Microsoft Corp., the world"s largest software maker, said on Tuesday it would devote a larger part of its massive $6.8 billion research and development budget to making its software more secure and reliable. "For Microsoft, security will continue to be our top R&D investment for years to come," the firm"s co-founder Bill Gates told industry experts at a Microsoft conference in Prague. System security and fighting spam has become one of the software giant"s top priorities, but Microsoft is often accused by its critics of producing faulty software that fails its customers. The U.S. company has issued a number of patches to its Windows operating systems and Office software packages to prevent hackers from taking control of computers connected to the Internet or finding information about their users.
Computer users are also being bombarded with unsolicited spam e-mails that are offering them anything from low mortgage rates to cheap drugs. These emails also can also contain potentially dangerous viruses that spread through unsecured Internet connections. Gates, at the World Economic Forum in Davos recently, had predicted that spam would slow to mere trickle by 2006 as technology is developed to prevent its spread. "There are a lot of advanced breakthroughs in the area we call trustworthy computing. In the next 12 to 18 months we can expect (unsolicited emails) not to be a major problem as today," Gates said. On Monday security experts warned of a new worm called MyDoom that spread via spam, which could potentially allow unauthorized access to users" computers.