Microsoft is warning about a new piece of malware, Rogue:MSIL/Zeven, that auto-detects a user's browser and then imitates the relevant malware warning pages from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. The fake warning pages are very similar to the real thing; you have to look closely to realize they aren't the real thing. The ploy is a basic social engineering scheme, but in this case the malware authors are relying on the user's trust in their browser, a tactic that hasn't been seen before. 

Beyond the warning pages, the actual malware looks like the real deal: it allows you to scan files, tells you when you're behind on your updates, and enables you to change your security and privacy settings. Performing a scan results in the product finding malicious files, but of course it cannot delete them unless you update, which requires paying for the full version. Attempting to buy the product will open an HTML window that provides a useless "Safe Browsing Mode" with high-strength encryption. To top it all off, the rogue antivirus webpage looks awfully similar to the Microsoft Security Essentials webpage; even the awards received by MSE and a link to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center have been copied.

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Microsoft has announced that Windows Phone 7 has hit the release to manufacturing milestone. The OS has been finalized and has been sent off to Microsoft's partners around the world, who in turn will put it on their hardware and networks in time for this holiday season. All that's left before release is manufacturer additions and testing. Prepare yourself for a Windows Phone 7 launch event; devices will hit Europe in October and the US in November.

"Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released," Microsoft wrote in a blog post. "We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes. We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready."

Since the release of the Technical Preview, Microsoft has fixed bugs, fine-tuned performance, polished the interface, and added features. (Side note: prototype phones will not be getting an upgrade to the RTM build.) Redmond is being secretive about the new features, only disclosing a couple related to Facebook. Users will be able to filter Facebook friends to only those already in the phone's contact list, as well as "like" Facebook posts and write messages on Facebook walls directly from the People Hub. Microsoft also added a more visible search option to the contact list after it found that testers were not aware they could search their contacts by using the phone's physical search button.

There is still one more milestone to reach on the developer side of things: the final SDK is slated for release on September 16. In early October, the Marketplace will start accepting application submissions. This will include applications from the hardware companies and network operators; their software has to go through the Marketplace validation process just like applications will.

This doesn't leave much time for Microsoft to accept apps and populate the online store for the early adopters. Still, with the final RTM code now available, the company should be able to refocus on its partners and third-party developers over the next few weeks.

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After a month of rumors and leaks, Microsoft has released the Arc Touch Mouse. The device is available for presale on Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, and Buy.com for $69.95. It will ship in early December, and will officially be available online and in stores in January 2011.

Redmond is touting Arc Touch as "the first mouse designed to flatten for portability and pop up for comfort." It's all about portability: less than 15 millimeters thick at its widest point, it collapses to turn off and pops up to turn on. The mouse requires two AAA batteries that Microsoft says give it more than six months of battery life (the two-color battery life indicators will keep you informed).

In addition to its compact form factor (see the Silverlight demo), the Arc Touch has a capacitive touch scroll strip: move a finger slowly on the strip for controlled scrolling, or flick a finger for fast scrolling that can be stopped with a simple tap. The mouse uses a capacitive sensing technique and sensor pads to detect each position and velocity change, and also includes haptic feedback to simulate the bumps of a traditional scroll wheel. The strip also has three tap buttons: page up, page down, and a reprogrammable (Microsoft's IntelliPoint software required) middle click area.

The Arc Touch includes Microsoft's usual mouse features such as a magnetic 2.4GHz wireless Nano transceiver that snaps into the bottom of the mouse and BlueTrack technology to let users use the device on virtually any surface. The only requirements are a USB port, and either Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7.

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As browser competition continues to heat up, 2010 looks like the year when the market was repeatedly disrupted. Internet Explorer has not managed to gain share for a third month in a row. Firefox is leveling out while Chrome and Safari continue to grow. Opera? It's hanging on to relevance.

Between July and August, Internet Explorer dropped 0.34 percent, a drop smaller than June's or July's gain. Firefox, meanwhile, went up 0.02 percent, Chrome gained 0.36 percent, Safari was up 0.07, and Opera dipped 0.08 percent.

IE looks stuck around the 60 percent mark for the time being. At least it's still above its lowest point (59.69 percent) with its best chance of market share gains in the short term coming with the IE9 beta, and the back-to-school season.

The importance of being the default browser in the world's most popular operating system continues to help IE. Microsoft browsers are being used by more than 6 out of 10 people and IE8 is being used by more than one in four on the Web (quickly closing in on one in three)—it is now at 27.90 percent (over 30 percent if Compatibility Mode is included). Unfortunately for Web developers everywhere, IE6 continues to be more popular than IE7, though this month it declined more than its successor. IE6's share can be attributed to businesses still using customized intranet applications, and XP's much bigger installed base than Vista's (especially in developing countries).

If we take a look at the last 12 months, the stabilization of IE is really obvious. Firefox, meanwhile, remains far away from what may be the unreachable 25 percent mark, having lost all the share it gained in the last year. Its market share is actually lower than it was a year ago. Chrome's progress is very noticeable in the chart above, though it seems to have found resistance at the 7 percent mark. Safari's gains are at about 1 percentage point, while Opera's are almost insignificant.

As always, things at Ars are very different. There was no place-changing this time: Firefox continues to dominate, Chrome is second, Safari is third, IE is fourth, and Opera brings up the rear. Last month, Firefox gained share, as did Chrome and Opera. The first-party browsers, Safari and IE, both dropped.

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The Windows 7 "family pack" will return on October 3. $150 gets you 3 Home Premium upgrade licenses.

Read More: The Windows Blog

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Newly discovered flaws in QuickTime 6 and 7 leave users running Internet Explorer on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 vulnerable to drive-by attacks.

Read More: ComputerWorld, Reversemode

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In addition to releasing the most security bulletins ever on this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released a number of non-security updates, the majority of which are for the latest versions of its client and server operating systems. All the patches are available on Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center and most will require a restart. With the exception of the last patch, they're all for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Most of these updates will be rolled into Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Testers got the first Windows 7 SP1 beta build two months ago, but just today Microsoft sent out build 7601.17077 to selected PC and Technology Adoption Program partners, according to ZDNet.

The first patch (KB2028560) is vaguely described as one that delivers "new functionality and performance improvements for the graphics platform." 

The second patch (KB2249857) describes an issue that occurs on 2TB+ hard disk drives. If the OS is configured to save dump files to a volume of such an HDD, some of the dump file is offset at a disk offset greater than the 2TB address, and Windows is either put into hibernation or crashes, volumes on the HDD may be corrupted, and data is lost. If the corrupted volumes include the system partition, the computer will no longer boot. 

The third patch (KB982110) fixes a problem when running 32-bit applications on a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. If the application uses the QueryPathOfRegTypeLib function to retrieve the path of a registered type library, it may return the path of the 64-bit version of the type library instead of the 32-bit one. 

The fourth patch (KB2272691) is for a game, application, or firmware that is either installed incorrectly, causes system instability, or has primary functions that do not work correctly. The update will either prevent incompatible software from running (hard block with third-party manufacturer consent), notify the user that incompatible software is starting to run (soft block), or improve the software's functionality (update). It lists just a single application (Sensible Vision FastAccess) as being affected.

The fifth patch (KB2203330) solves a problem when installing a third-party application for the multiple transport Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) device or for the Windows Portable Device (WPD). Connecting an MTP or WPD device may result in an APC_INDEX_MISMATCH stop error message because of a race condition in the Compositebus.sys driver. 

The last patch (KB979453) is for Windows Home Server and addresses five separate issues that were found since the release of WHS Power Pack 3.

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Microsoft today rolled out Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), which lets users get push notifications on phones and other mobile devices, as part of the Wave 4 release of Windows Live Hotmail. Some users reported EAS working for them two months ago, but only now has Microsoft made it official: e-mail, calendar, and contacts can be pushed automatically to your phone from Hotmail. To enable EAS, use the following settings:

Many phones already support ActiveSync for connecting to an Exchange server, but the feature will be particularly useful on phones that support dual ActiveSync accounts, including devices running Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 7 OS. Users who don't connect to an Exchange Server, but still have a device with ActiveSync support can also use the new Hotmail feature. Microsoft says over 300 million mobile devices currently support EAS; a full list is available on the Windows Live Solution Center.

Hotmail users have been begging for IMAP and other enhanced syncing capabilities for ages. Microsoft still won't budge on IMAP, but the company did rollout POP3 last year, and now with EAS support this year, it's clear the software giant is finally listening.

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Why Intel bought McAfee: Theories abound for why Intel bought McAfee, but the reality is more prosaic than most imagine. The Aurora attacks on Google and others were a wakeup call for Intel, and the company got serious about developing vPro's security potential. But to do that, they had to be able to offer products and services directly to the consumer.

Windows DLL-loading security flaw puts Microsoft in a bind: The rediscovery of an old attack method based on the way that Windows loads DLLs places Microsoft in a tricky position: a change to Windows will fix the problem once and for all, but could break third-party software that relies on the operating system working the way it has worked for 20 years. Ars explains the situation.

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Microsoft has renamed Windows Live Sync to Windows Live Mesh. Redmond often rebrands its Windows Live products, but there's more than a simple name change to today's announcement.

Windows Live Mesh will support syncing hidden files and will show a list of files that might be missing in a synced folder. Complaints that 2GB is an insufficient amount of storage have resulted in 5GB becoming the cloud storage limit again. Microsoft has also been working on cutting the application load time in half, speeding up syncing large numbers of folders or adding multiple devices to a sync folder, and optimizing memory and CPU usage during sync activity as well as when idle.

Windows Live Mesh has had two previous names. Microsoft bought FolderShare from ByteTaxi in November 2005 and released it in March 2008, renaming it to Windows Live Sync in December 2008. The "Windows" moniker isn't the best, since Sync (as well as Microsoft's other online services) is available for the Mac. 

These name changes remind us that Microsoft's syncing/storage strategy is a mess. When the Windows Live Wave 4 beta arrived two months ago, we were happy that Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh were being merged. Microsoft would finally be offering just one product (Sync/Mesh) and just one service (SkyDrive, for uploading photos, files, and documents for sharing) that would happily work together, right? Wrong.

Although SkyDrive is integrated better than it was previously, users still don't have access to its entire 25GB for sync (remember, Microsoft just went from 5GB, to 2GB, and back to 5GB). 

"While we merged Sync and Live Mesh in this release, we did not merge the online storage system used for Live Mesh with the one used for Office or Photos on SkyDrive," explains Microsoft. "This means that each system has different storage limits and is optimized for different scenarios." Maybe the merge will be complete by Wave 5?

Microsoft should have its syncing/storage strategy ready for this year's Windows Phone 7 release, but it won't. Windows Live Mesh will not support mobile phones when it's released. This would be tolerable if the original Live Mesh didn't support syncing between PCs and devices, but it did. With Wave 4, though, Microsoft eliminated mobile support and won't say when it's coming back.

Currently we have 25GB of space for SkyDrive, an infinite amount for Hotmail, 200MB for MyPhone, and so on. Why not offer 100GB on SkyDrive and make it accessible via all of Microsoft's products and services? That's so simple it just might work.

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