Thursday Throwdown

All the week's news in one convenient package - cuz I've been too lazy to do the news all week. It's Towel Day. Douglas Adams passed away on this day three years ago.

1. eEye is at it again. April 19 the firm discovered four serious flaws that occur in almost all Symantec security products. Symantec is offering a comprehensive patch and strongly encouraging its customers to update immediately (in most cases running Live Update is sufficient). It typically takes less than a day for worm authors to capitalize on such holes once publicized. The holes, which occur in the symdns driver, allow ring 0 access to code, even when all firewall ports are filtered and all intrusion rules are set (thanks to a separate bug there).
2. Google'sAdSense will offer banner ads for those that want them. I'm sticking with the plain old text version. Still no graphics on the main Google site, however. The company has also launched the second beta of its Google Groups site.
3. There have been five more Sasser arrests this week, but the German police say it's not a gang, just a loosely knit collection of teens and 20-somethings who share code with each other. Meanwhile they're calling the original suspect, 18-year-old Sven J., a "bottom-feeding hacker" who is responsible for all 28 strains of Sasser and Netsky. In his confession Sven said he originally intended to create an anti-virus worm but something went wrong.
4. The US House of Representatives is considering modifications to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) but the movie industry is crying foul. Republican Representative John Doolittle waved his iPod around and said he didn't understand when he sponsored the DMCA that it would limit what he could do with his music. "We went way overboard," he said. "It needs to be corrected."
5. The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill Wednesday that would outlaw "upskirt" pictures. The Video Voyeurism Prevention Act would prohibit taking covert pictures in any place where people had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Senate passed the bill last year.
6. A Salinas, California High School has banned camera phones from classes after catching a student using one to cheat on a math exam. Last year, six University of Maryland students admitted to cheating on an accounting exam by using SMS messaging to get the answers from their friends.
7. Wi-Fi is susceptible to a denial-of-service attack according to AUSCERT at the University of Queensland in Australia. A vulnerability in the 802.11 spec could allow someone with a PDA to disrupt an entire wireless network. No patch is possible because the problem lies in the fundamental spec for 802.11.
8. Spammer OptInRealBig won a temporary injunction Monday against SpamCop, prohibiting the spam fighting site from reporting spammers to ISPs. The judgement was issued ex parte because SpamCop had not yet files a response. Once the court heard from SpamCop's parent IronPort it rescinded the order.
9. Intel released the 90 nanometer version of the Pentium M this week, code named Dothan, a year late. The small die should further improve the M's already excellent power usage. Its 2 meg L2 cache should speed it up condsiderably. Reviews available at Tom's Hardware and elsewhere.

Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.

Monday Merry Mausoleum

The live transit of Venus webcast from down under begins tonight. Miss it and you'll have to wait until 2012. The first network color TV broadcast happened on this day in 1953. Ford began designing the Edsel in 1954. Before Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, there was the $64,000 Question. It debuted on this day in 1955. Happy birthday Tom Jones and Prince.

1. Give up your CrackBerry? You might have to. The US Court of Appeals hears arguments today that Research in Motion, BlackBerry's Canadian parent, violated US patents. The plaintiff, NTP, seeks to bar the popular little wireless e-mail devices in the US. Fortunately I lost mine in a cab years ago and I've already recovered from the withdrawal.
2. Steve Jobs is California's richest CEO, despite only getting $1/year in salary. Jobs received $74.75 million in stock grants last year.
3. Apple is expected to announce the launch of iTunes Europe on June 15.
4. Pictures of Apple's next G5 desktop have leaked out but no word on when it will ship. The next big Apple event is the Worldwide Developer's Conference June 28.
5. Pop-ups are back. According to CNET News, advertisers have figured out how to get around the popular Google Toolbar and its pop-up blocking. Other third party pop-up blockers are also less effective. I haven't noticed any problems with browser based blockers in Mozilla, Firefox, and Safari, however.
6. Cisco has released a patch for the Linksys WRTS54G 802.11g wireless router. The box has a flaw which gives an attacker access to the routers configuration page without a password. If you're using a WRTS54G make sure your router's firewall is turned on or download the patch from Cisco.

Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.

Tuesday to Toronto

I'm off to Toronto to visit TechTV Canada and my buddy John Donabie. But first, these stories... Ice cream was first sold in New York on this day in 1786. Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867. The Source, the first public online service, opened for business in 1979.

1. Something else to blame Microsoft for. According to Sandvine, 80% of all spam comes from Windows computers that have been infected by trojan horse viruses like SoBig and Migmaf.
2. Apple posted a new security update yesterday that fixes the URI vulnerability discovered in Mac OS X last month. You can uninstall Paranoid Android now.
3. Apple also announced a smaller version of its Airport 802.11g wireless networking base station yesterday. The $129 Airport Express plugs directly into the wall and includes a mini-jack for your stereo so it can play back shared iTunes.
4. Buy a Big Mac, get a song. Starting today you get a free song from Sony's Connect music service with every Big Mac Extra Value Meal you buy at participating McDonald's. The Big Mac Meal Tracks promotion will run through July. Wasn't this supposed to be an iTunes promotion originally?

Monday's Mardi Gras

The Cannes Film Festival launched on this day in 1946. JFK proposed a joint moon mission with the Russkies in 1963. Happy birthday Alexander the Great, Sophia Loren, and Dr. Joyce Brothers!

• Attacks on Windows PCs jumped sharply in the first six months of this year, with 1,237 new vulnerabilities, and 4,496 new Windows viruses discovered. According to the Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec, the number of monitored bot networks jumped from 2,000 to 30,000. Apparently virus authors are selling access to the bots to spammers. Each botted network ran an average of 2,000 machines, although the biggest bot network controlled 400,000 owned boxes. 50% of the infected machines were running within the networks of Fortune 500 companies.
• Write a bug, get a job. The kid who is currently on trial for writing the Sasser worm, and is widely believed to have created the Netsky virus, has been offered a job at Securepoint. The company says it will train 18-year-old Sven Jaschan to be a security programmer. Jaschan is thought to be responsible for 70% of all the virus infections this year. He is facing up to five years in prison if convicted.
• Microsoft is planning to release the source code for parts of Office to more than 30 world governments to reassure them over security. It's not quite open source, but we'll all benefit from someone else looking at the code.
• Arizona Senator John McCain has proposed a law that would require TV broadcasters to shift to digital by 2009. The bill earmarks $1 billion to help low income consumers buy digital converters. FCC regulations mandate the shift to all digital broadcasting when 85% of a market can receive digital signals. The commission is considering including cable and satellite services in that mix, which would qualify most of the country today. The Feds are in a hurry to reclaim the low frequency spectrum currently occupied by broadcast television for what promises to be a very lucrative resale.
• eMusic, one of the original legal music sites, is relaunching Wednesday. The site will focus on indy artists. The site will also feature recorded music from 150 live shows each month. Subscriptions to the site will cost $10 for 40 songs a month, 65 songs for $15, or 90 songs for $20.
• Giving away 276 Pontiac G6 automobiles on Oprah last week has driven a lot of web traffic. Oprah's site spiked an 864% increase the day after, and Pontiac jumped 636%.
• Speaking of giveaways, Via is releasing open source disk scrubbing software that takes advantage of a hardware random number generator built into the company's microprocessors. Tru-Delete is free and will run on any PC, but runs faster on a Via based PC. (Good thing because no other software does.)
• Check your bike lock. Turns out the famous Kryptonite U-lock can be hacked with a ballpoint pen. The hollow shaft of a Bic pen can defeat the tubular cylinders used in some Kryptonite locks, including the Evolution and KryptoLok series. The New York series is safe.

Listen in tomorrow at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.

Wednesday's Whispered Innuendos

Happy birthday Bilbo! President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on this day in 1863. The US's first automobile was built in 1893. Today's news includes a cell phone that detects halitosis and city wide Wi-Fi for Philly...

• The gaming wars heat up. Yesterday Nintendo announced pricing and availability for its successor to the best selling game machine of all time, the Gameboy. As expected the Nintendo DS will go on sale in the US November 21 for $149 list. Meanwhile, Sony has announced that it will start selling a slimmed down PS/2 for the same price starting November 1. The new PS/2 is one inch thick and weighs just a pound. The Sony hand-held isn't going on-sale until this spring.
• Silicon.com is reporting speculation that Google might be developing yet another browser. (Do we really need another?) The company registered gbrowser.com in April, has hired away key developers from the Internet Explorer team, and hosted last month's Mozilla Developer Day.
• The ACLU and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse say Governer Schwarzeneggar should veto a California anti-spyware bill because it's impossible to enforce and offers no serious penalties to spyware vendors.
• Philadelphia has announced plans to turn the city into the world's largest Wi-Fi hotspot. The mesh network would use street lights and thousands of antennas to light up 135 square miles at a cost of $7-10 million. Wonder how Comcast feels about the city offering free broadband?
• Warer Brothers has agreed to participate in the Netflix/Tivo broadband movie trial. Must be because they know the Tivo is unhackable.
• Siemans is developing a new cell phone that will tell you when you have bad breath. But you won't be able to use it in some Mexican churches. They're using telephone jamming systems developed by former Israeli military researchers. Maybe Kevin Spacey will buy a few jammers for the Old Vic - the gadget loving movie star has declared it a cell phone free zone. Reminds me of the time I was in a Broadway show and Aida Turturro's cell phone rang endlessly. I got the distinct feeling she enjoyed the attention.