Category: Technology

After reading this success story about how they switched to using open source software on all their desktops, I may have to start using Ernie Ball strings on my instruments.

Now we’ve got the sobig-f virus running rampant all over and we’re all getting LOTS of email messages from email antivirus scanners complaing “you sent me a virus-infected message.” Sheesh… After dealing with the thousand or so email messages in my inbox from yesterday, (and that doesn’t include what went into my spam folder or my filtered list folders) I’m about ready to give up on email altogether … if you really want to talk to me, I’ll be glad to give you my instant messenger info…

A couple weeks ago I was wondering whether there were good RSS syndicators that were web-based. Today, while reading comments and following links on Dan Gilmor’s article on RSS Hitting Critical Mass, I came across Bloglines, which is a free, and advertising-free, web site that allows users to subscribe to and read RSS feeds. Very cool.

In what sounds like something straight out of a Neal Stephenson or William Gibson book, CNET News reports on a new file-sharing network being run out of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Some great quotes in the article, like:

“We’re in Palestine, in a refugee camp,” said Ras Kabir, the service’s co-founder. “There aren’t too many process servers that are going to be coming into the Jenin refugee camp. We’ll welcome them if they do.”

and what has got to be one of the most definitive examples of chutzpah seen yet from the RIAA (and that’s saying something), Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president of the RIAA, says: [This] is playing on the fears of others, encouraging them to engage in behavior that will get them into a boatload of trouble.

Wow.

Today it is being reported that Microsoft will start to turn on the firewall by default in new systems being shipped with Windows XP.

Jeeze. Finally.

And a relevant quote showing true vision from our leading technology company:

Steve Lipner, Microsoft’s director of security strategy, said yesterday that the company had been shipping the software without the full firewall protection turned on because customers had indicated that it was their preferred setting.

“Doing it the way we did was probably the right decision when we shipped XP,” he said. “Obviously, times change, and the things we do to protect our customers change.”

Hoo-boy.

From the Beeb: People confused by wi-fi jargon. Good quote: If talk of a “wi-fi hotspot” makes you think of someone having trouble with their spouse, then you are not alone.

Thanks to boing-boing for spotting this one.

Well, well, well. With the appearance of the MSBlast worm form of exploit for Microsoft’s security compromise (which I’ve been writing about here for two weeks now) the major news media have finally awoken from their collective slumber and started reporting on the effects this compromise his having. CNET News has a collection of stories, the NY Times reports on it here (requires a login), and the San Jose Mercury News has a story here that is inexplicably bylined from Sweden. Nice to see them catch up.

The CNET coverage includes an piece by Charles Cooper calling Microsoft to task for building insecure software. It’s almost a year ago since Terry Gray wrote his 7-Point Plan for Windows Security that, if implemented by Microsoft then, could have alleviated much of this pain.

The Microsoft RPC security disaster continues to explode all over the net. The latest version of the exploit is a worm that is being labelled the W32/Blaster Worm. It reproduces itself onto machines it finds that are vulnerable and can source a denial-of-service attack against Microsoft’s Windows Update site. Sigh. At present this is finally hitting the commercial networks as well as academic sites – all of Comcast (our major cable internet provider) in the Northwest has been down since yesterday, which they attribute to this worm. I saw one estimate that 7% of all the traffic on the Internet 2 backbone yesterday was attributed to this worm – that’s HUGE!

When will the madness end?

Last week I wrote a little about how the Microsoft Windows RPC-DCOM exploit is a major security event at universities across the US. This event has continued to mushroom, to where it is consuming the efforts of hundreds of computing support staff at our campus alone. We continue to discover hundreds of compromised machines and thousands more remain vulnerable. There is now also beginning to be evidence that there are variants of the exploit that will propagate themselves, in worm fashion, through the net.

Continue reading “The Windows Security Nightmare Continues”

Tim Bray has yet another interesting article in his ongoing weblog relating how Antacrtica, the company he founded and works at, is abandoning the Flash version of its interface and concentrating instead on dynamic html. Worth a look.