Windows Genuine Advantage is the target of a new Trojan, which pretends to be Microsoft’s activation mechanism.

Symantec issued a bulletin in late April on the Kardphisher Trojan, which has a threat rating of "very low." But the Trojan picked up new attention over the weekend, following a Friday post on Symantec’s security Weblog.

The Trojan takes advantage of one controversial feature of Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy mechanism: revalidation. To receive most downloads, including Internet Explorer or anything from the Windows Update Web site, end users must validate that their computers are, in Microsoft parlance, "genuine." But one validation isn’t enough. Microsoft has Windows clients periodically revalidate. The process is designed to catch new pirated versions as Microsoft continually updates its piracy database.

A Russian headmaster said on Monday a court has fined him half his monthly wage for using pirated copies of Microsoft software at his school in a case President Vladimir Putin has called "utter nonsense."

Prosecutors said Alexander Ponosov had violated Microsoft’s property rights by allowing pupils to use 12 computers with unlicensed copies of Microsoft Windows and Office software.

Ponosov, a headmaster in a remote school in the Perm region of the Ural mountains, said he did not know the computers had fake licenses when they were delivered by a sub-contractor.

We continue our technical analysis of the White House missing email controversy. Earlier, we learned that the President’s staff uses at least two domains for email: EOP.GOV for official business and GWB43.COM for political business. Last week, we explored GWB43.COM for clues into the White House email infrastructure and came up with some disturbing questions. This week, we take a strange detour into mob journalism as we continue to dig for the truth.

Read this OutlookPower article.

It appears we may have our own Deep Throat on our hands, as we continue our investigation into the White House email scandal. After we published our second article, we got an interesting email from someone with a very anonymous Gmail account. Having no self-control ourselves, we’ve nicknamed him "Deep Mail". Here are his letters to us.

Read this OutlookPower article.

After more than two years in development and testing by some 20 million beta testers globally, Microsoft will launch Windows Live Hotmail, the successor to MSN Hotmail, in 36 languages across the world May 7.

Windows Live Hotmail customers will also, later this month, be able to access their Hotmail email and contacts for free, using Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007, via the new Microsoft Office Outlook Connector beta that will be made available in 11 languages worldwide. There will also be full contact, email and email folder synchronization between the two products.

Bloggers engaged in journalistic pursuits would be granted immunity from divulging confidential sources under a new bill pending in both chambers of Congress.

An updated version of the Free Flow of Information Act, introduced earlier this week, gives a more expansive definition to the concept of a "covered person" under the law than any of Congress’ previous attempts at so-called "reporter’s shield" legislation.

Research In Motion announced plans to introduce a new development tool that will enable developers to work within the familiar .NET programming environment to rapidly create rich client wireless applications for BlackBerry smartphones. The BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio provides system integrators and in-house corporate developers with the ability to create BlackBerry applications that seamlessly integrate with back-end systems through .NET Web Services.

The BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio will leverage the BlackBerry Mobile Data System to simplify wireless application development, deployment and management for the enterprise.

4Team Corp has released a new software release of Sync2 for Microsoft Outlook. Synchronize any Microsoft Outlook Folder between multiple PCs without a server.

Researchers from security vendor Sophos say a new worm targeting removable drives is an example of a potential security threat for businesses.

The SillyFD-AA worm searches for removable drives such as floppy disks and USB memory sticks and creates a hidden file called autorun.inf so that a copy of the worm runs the next time the device is connected to a computer running Windows. In addition, it changes the title of Internet Explorer windows to say that the computer has been "Hacked by 1BYTE."

Some of Microsoft’s most important customers aren’t happy with the battery life offered by notebooks running Windows Vista.

"It’s a little scary," said John Wozniak, a distinguished technologist in Hewlett-Packard’s notebook engineering department, referring to the work HP needed to do on making Windows Vista more suitable for notebooks.

Vista, while touted as having improved power management capabilities that would make it easier for users to extend battery life, isn’t to some living up to that promise. The main culprit appears to be the Aero Glass interface, a spiffy new user interface that makes Vista more pleasing to the eye with transparent windows and animated transitions when moving from one application to another.