Microsoft working on new browser codenamed Spartan: reports

Recent reports suggest Microsoft is working on a new browser codenamed Spartan for its upcoming Windows 10 operating system.

According to sources, Spartan would come with several new features that many leading browsers offer today, Tech2 reported.

The report cites The Verge , as saying one of key features in Spartan would be the ability to annotate a web page with a stylus and then send notes and annotations to others.

This web note service would be driven by the company's OneDrive cloud storage, meaning that notes would be stored on a copy of the web page, accessible by any other browser across multiple platforms.

This further meant that users could simply doodle on a web page and share it between groups.

The report also pointed out that the Spartan browser would get Microsoft's digital assistant, Cortana. The digital assistant would provide information on flights, hotel bookings, package tracking, and other essential data using the traditional address bar.

It would be possible to access Cortana search directly from the new tab interface in Spartan.
 
It would also come with other features like a novel way to group tabs together avoiding the otherwise messy multiple browser tabs. Spartan would also allow users to split up personal tabs from work ones. Spartan would also offer custom themes with updates in future.

Meahwhile ZDNet reported that researchers had published a new report revealing security flaws in Microsoft Windows and Office patched over 2014, and how services were exploited throughout the year.

A report by security firm ESET which published an analysis of Microsoft's Windows and exploitation of the operating system throughout 2014 listed the vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and Office patched over the course of the year.

These included how drive-by download attacks were conducted and the various exploit techniques used for  compromising  the system.

Microsoft issued patches for most of the vulnerabilities discovered in the Internet Explorer browser and many of the security issues found were related to the Remote Code Execution type, which allowed for drive-by download attacks to occur.

In other words, malicious code was unintentionally downloaded to a computer due to a vulnerability in a browser. This could also happen if software was out-of-date or lacked the latest security patches.

Such exploitation of the Windows system was a major 2014 pattern. According to ESET in comparison to 2013, Microsoft addressed twice as many IE vulnerabilities over the past year.