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Unix developer The SCO Group has filed a law suit against IBM, charging it with misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition and other illegal actions related to IBM's Linux business. The suit seeks at least US$1 billion in damages. IBM obtained its Unix license in 1985 from AT&T, which developed the operating system, SCO said in a statement. In 1995 SCO purchased the rights and ownership of Unix and so became the successor to the Unix licenses doled out by AT&T to IBM, Hewlett-Packard and others, SCO said. In its suit filed Thursday in the State Court of Utah, SCO...

Buffer overflow flaw socks Snort By Patrick Gray ZDNet Australia March 4, 2003, 8:38 AM PT The discovery and disclosure of a serious vulnerability in the Sendmail e-mail software by Atlanta based security giant Internet Security Systems (ISS) is starving another vulnerability of the attention it deserves. ISS have also disclosed a buffer overflow vulnerability in Snort, a widely used open-source Intrusion Detection System. "Remote attackers may exploit the buffer overflow condition to run arbitrary code on a Snort sensor with the privileges of the Snort IDS process," the advisory said. Snort is a network based intrusion detection system (IDS)...

A consulting group that scrutinises the source code underlying several operating systems has found that a key networking component of Linux is of higher quality in many regards than competing closed-source software. Reasoning, which sells automated software inspection services, examined part of the code of Linux and five operating systems, comparing the number and rate of programming defects. Specifically, Reasoning examined the implementation of TCP/IP, a key networking technology, and found fewer errors in Linux. Reasoning declined to disclose which operating systems it compared with Linux, but said two of the three general-purpose operating systems were versions of Unix. The...

(LinuxWorld) - I believe I have stumbled upon two of Microsoft's most-startling and best-kept secrets, the ramifications of which for Linux and open source are profound. The revelation began when I realized that I had been mistaken in thinking that the lack of a well-funded marketing department could prevent open source and free software from displacing the commercial variety. The events of the past few months demonstrate that free software is being promoted by the richest and most-talented marketing organization on the planet: Microsoft. Consider for a moment what a well-orchestrated promotional stunt the Microsoft SQL Server Slammer worm proved...

Microsoft "may have to lower prices" System builders fall over in a faint A REPORT IN PC Week, renamed e-week before the dotcom bubble popped, said that Microsoft has warned its shareholders it might have to drop prices on its software. This will horrify system builders who have now got used to Microsoft Windows being the most expensive "component" of a PC.The Vole made its warning in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).It believes "Open Source" and its proponents are weakening its business model and are lobbying governments worldwide.And it said the company might have to...

Front Door | Enterprise | Search | One Week View http://www.news.com Microsoft fails Slammer's security test By Robert Lemos Staff Writer, CNET News.com January 27, 2003, 4:27 PM PT http://news.com.com/2100-1001-982305.html Microsoft's policy of relying on software patches to fix major security flaws was questioned Monday after a series of internal e-mails revealed that the software giant's own network wasn't immune from a worm that struck the Internet last weekend. Special ReportCode Red for security Virulent worm calls into doubt our ability to protect the Net. The messages seen by CNET News.com portray a company struggling with a massive infection by the SQL Slammer worm, which...

Langa Letter: Linux Has Bugs: Get Over ItFred Langa contends that some Linux proponents harm their cause by hiding from the facts--it's just as buggy as Windows XP. By Fred Langa, InformationWeekJan 27, 2003 (12:00 AM)URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20030124S0013I made a private bet with myself when I ran an item in my newsletter called "Linux Hacks On The Rise". It cited a study of software problems reported by CERT--the Computer Emergency Response Team that impartially tracks computing security threats. (CERT is part of a federally funded research and development center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.) Among other things, the article said:...

Open-source defect reaches deep By Patrick Gray Special to CNET News.com January 23, 2003, 9:00 AM PT A critical vulnerability has been found in the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), which is used in the vast majority of open-source projects to update and maintain source code. CVS allows open-source developers to remotely update and modify the source code to projects while ensuring that collaborative efforts don’t overlap. The security hole allows attackers to take control of a CVS server and alarmingly, it may also allow anonymous attackers to fiddle with open-source code at the development level. "There is a significant secondary...

There's something fishy about freeware Jacques Loubser, programme director for enterprise consulting services at Business Connexion, says companies seduced by "free" operating systems will ultimately find their choice constrains them.While many users try to measure the operating system in medium to large organisations purely on the cost per desktop by product, owning a desktop environment has costs that far outweigh that of the associated licensing.Installation is one of the first issues businesses stumble across. After organisations find their free-to-buy software they need somebody to install it. While it's not at all difficult to find someone who can put Microsoft's Windows...

November 26, 2002  | Paul ThurrottMost Unsecure OS? Yep, It's Linux According to a new Aberdeen Group report, open-source solution Linux has surpassed Windows as the most vulnerable OS, contrary to the high-profile press Microsoft's security woes receive. Furthermore, the Aberdeen Group reports that more than 50 percent of all security advisories that CERT issued in the first 10 months of 2002 were for Linux and other open-source software solutions. The report muddles the argument that proprietary software such as Windows is inherently less secure than open solutions. And here's another blow to the status quo: Proprietary UNIX solutions were responsible...

In a well-publicized memo either earlier this year or sometime during last, (I can't remember exactly which, I admit), executives at Microsoft admitted they considered Linux and open source software to be the biggest threat to their dominance and continued expansion into a variety of markets, from the home desktop and business office to the emerging TabletPC and notebook market.After watching Microsoft closely for the last eighteen months or so, I've got to disagree.  Microsoft's biggest threat isn't Linux, OpenOffice, or any piece of software at all--its themselves.  Over the last eighteen months two distinctly different Microsoft cultures have emerged,...

Could a wily little penguin disrupt Microsoft's desktop empire? The Linux operating system has made impressive gains on corporate servers, but so far has failed to crack the desktop market. More than 90 per cent of the world's personal computers run on Windows. And Linux is still considered too technically complex for the average computer user. But that is changing, especially outside the United States. Government agencies in Europe, China, India and South America have started to encourage Linux over proprietary software because it provides cost savings, freedom from reliance on a single software vendor, and flexibility. Linux is Open...

One of Microsoft's special strengths is the speed and intensity with which the sales team (right the way up to Bill, for government and really big accounts) goes in whenever a defection is threatened. As we noted last week Open Source is currently in the counter-insurgency SWAT team's crosshairs, with who knows what discounts and pressures being deployed to nip rebellion in the bud. Who knows? Well, the would-be defectors, of course. What? How does free server licences grab you? One defector who declined to hock his soul to Microstopheles in exchange for absolute temporal power in the IS department,...

The Initiative for Software Choice, which counts Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Intel among its backers, said in comments filed Tuesday that the department should "avoid crafting needless and potentially detrimental IT policy to promote the use" of open-source software. "Open source" means every software developer can view the source code for software, modify it, and use it for free. The initiative, which launched in May and is chaired by a group called CompTIA, an organization that has close ties to Microsoft, is worried about a recent report that concluded the Defense Department relies on open-source software and recommended its further...

From a slashdot.org posting of a BBC News article:"Citing security flaws that lead to ads and spys on Microsoft infested computers the BBC in this article recomends avoiding Internet Explorer."Ain't it the truth? Mostly its about adware & spyware and other wretched bits of software that make the internet suck a little more each day.

<p>Thanks to several high-profile vulnerabilities and an overall increase in the number of flaws, open-source software has taken over Microsoft Corp.'s position at the bottom of the security heap. A recent research note from two analysts at the Aberdeen Group calls open-source software and Linux distributions the "2002 poster children for security problems." Of the 29 advisories issued through October by the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, 16 of them addressed vulnerabilities in open-source or Linux products.</p>

Nuclear Winter? More Like Global Warming Contributed by Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier Send this Article Print this Article Talkback Related Stories osOpinion.com November 19, 2002 The goal of a proprietary software company is to increase profit margins. An IT department strives to deliver needed services as inexpensively as possible. Those two goals are diametrically opposed to one another. Is mainstream acceptance for Open Source a "nuclear winter" for the software industry? I certainly hope so. Some argue that Open Source and Free Software are best left as a niche market, and that widespread acceptance of software without license fees will harm...

The Japanese government is contemplating to replace Microsoft Windows, used in much of its computer networks, with another operating system to bolster security. According to the local newspaper Asahi Shimbun, the planned move came in the wake of recent event of leakage of secure data from Japan's military network. Instead the government is looking the possibility of adopting open source programs like Linux. Reuters TOKYO: The Japanese government will consider replacing Microsoft Corp's Windows, used in much of its computer networks, with another operating system to bolster security, a newspaper said on Saturday. The safety of computer networks is under...

According to a report published November 12 by Aberdeen Group^, "Security advisories for open source and Linux software accounted for 16 out of the 29 security advisories - about one of every two advisories - published for the first 10 months of 2002 by Cert (www.cert.org^, Computer Emergency Response Team)." Aberdeen says Microsoft products have had no new virus or trojan horse advisories in the first 10 months of 2002, while Unix, Linux, and Open Source software went from one in 2001 to two in the first 10 months of 2002, that in the same 2002 time period "networking...

<p>Hackers like Jeremy Allison would rather pore over source code than legal documents, but the recent Microsoft antitrust settlement decision has the Samba leader thinking about lawsuits. Patent lawsuits.</p> <p>The open-source developer fears that, having settled its long-running antitrust suit, Microsoft will now become more aggressive in competing with open-source software. And for Samba -- software that allows Windows machines to read files on Linux servers -- as well as other open-source projects that compete with Microsoft's products, that may mean dealing with patent lawsuits.</p>