21st February 2003 Archive

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Pipex and Eclipse win top Internet ‘Oscars’

Congrats all round

Pipex and Eclipse have scooped the top awards at this year's "Internet Oscars" held in London last night. Pipex won "Best Consumer Broadband Provider" by offering a "good access level price for consumers requiring an all in one package to access the Internet with a high-speed connection". Eclipse walked away with the "Best …

Music and Media 21 Feb 2003, 10:21
Unions fight call centre crossed legs

Crackdown on leaks unacceptable

Britain's bosses are being pressed to treat their staff with respect and allow them sufficient time to take pee breaks. Launching a campaign today the TUC highlights a legal loophole which says that employers have got to provide lavatories for their staff, but don't have to let them go when they want. Call centres - where …

Business 21 Feb 2003, 11:25
Crypto attack against SSL outlined

Risk for email password exchange using OpenSSL, at least

Swiss security researchers have discovered an attack against implementations of the ubiquitous SSL protocol that could potentially compromise email passwords, though not ecommerce transactions. The protocol itself has not been compromised and the weakness only applies to versions of OpenSSL prior to version 0.9.6i and 0.9.7a, …

Security 21 Feb 2003, 12:00
Selling homeland security – how it works

An archive-based approach...

What did you make up in the war on terror, daddy? The Register's recent discovery of the 'approved news' panel on the front page of the US Customs site is already paying dividends. Today, we have an item headed 'On the front lines of Homeland Security' from NPR. Within this piece, you'll note news of "perhaps the biggest arrest …

Music and Media 21 Feb 2003, 12:33
How to get an ATM PIN in 15 guesses

Bank employee fraud just got easier

Cambridge researchers have documented a worrying PIN cracking technique against the hardware security modules commonly used by bank ATMs. Mike Bond and Piotr Zielinski have published a paper detailing how a complex mathematical attack can yield a PIN in an average of 15 guesses. By design, it shouldn't be possible to guess a …

Security 21 Feb 2003, 13:43
Spam is ‘public enemy number one’, says AOL

Talks tough

AOL is kicking butt in a bid to clamp down on spam. Writing to some 27m of its customers in the US the Internet giant explained the steps it was taking to stamp out unsolicited commercial email. It reported that its proprietary anti-spam filtering technology is blocking up to 780m pieces of junk mail a day - an average of 22 …

Music and Media 21 Feb 2003, 15:07
The London charge zone, the DP Act, and MS .NET

It may not entirely work, and its data protection registration looks more dubious by the day

Data Protection Act breaches by London's traffic congestion charge system may be numerous and varied, even if you exclude all of the ones that are committed if Mayor Ken's security ring of steel exists. And a report by one of the many (we presume) journalists who've infiltrated the system suggests a) that it doesn't work to …

Music and Media 21 Feb 2003, 15:29
Poker.com Inc continues fight over ‘hijacked’ URL

Update UDRP arbitrator dismisses case

Poker.com Inc is continuing to pursue "all legal avenues" in a bid to regain control of the domain www.poker.com. In December, the Canada-based company claimed it had been the victim of a "form of technological piracy" after it alleged that the poker.com domain was "hijacked and re-directed without the consent or knowledge of …

Music and Media 21 Feb 2003, 16:50
IBM launches powerful AIX/Linux entry-level server

Benchmarks galore for the p630

IBM today launched what it touts as the world's most powerful entry-level Web server. The 4-way eServer pSeries 630, which features IBM's latest Power4+ processor, has far greater horsepower under the bonnet than competitive servers, IBM boasts. In a benchmark on secure Web serving performance, a 4-way 1.45 GHhz p630 set a …

Servers 21 Feb 2003, 16:52
Oops – Internet credit card Marbles' web site goes MIA

And if that's not enough bad luck, they gave The Reg one...

In one of life's more astonishing pieces of bad luck, the web site of the Internet-oriented Marbles credit card vanished today, just as The Register's new Marbles card and Internet login details arrived. The Marbles card is pitched as being Internet-friendly, in that it allows you to look at your account online and it includes …

Music and Media 21 Feb 2003, 17:16
Unisys boss predicts telco restructuring

Voicemail by MMS is just the first of many changes

The days of dialling-up to retrieve your voicemail are numbered, thanks to audio MMS, says Carlo d'Asaro Biondo, the general manager for communications and media at Unisys EMEA. Delivering voicemail as a free MMS message not only gives a better service, but will save millions of minutes a year on congested voice networks by …

Hardware 21 Feb 2003, 17:43
AOL probes hacker “breach”

Don't panic, just yet

AOL is investigating reports that crackers gained access to its customer database through a combination of cracking and social engineering exploits. The allegation of an extremely serious security breach is published today in Wired. The publication interviewed hackers who claim to have gained full access to Merlin, AOL's latest …

Security 21 Feb 2003, 18:24