Microsoft Security Essentials has once again failed to make the grade for certification at AV-Test, an independent but non-required honor that most anti-virus programs enjoy. By extension, Windows 8's built-in virus protection, Windows Defender, likely suffers the same shortcomings as it is essentially a rebadged version of MSSE. The anti-virus utility marked its first failure for Sept/Oct.

Since its debut in 2009, Microsoft's no-cost anti-virus has remained free of advertisements, nagging reminders or required registration. This made MSSE an exciting alternative to long-time freebies Avira, Avast and AVG. MSSE quickly took off and gained a reputation as a top contender, once receiving excellent marks for its lightweight foot print, simple interface and detection/removal capabilities. In recent times though, MSSE has slipped -- a lot.

The phrase 'Hunt for Red October' no longer refers only to the work of author Tom Clancy, or the film based on his novel.

Today, it also refers to a sophisticated cyber-espionage operation that stretches back to 2007. On the perpetrators' tails have been a team of researchers from Kaspersky Lab and Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) around the world. Now, in a detailed analysis, Kaspersky Lab has posted more information about the inner workings of an attack its researchers say rivals Flame in complexity.

Earlier this week Oracle rushed out a fix for a critical bug in Java that was reportedly being widely exploited by malicious sites to remotely execute code on a victim’s machine. Well, it only took one day after the patch arrived for a different and apparently still-unpatched zero-day vulnerability to start circulating online.

According to a report on KrebsOnSecurity, a fully "weaponized" executable that exploits the bug was being advertised for $5,000 a piece in an underground Internet forum. The price included a ready to use encrypted version of the exploit as well as the source-code so that it could be folded into other types of attacks.

As is the way of such things, just days after one coder figured out a way around Microsoft's Windows RT controls another individual has created an easy-to-use tool based on the example.

Posted by netham45 on XDA-Developers, the RT Jailbreak tool needs only to be loaded and run on the tablet (wait a minute or two after booting up), without any need for the user to poke around in the Windows kernel themselves.