Microsoft
Is Microsoft preparing to make another major acquisition, as part of a transaction similar in significance to the purchase of Bethesda? This is what we read yesterday in a rumor, but the news may not be true according to what an insider reported.Let's take a step back: yesterday a youtuber said he heard from some of his sources that Microsoft is preparing another important acquisition, and someone has even thought about Take-Two.
It must be admitted that the same author of the post stated that it could be a fake news, however, on social networks it has begun to move something and even the Xbox social media manager posted a strange post full of enthusiasm, then deleted it.
At this point, Timur, the insider specialized in leafing through curriculums in search of unknown information, intervened, saying that he had asked two of his sources for confirmation on the matter.
Well, one of the two people said they had not heard anything, the other has not yet responded. In short, for the moment there are several uncertainties on the validity of the rumor.
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Microsoft will now let its users log in without passwords
© Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images The new Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet with detachable keyboard and pen for writing on the screen after it was unveiled May 19, 2014 in New York. Microsoft unveiled the Surface Pro 3 tablet at an event in New York on Tuesday, as it attempts to fuel interest in its struggling tablet line amid increasing competition. The Intel Core-powered tablet measures 0.36 inches thick, boasts a 12-inch screen and weighs just under 2 pounds.Microsoft has a solution for the familiar problem of needing to remember too many passwords: doing away with them altogether.
The company announced Wednesday that it will introduce a 'passwordless account' option for all users of several popular services such as Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft OneDrive in the coming weeks. Microsoft previously made this option available to corporate accounts in March.
'You can now completely remove the password from your Microsoft account,' Vasu Jakkal, the company's corporate vice president of security, compliance and identity, wrote in a blog post Wednesday.
Instead of passwords, Microsoft will let users sign in to these services with either the company's Authenticator app, which produces a unique numbered login code every few seconds, or with Windows Hello, which lets users sign in using facial recognition, a fingerprint or a unique pin. Microsoft users can also buy an external security key, like a USB drive with login information stored on it, or register a phone number to which Microsoft sends a verification code.
The change from Microsoft comes after a spike in cyberattacks over the past year. With the majority of corporate employees working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic, hackers have many more avenues to infiltrate a company's systems — and compromising passwords is one of their most common strategies. (Microsoft has also had its share of security issues in recent months, with its services linked to multiple high-profile hacks and breaches.)
Passwords can often end up for sale on the dark web, where they are bought and used to hack even more services. Hackers have even gone after password managers that aim to make login data more secure, with popular service LastPass hacked in 2015.
According to Microsoft, 579 password attacks take place every second, adding up to 18 billion attacks a year. And cybersecurity experts have said the weakest link is human behavior — our tendency to re-use the same password across accounts so it's easy to remember, or create patterns for different passwords that are easy for hackers to guess.
'Weak passwords are the entry point for the majority of attacks across enterprise and consumer accounts,' Jakkal said.
Microsoft appears to be leading by example in its effort to pioneer a passwordless future. According to Jakkal, almost all of the company's own employees now log into their corporate accounts without passwords.
Other companies such as Google and Apple also offer password alternatives — sending a notification on another device to verify your identity, for example — but those solutions haven't completely replaced the need to type out a password just yet.