow Microsoft to collect valuable
customer feedback. During this beta, Microsoft hopes to garner
significant feedback from software developers and IT professionals
that will be incorporated into and improve the final product." The
company notes that the current XP SP2 beta contains only a subset of
the technologies that will ultimately ship in the final SP2 version,
and that the final technology set will be based largely on customer
feedback generated during the beta process.
XP SP2 includes the following security improvements:
- Network protection: The new, more powerful version of Internet
Connection Firewall (ICF) in SP2 is enabled by default.
- Safer Web browsing: Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 6.0 provides
improved protection against harmful Web downloads and pop-up
advertisements.
- Enhanced memory protection: By preventing errant applications
from copying too much data into areas of a computer's memory, XP can
now stave off buffer-overrun attacks.
- Safer email and Instant Messaging (IM): XP SP2 protects against
malicious email attachments and IM file transfers.

According to Microsoft, XP SP2 is still on track for delivery in
the first half of 2004. Given the wide range of improvements in this
release, as well as its lengthy development time, XP SP2 is probably
the most important XP update ever. When Microsoft releases the product
next year, the company will likely work diligently to move all of its
XP customers to SP2 as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, Windows 2003 SP1 is on a longer development cycle than
XP SP2 and won't ship until late 2004. This week, Microsoft issued a
new interim build of the service pack: Build 1137 includes versions
for Intel x86 and AMD64 systems. Windows 2003 includes the following
improvements:
- Security Configuration Wizard (SCW): You can use this rules-based
wizard to create, edit, or apply security policies for a computer or
group of similarly configured computers.
- Microsoft IIS 6.0 performance enhancements: New kernel-mode
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) functionality improves performance by
moving encryption and decryption operations to the Windows kernel.
- ICF for IPv6: The new, two-way ICF is now IPv6-compatible.
- 32-bit application performance on 64-bit platforms: New Intel
technologies improve the performance of 32-bit applications running on
64-bit Windows OSs (aka Windows on Windows 64--WOW64).

Unlike the XP SP2 beta, the Windows 2003 SP1 beta won't be widely
available at this time. However, a later milestone release will likely
be more widely available, the company notes.

__________________
The Apexer formerly known as SnotRocket.

"Like I ****ing said, "Ok, so I hear it may be a repost. Blah But I had never seen it, so..." **** you Canta." -Jenny 12/4/2003