2nd July 2002 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

New IE spy progie exploits DCOM

And MS says it's secure....

A group of Japanese security enthusiasts has developed a little tool called IE'en which exposes traffic between an IE user and any server he's contacting, including logins and passwords over HTTPS. The group, SecurityFriday, has made the tool available for download here. To use the tool it's necessary to log in as a current …

Software 2 Jul 2002, 06:55
Cyberwar is Hell

AV profiteers delight

Cyberwar is Hell, but never too hellish for feverish salesmanship. Take, for example, McAfee's recent botched attempt to sell the public on the merits of the fiendish "JPEG virus" said to be hanging over beloved digital stockpiles of family photos and Swedish pornography like the sword of Damocles. The corporate deployment of …

Security 2 Jul 2002, 10:27
Vodafone eyes up SFR in Vivendi fall-out

VaVaVoom

Vodafone Group Plc is expected to seize on the disorder at Vivendi Universal SA, following the departure of boss Jean-Marie Messier, by seeking control of France's number-two mobile operator SFR. Weighed down with debt following an over-ambitious expansion program, Vivendi will be looking to sell non-core assets and it …

Mobile 2 Jul 2002, 10:45
DoubleClick exits US ad sales business, L90 takes over

Tit for tat

DoubleClick Inc, once the leader in online advertising sales and representation, has sold its North American Media unit to rival L90 Inc for $5m cash and a 16.1% stake in the merged company, which will be known as MaxWorldwide Inc. MaxWorldwide will become the largest web ad sales company, leaving DoubleClick free to focus …

e-Business 2 Jul 2002, 10:46
FTC turns screws on Payola search

Search engine vendors told to clean up act

Federal regulators in the US have determined that several Internet-search engines are not properly informing Internet consumers when certain advertisers pay for a prominent placement in search results - which can give them a competitive "eyeball" advantage, unfair or otherwise. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is asking …

e-Business 2 Jul 2002, 10:46
Xbox mod-chips still on the menu

Home brew? Nah

Last week we reported on Xbox mod-chip group Enigmah's decision to withdraw its product from the market, citing a consultation with lawyers as its reason for pulling back from the legally delicate area of console modification. However, it transpires that Enigmah hasn't cancelled its mod-chip plans after all, and the team has …

Personal 2 Jul 2002, 10:50
SGI to develop MIPS chips for Origin, Onyx

Life outside Itanium 2

The impending McKinley Itanium 2 announcement from Intel Corp has all the RISC/Unix vendors redrawing or at least coloring in their own product roadmaps, and workstation and HPC server vendor SGI is no different, Timoty Prickett Morgan writes. SGI is widely expected to make a statement of direction that will see the …

Servers 2 Jul 2002, 10:51
NAI revisits McAfee.com takeover bid

House in order

Network Associates Inc has relaunched its bid to acquire the publicly held shares of subsidiary McAfee.com Corp it does not already own, having filed its restated financial results for 1998, 1999 and 2000 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday. Santa Clara, California-based NAI already owns 75% of …

Security 2 Jul 2002, 10:51
Ebone to shut as sale falls through

Threat number 192

KPNQwest's Ebone network could be on the verge of shutting down - again - following the collapse of a deal to purchase the high-speed network. A UK consortium - Oakley Investors - had been in talks to buy the 25,000km European data network. But according to insiders the deal fell through last night after the banks demanded …

Media 2 Jul 2002, 10:52
Microsoft updates Java (in its own way)

XML support

The second prong in Microsoft Corp's Java developer strategy has come into play, with the launch of its latest .NET programming language. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft opened its TechEd Europe 2002 conference in Barcelona, Spain, yesterday releasing Visual J Sharp .NET - an update to Visual J++. Visual J Sharp.NET …

Software 2 Jul 2002, 10:52
European antitrust chief concerned over MS Palladium?

Up to a point, Lord Copper...

The European Union antitrust investigation of Microsoft is going to take forever, and Europe has now added Palladium to the list of issues it's not going to focus very hard on for a very long time. We jest, of course, because this isn't quite what Philip Lowe, incoming EU Director General for Competition, told the American …

Software 2 Jul 2002, 11:25
Indymedia.nl loses anarchist hyperlinks case

Deutsche Bahn railroads Dutch law

In April this year, Deutsche Bahn sued Google over links to a German anarchist website which showed how to sabotage a railway. It wasn't Google's fight: the world's favourite search engine firm promptly removed the offending links to the website of Radikal, the aforementioned anarchists. Deutsche Bahn had already gone to court …

Media 2 Jul 2002, 13:01
Police bust global Net pedo ring

50 arrests in Operation Twins

Police have arrested 50 in co-ordinated international raids this morning aimed at breaking up a ring of paedophiles trading indecent pictures over the Internet. Operation Twins was lead by the UK's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, which has investigated a group called the Shadowz Brotherhood for over a year. Scores of computers and …

Media 2 Jul 2002, 13:04
EC greenlights PSINet Europe sale

Go on then

The sale of PSINet Europe to a consortium including ClearBlue Technologies, Israel Corporation and Infinity Holdings has been given the green light by the European Commission. In May a US bankruptcy court gave its approval for the $9.5 million sale to go ahead after its parent, PSINet Inc decided to auction off the business. …

Business 2 Jul 2002, 13:06
Akamai wins Digital Island patent injunction

Customers not affected?

Akamai was granted a permanent injunction against rival Digital Island's content delivery service by a Federal Court in Boston yesterday. In a statement, Akamai welcomed the ruling said Digital Island cannot effectively operate its content delivery service without violating key aspects of a disputed patent. In December last …

Business 2 Jul 2002, 13:06
$200k prize offered for getting Linux to run on Xbox

Legally, that is...

An anonymous donor has offered a total of USS200,000 as prize money for getting Linux to run on Microsoft's Xbox, legally, by the end of this year. The prize money is intended to be awarded in stages as parts of the project, which is being run via the Xbox Linux Project, are completed. Is this for real? According to Michael …

Software 2 Jul 2002, 13:54
CNET sniffs Silicon.com

For sale sign in French

CNET is in talks to buy Silicon Media Group, the European online tech publishing business, for up to £30m, Les Echos reports, by way of the FT. Neither side are talking, the paper reports. No surprise there, and the leak is not particularly surprising - there have been mutterings in the UK about a CNET/Silicon tie-up for a few …

Media 2 Jul 2002, 14:03
Java runs like the clappers on HP Superdome

Bloody great machine, not exactly surprising

HP yesterday claimed a Java performance benchmark record for its flagship Superdome server, beating high-end servers from Sun Microsystems. In a SPECjbb2000 benchmark, a 64-way HP Superdome server with PA-8700+ processors scored 614,538 Java applications per second, narrowly outshining a 104-way Sun Starfire 15K which recorded …

Servers 2 Jul 2002, 15:32
Court freezes lawscot.co.uk, owner claims unfair trial

Scottish Law Society tries to reverse hijack legal portal

The Law Society of Scotland is attempting to reverse hijack the domain www.lawscot.co.uk, claiming that its current owner, Mr Tommy Butler, is "passing off" and wrongly receiving private and confidential emails. Mr Butler and the UK domain arbitrator Nominet have both been served with a 10-page court order, suspending the …

Media 2 Jul 2002, 15:44
Internet privacy campaigner to become MS privacy officer

Bowden and the Beast...

Caspar Bowden, who resigned as director of the Foundation for Internet Policy Research to 'return to industry' earlier this year, is due to pop up at Microsoft this week, our sources inform us. Bowden was involved in establishing the FIPR as a campaigning think tank on Internet and privacy issues, and was heavily involved in …

Media 2 Jul 2002, 15:46
Corporates! Give your PCs to Africa

Here's why

Yesterday we wrote about the real Digital Divide, and we promised to run a charity appeal on behalf of Computer Aid International. We asked for details of other refurb PCs-for-developing countries-charities, and we've received several, which we'll run tomorrow, along with a couple of domestic IT charities, running in the US and …

Personal 2 Jul 2002, 16:09
PDA makers snub Dell handheld plans

What's in it for us?

Dell has been knocked back by three of the four Taiwanese handheld makers lined up to tender for the contract to make its first handheld PDAs. The cut-throat price demanded by Dell left little profit margin, the firms which pulled out of the bid concluded, Digitimes reports. The newswire names High Tech Computer (HTC), Wistron …

Personal 2 Jul 2002, 17:04
Mac users to MS: your Right to Left defence is Upside Down

Letters And get your skates on, Apple

Some, but not too much sympathy for Microsoft Mac boss Kevin Browne from readers wanting Hebrew and Arabic support on the Macintosh. Dear Mr. Kevin Browne, I have just read the correspondence between you and Mr. Andrew Orlowski of the Register concerning the question of supplying Hebrew and Arabic versions of IE and Office, …

Letters 2 Jul 2002, 17:38
Bug puts Unix servers in a BIND

Bindweed

Security watchers are warning that a security flaw affecting Domain Name System servers running Unix could prove difficult to fix. A buffer overflow vulnerability in DNS Resolver Library represents a serious risk to many Unix system using the BIND or BSD resolver libraries, CERT warned last week. It warned that a remote …

Security 2 Jul 2002, 17:45