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iTunes and QuickTime flaw detailedBy Joris Evers, CNET News.com Published on ZDNet News: December 21, 2005, 2:47 PM PT Don't open media files from sources you don't trust--it may lead to your computer being hacked, a security researcher has warned. Tom Ferris, an independent security researcher, has provided more details on a security flaw in Apple Computer's popular iTunes and QuickTime software that could put systems running Windows and Mac OS X at risk of attack. He first disclosed the flaw in early December. An attacker could commandeer a vulnerable computer by tricking a user into opening a malicious ".mov"...

Consumers snap up computers on Black Friday By Michael Kanellos, CNET News.com Published on ZDNet News: December 2, 2005, 10:41 AM PT Computer makers can breathe a sigh of relief--people did scoop up a lot of laptops during the holiday shopping extravaganza last week. Sales of personal computers in U.S. retail outlets during Thanksgiving week increased 35 percent over the same week the year before. Overall revenue increased by 11 percent, better than expected, according to research firm Current Analysis. In 2004, computer sales increased by only 7 percent while revenue decreased by 3 percent. Thanksgiving week is a crucial...

Cost questions dog Blu-ray DVD's lead By John Borland Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: November 28, 2005, 4:00 AM PST Because Sony's Blu-ray disc technology appears to be the front-runner in the nasty fight to determine how the DVDs of the future are produced, movie studios and disc manufacturers are beginning to come to terms with the financial realities of the new format--as well as some troubling uncertainties. For more than a year now, a bitter public relations war has been waged between supporters of Blu-ray and a rival Toshiba-backed technology known as HD DVD. Both are high-capacity discs that...

Another QuickTime flaw found By Dawn Kawamoto, CNET News.com Published on ZDNet News: November 8, 2005, 11:46 AM PT Less than three weeks after Apple Computer issued an update to patch four security flaws in its QuickTime media player, a new "critical" problem has been discovered. The unpatched vulnerability could allow remote execution of code, according to an advisory published Monday by eEye Digital Security. It affects various versions of Apple QuickTime running on all types of operating systems, the company said, but did not specify which versions in particular were at risk. eEye said it notified Apple of the...

New worm targets Linux systems By Joris Evers Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: November 7, 2005, 5:12 PM PST A new worm that propagates by exploiting security vulnerabilities in Web server software is attacking Linux systems, warned antivirus companies on Monday. The worm spreads by exploiting Web servers that host susceptible scripts at specific locations, according to antivirus software maker McAfee, which has named the worm "Lupper." Lupper blindly attacks Web servers, installing and executing a copy of the worm when a vulnerable server is found, McAfee said in its description of the worm. A backdoor is installed on infected...

Mass. bill endangers OpenDocument decision By Martin LaMonica Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: November 3, 2005, 7:54 AM PST The Massachusetts Senate has introduced a provision to an economic stimulus bill that endangers a state decision to standardize on the OpenDocument format. An amendment to Senate bill 2256, published on Wednesday, proposes the creation of a four-person information technology task force to approve technical standards in the state. The Senate is scheduled on Thursday to discuss the bill, known as the Commonwealth Investment Act. The introduction of the amendment follows a hearing on Monday during which the chair of a...

Palm Expected to Unveil Windows Mobile Treo Palm and Microsoft will hold a joint press conference Monday, when they are widely expected to unveil the much-anticipated Palm Treo based on Windows Mobile 5.0. Palm CEO Ed Colligan, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates, and Verizon Wireless CEO Denny Strigl will be the featured participants in the San Francisco event, which takes place at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco at 9 a.m. PDT. Earlier this week, photos purporting to be of a Treo 700w bearing a Verizon logo and running Windows Mobile software were published by Engadget. Key...

Extremely Critical Flaw Found in FireFox Peter Zelezny has discovered a vulnerability in Firefox, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The vulnerability is caused due to the shell script used to launch Firefox parsing shell commands that are enclosed within backticks in the URL provided via the command line. This can e.g. be exploited to execute arbitrary shell commands by tricking a user into following a malicious link in an external application which uses Firefox as the default browser (e.g. the mail client Evolution on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4). This vulnerability can only...

CIO Jury: Businesses give open source a reality check IT bosses wary of hidden costs of moving to Linux… By Andy McCue Published: Thursday 1 September 2005 CIOs are still divided on whether the cost benefits of using open source software in a business IT infrastructure outweigh the risks. Just this week Unilever said it has ditched a three-year plan to migrate its global IT infrastructure to a Linux platform, citing security issues, support costs and a competitive comeback from proprietary software vendors - though open source will be used in some instances. silicon.com's 12-strong CIO jury user panel was...

Unpatched Firefox flaw may expose users By Joris Evers, CNET News.com Published on ZDNet News: September 9, 2005, 3:53 AM PT A new, unpatched flaw in that affects all versions of Firefox could let attackers surreptitiously run malicious code on users' PCs, a security researcher has warned. The problem lies in the way Firefox handles Web links that are overly long and contain dashes, security researcher Tom Ferris said in an interview via instant messaging late Thursday. He posted an advisory and a proof of concept to the Full Disclosure security mailing list and to his Security Protocols Web site....

Firefox's 'retreat' ensures Microsoft excels Open source web browser Firefox has lost the momentum it has steadily gained since it was unleashed last year, according to Web analysts at Net Applications. The online portal’s unique Hit List service reveals a slump in the Mozilla browser’s market share, falling from 8.7% to 8.1 % in July. Coinciding with its demise, was the advance of Microsoft's IE that has gained some of the ground surrendered in June, climbing back from 86.6 % to 87.2% last month. The revival for the dominant browser comes on the back of average monthly losses of between...

EU plan could put open sourcers in court By Ingrid Marson, ZDNet (UK) Published on ZDNet News: August 2, 2005, 11:51 AM PT The European Commission has proposed a law that could allow criminal charges to be pressed against a business using software believed to infringe upon another company's intellectual property. The proposed directive, which was adopted by the European Commission last month, would allow criminal sanctions against "all intentional infringements of an IP right on a commercial scale." Richard Penfold, a partner at law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, said last week that the proposed directive could "quite...

Ex-Microsoft Exec Barred From Google Job Jul 28, 8:20 PM (ET) By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE SEATTLE (AP) - A former Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) executive who defected to Google Inc. (GOOG) cannot immediately perform the job Google hired him to do, a judge ruled Thursday, saying Microsoft has a well-grounded fear that leaked trade secrets could hurt its business. Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez granted a temporary restraining order barring Kai-Fu Lee from working at Google on any product, service or project similar to those he worked on at Microsoft, including Internet and desktop search technology. A Google lawyer requested a...

Supreme Court Rules Against File Swapping update The Supreme Court handed movie studios and record labels a sweeping victory against file-swapping, ruling Monday that peer-to-peer companies such as Grokster could be held responsible for the copyright piracy on their networks. In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled companies that build businesses with the active intent of encouraging copyright infringement should be held liable for their customers' illegal actions. "We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is...

Totally useless silly stuff. For all of you Mac advocates, here's your fearless leader. Follow the link.

Workstation, yes; Server, no. The G5 is a gigantic improvement over the previous CPU in the PowerMac, the G4e. The G5 is one of the most superscalar CPUs ever, and has all the characteristics that could give Apple the edge, especially now that the clock speed race between AMD and Intel is over. However, there is still a lot of work to be done. First of all, the G5 needs a lower latency access to the memory because right now, the integer performance of the G5 leaves a lot to be desired. The Opteron and Xeon have a better integer...

Windows computer servers tie with Unix in revenue The worldwide computer server market grew 5.3 per cent to $12.1 billion in the first quarter, with revenue for servers running the Microsoft Corp Windows operating system equalling that of Unix servers for the first time, market research firm IDC said on Friday. Revenue for Windows servers grew 12.3 per cent to $4.2 billion in the quarter while unit shipments grew 10.7 per cent. Unix servers saw 2.8 per cent revenue growth to $4.2 billion while unit shipments increased 5 per cent. "The equal level of spending in both segments this quarter...

Apple Recalls more G4 Batteries Apple Computer is recalling 128,000 batteries that were shipped in its PowerBook G4 and iBook G4 laptops over the past eight months, marking the second time since last summer that it has issued such a warning. In a report filed with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the company said that it has identified a new crop of batteries that may have the potential to overheat. Apple will replace all of the batteries in question, which were shipped in 12- and 15-inch models of the PowerBook G4 and 12-inch versions of the iBook G4 delivered...

Linux Kernel Security, Again by Jason Miller, SecurityFocus.com It's a sad day when an ancient fork bomb attack can still take down most of the latest Linux distributions. While investigating some reports of recent Unix compromises, I ran into a message from the SecurityFocus Incidents mailing list that was forwarded to me by the moderator, Daniel Hanson. It was a lengthy post detailing the compromise of a Linux machine. The post contained an awkward IRC-based discussion between the server administrator and the guy who had broke into the machine. Reading through this discussion, I discovered the following exchange which immediately...

IBM goes silent on Linux desktop effort Big Blue mum about progress of the company's move to open source clients By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service January 25, 2005 More than a year after IBM's (Profile, Products, Articles) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano challenged his company to move to the Linux desktop by the end of 2005, IBM has significantly toned down its rhetoric on the subject of open-source clients. "We don't have anything we want to say that's definitive," said Nancy Kaplan, an IBM spokeswoman, as she declined to comment on specifics of the roll-out. "There are...