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George Hotz, who gained notoriety by hacking the iPhone, was barred from distributing, creating, or marketing his technology for running unauthorized software on the PlayStation 3. Sony has convinced a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order that bars a hacker from distributing his technology for running unauthorized software on the PlayStation 3.
The new version of the Opera web browser closes the critical hole that was reported early this week; this vulnerability allows attackers to gain control of a computer. The problem was caused by a flaw in the code for processing HTML documents which contain select elements with a large number of child elements.
Intel's chief technology officer says the chip maker is developing a technology that will be a security game changer. Justin Rattner told Computerworld on Tuesday that scientists at Intel are working on security technology that will stop all zero-day attacks.
Mozilla, acting on a U.S. Federal Trade Commission proposal, has offered a detailed mechanism by which Firefox and other Web browsers could prevent Web pages from tracking people's online behavior for advertising purposes.
In addtition to protecting online privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is also committed to preserving freedom of speech on the Internet. So when Sony filed suit against researchers who found and published details about security gaps in the company's PlayStation 3 that allow users to run Linux on their machines despite Sony's efforts to prevent that, the EFF was quick to speak out about it.
By taking researchers to court, the company demonstrates contempt for the law and its customers. ... Sony is Exhibit A in the abuse of intellectual-property laws by corporations that believe they have all the rights -- including how products may be used after sale -- with users and purchasers having no rights at all.
As part of its January patch update, Oracle has released security updates for a number of products. The Critical Patch Update addresses vulnerabilities in, for example, the company's database server, Application Server, WebLogic Server, PeopleSoft Enterprise and Open Office.
Another major new capability in Joomla 1.6 is the Access Control Level system for managing rights and permissions within the system. This isn't exactly a revolutionary improvement, as many CMS products, especially on the commercial side, have long had very capable access control systems built-in.
Worried about someone ease dropping on your cell phone calls? Then try out a new mobile application called Kryptos. "It enables you to have conversations that are free from being intercepted by anybody," said Stephen Carnes, president of Kryptos Communications Inc.
Sony has sued 3 hackers and 100 others whose names the company doesn't know for developing and releasing over the Web code that makes it possible to run homegrown or pirated software on the PlayStation 3 videogame console.
A flaw in the web server components of the free Mono .NET clone potentially allows ASP.NET applications to supply source code or other files from the web server's application directory. Mono 2.8.2 fixes this as yet unexplained bug. Affected components on the project's vulnerability list include the XSP web server and the mod_mono Apache module. Both of these execute ASP.NET code.
WordPress has detected and fixed a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. WordPress 3.04 contains the fix that founder Matt Mullenweg calls "critical." Hosted WordPress.com customers don't need to worry, as security updates happen automatically for them.
New York: Researchers at Mocana are being troubled with their recent discovery of an easy way of hacking into a best-selling internet-ready HDTV model. The security technology company in San Francisco easily discovered a loop hole in the software that shows Web sites on the TV and used that as an opportunity in order to gain a control on the information being sent to the television.
It's no longer enough for antivirus software to scan files on your PC. You need someone looking over your shoulder and telling you whether it's safe to click that link; whether the popup for that software update is legitimate; and whether that download from your favorite social network is actually a tool created by organized criminals for stealing your personal information. You need an all-in-one Internet security suite capable of identifying, blocking, and cleaning up after a wide array of malware.
User data for some registered developers of Mozilla Add-ons was temporarily exposed by mistake on a Mozilla server. Mozilla has disabled those users' accounts until they reset their passwords.
Researchers at Mocana, a security technology company in San Francisco, recently discovered they could hack into a best-selling Internet-ready HDTV model with unsettling ease. They found a hole in the software that helps display Web sites on the TV and leveraged that flaw to control information being sent to the television.
Not a Linux article, but important nonetheless. This seems to show that money can't be made with closed-source software any longer. Even with the best protection, it doesn't keep people from sharing it. Microsoft last week killed an anti-piracy service that checked whether customers were running legal copies of Office, saying that the program had "served its purpose." ZDNet blogger Ed Bott first reported on Microsoft's move after a tipster pointed him toward a support document on the company's site.
There's a cartoon that made the rounds in the Linux community a few years back that I often think of at this time of year. In essence, it depicts a Linux aficionado refusing to help convince someone to switch to Linux, explaining, "If everyone's using it, I'm not cool anymore."
Driven by Google and like-minded software makers, a new era is dawning in which your software is constantly refreshed--often without any intervention on your part at all. Depending on how you see things, that could be either a scary loss of control over your own computer or a boon to convenience and security. Either way, the practice is increasingly common.
I've been testing out a prototype of Google's Chrome OS laptop for about a week now, and while I love certain things about the device my mind keeps coming back to the fact that it would be so much nicer if it could boot a "real" operating system as well.
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