A hundred million miracles   19 Sep 2007 16:31 GMT
This post is something of an apology. And an explanation of the picture at right. While I've been writing about IBM and Microsoft, about the the biggest trees in the open source forest, thousands of little shoots have been growing, ignored. Zoho has been...
Source: ZDNet

Antitrust is a scurvy dog   19 Sep 2007 15:41 GMT
Avast, government scalliwags are blind as me 25 year ol' pup when it comes to spying land on the antitrust seas. If government scoundrels showed two pence worth of good sense, I'd be wining and dining them in the captain's stateroom rather than keelhauling those bilge rats the length of...
Source: ZDNet

Security gurus look for better ways to classify malware   19 Sep 2007 13:00 GMT
Two senior security veterans from Trend Micro are trying to get the industry to change how it classifies malicious software so users will better understand technology threats.

Source: Computerworld

News to know: DRM; 3G iPhone; Opsware   19 Sep 2007 08:36 GMT
Notable headlines: Ed Bott: Everything you've read about Vista DRM is wrong (Part 2). David Berlind: If true, Jobs quote of "A 3G iPhone later next year" should kill demand for iPhone 1.0. Matthew Miller: Steve Jobs confirms that a 3G iPhone will be...
Source: ZDNet

Backdooring Windows Media files (and assorted Microsoft security problems)   18 Sep 2007 22:28 GMT
Petko D. Petkov's ongoing research into malicious rigging of media files is now taking aim at Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows Media Player (WMP) software. The latest discovery revolves around manipulating ".asx" files to display a Web page within the standalone media player. [The] page will be opened...
Source: ZDNet

With health records security is an afterthought   18 Sep 2007 17:34 GMT
The eHealth Vulnerability study released today sounds self-serving, but does make clear that health IT is something of a technology backwater where security and patching has yet to catch up with supply or demand. The group represents existing players in health care, security and IT, rather than the groups...
Source: ZDNet

Information security by the numbers: It's not pretty   18 Sep 2007 17:27 GMT
A pair of security surveys were released Tuesday and the findings aren't pretty. First up, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) released a survey on information security breaches. Among the findings: Among companies that reported a security breach in the last year, the...
Source: ZDNet

Google ships open-source security fuzzer   18 Sep 2007 15:09 GMT
Google's security team has released a fuzz testing tool that was used internally to find multiple vulnerabilities in Internet-critical software products. The fuzzer, called Flayer, is an analysis and flow alteration tool that has been used to find errors in real software. In the past...
Source: ZDNet

Group says e-voting paper trail wouldn't improve security   18 Sep 2007 13:00 GMT
So-called "paper audit trails" are unlikely to solve accuracy problems associated with electronic voting and would in fact introduce another potential problem to the mix, according to a report issued Tuesday. But even some critics of current e-voting tech are discounting the ITIF's take on the matter.

Source: Computerworld

Facebook, MySpace users will trade privacy for features   18 Sep 2007 13:00 GMT
Researchers at Pace University found that users of social networking sites are willing to share personal information even though they know the security is suspect.

Source: Computerworld