Weekly Wrap-Up. Summary of some top stories in the past week.

In the search war Bing grabs 11% of search market, while Microsoft introduces new tools for secure application development.

According to recent results from analyst company Nielsen, Microsoft Corp's Bing continues to strengthentening its position on the search engine market and demonstrated steady growth by 9% in July and 10.7% in August. Such performance has made Bing the fastest growing search engine on the market, where still three major competitors, with Google long ahead are trying to take their stakes. Although, Bing still far behind Google, its verges towards Yahoo Inc.'s search engine position, that showed 4.2% decline from July. However, the emphasis might shift once Microsoft and Yahoo enter into a partnership after passing an antitrust muster. The agreement allows Bing to power Yahoo's Web sites, while Yahoo will drive sales of premium search advertising services for both companies. That movement
could unite two giants and give them a needed leverage in ongoing battle against the leader.

On other side, Microsoft continues to show its commitement to making Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) process real for developers and presented new testing tools to help Windows programmers build better security into their C and C++ applications. Symbolically the tools offered at no cost enablig implementation of Microsoft's SDL process, for injecting security and privacy provisons into the development lifecycle as opposed to testing during pre- and post deployment of application.

One of the tools, BinScope Binary Analyzer, analyzes binary code to validate adherence to SDL requirements for compilers and linkers. By checking a variety of SDL requirements like GS flag, which is used to prevent buffer overflows it also verifies use of strong-named assemblies and up-to-date build tools. The tool requires symbol files, providing security against hackers potentially using the tool to analyze software on the Web for weaknesses.

A Microsoft representative said many of the checks featured in BinScope Binary Analyzer are inherently built into .NET coding. Microsoft previously has released a threat management tool and process management template based on SDL.

The second tool, Microsoft MiniFuzz File Fuzzer implements the fuzz testing technique. Testers check application behavior by parsing files that have been deliberately corrupted. Security tests are applied to take code through different flow patterns and identify whether resulting crashes should be investigated as potential application security risks.

Microsoft has recently released a paper entitled "Manual Integration of the SDL Process Template," to guide Microsoft Visual Studio Team System users through a manual process to incorporate elements of the SDL process template into Team System projects.