P2P-Zone - View Single Post - The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition

23-07-01, 08:55 PM

WalkTalker is baking cookies now.. But yet it's time to read now

Flaw gives hackers key to Unix computers

A flaw in widely used Unix software could allow attackers to gain control over computers running Solaris, HP-UX and several versions of Linux, security analysts and the company selling the software warned Monday. SSH Communications Security, a Finnish company, reported Monday that the latest edition of its SSH Secure Shell software, version 3.0.0, released June 21, can let an attacker gain control over some Unix or Linux computers. SSH is software designed to secure the text-based user interface -- or "shell" -- people use to remotely log in to computers and send them commands. SSH checks people's passwords and lets authorized individuals open and use the shell by way of an encrypted communications channel.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01

House pulls Carnivore into the light
A bill requiring federal law-enforcement officials to be more forthright when answering questions about electronic surveillance systems has passed the U.S. House. The bill, which passed by a unanimous voice vote Monday afternoon, would require the attorney general and the FBI director to submit a detailed report on the use of systems including Carnivore and its successor, DCS1000. The surveillance systems let law enforcement intercept electronic transmissions such as e-mail. The bill requires that the federal government reveal in its report the following, among other points: how many times DCS1000 has been used; how the approval process to use it works; and any unauthorized information that has been gathered by the system.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

SirCam worm puts secrets at risk
Like many other worms, SirCam spreads by e-mailing copies of itself to everyone in the infected computer's Microsoft Outlook address book. An added twist with SirCam is that the worm sends a random file from the infected computer's hard drive, potentially sending confidential business data or embarrassing personal information along with the virus. The subject line matches the name of the file being sent. "That's a far more serious consequence for a person or business," Weafer said. "Once a document is gone from your organization, it's gone." Pennsylvania e-mail user Carl Schaad said he had received numerous infected messages by Monday morning, including many with sensitive attachments. "I've already received memos, resumes, job listings and, in one case, a Visa number in a letter written to Amazon.com," he said.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Voice-over-DSL: Once again the talk of the town
One of the technological casualties of the telecommunications collapse is gaining a second wind as companies again look for cheap ways to offer voice services over high-speed Net connections. Voice-over-DSL (VoDSL), which uses a single regular phone wire to offer the equivalent of many phone lines, once teetered on the edge of mainstream technology before falling back into obscurity. At a time when finding investment capital was easy, start-up phone companies touted it as a way to break into the local phone companies' business cheaply and easily. That never happened. The bottom dropped out of the telecommunications market, and the start-up network companies found themselves too busy trying to stay alive to test and offer new technology. But the voice technology appears to be on the cusp of a renaissance.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Microsoft, U.S. say nukes are secure

Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Energy are disputing claims that bugs in Microsoft's database software threatened nuclear security in the United States and Russia. Earlier this month, Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, a nonprofit military research organization based in Washington, D.C., wrote that Russian nuclear scientists last year found a bug in Microsoft's SQL Server database software that threatened the security not only of Russian nuclear weapons materials, but also of U.S. nuclear materials. Microsoft executives and Energy Department representatives scoff at the charge, saying Blair is making too much of a trivial matter. They say that the two bugs were never a threat, that no data was ever lost, and that the issues Russia had with the software have been resolved. U.S. nuclear data was never at risk, they say.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Digital copyright tug o' war
The European Union wants desperately to transform its 15 member nations into an "information society" capable of not just competing in, but leading the world economy. But manufacturers of computers, cellular telephones and other electronic equipment say that goal will be impossible to achieve unless the EU's copyright laws are changed. At the core of the debate are "collection societies," powerful private-sector groups authorized by law in most European nations to impose levies on equipment that can be used to copy commercial products. The fees raised by the societies are disbursed among copyright holders as compensation for unauthorized copying of their works. The laws were originally intended to apply to copy machines and tape recorders, but collection societies in several nations have attempted recently to use the laws to impose levies on computers.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...784806,00.html

Net music in a post-Napster world
With Napster and other online threats to major record labels on the ropes, the task of challenging the status quo at a major Net music gathering here fell to one of the industry's biggest profit generators: singer Alanis Morissette. In an incendiary keynote speech at the Jupiter Media Metrix annual Plug-In music conference Monday, the platinum-selling pop star highlighted the shattered promise of the online music revolution, blaming everyone from major record label executives to radio stations and music publishers for their role in stifling the Internet's ability to promote unknown musicians. "The development of the Internet was an option for these artists," Morissette said. "We are now seeing the Internet turned into a bottleneck for creativity." Morissette's remarks underscore how suddenly the tables have turned on start-ups out to challenge entrenched media interests with file sharing. A year ago, the question was not so much whether the labels would shut down Napster, but whether Napster might somehow shut down the labels.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=tp_pr

Napster to name new CEO
Napster is expected to name a new chief executive as early as Tuesday, according to sources close to the company, bringing current CEO Hank Barry's tumultuous term to a close. A Napster representative refused to comment on the impending executive switch, which has been expected for some time. Neither Barry nor his replacement, whose identity was not immediately clear, could be reached for comment late Monday. Barry joined Napster as "interim" head of the company 13 months ago, when venture capitalist firm Hummer Winblad invested $15 million in the burgeoning file-swapping firm. In that time, the company became one of the most familiar names on the Internet and the standard-bearer of what many saw as a digital revolution -- and ultimately the most visible symbol of that revolution's decline.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Adobe: Free the Russian programmer

In the wake of worldwide criticism, Adobe Systems agreed Monday to withdraw from a case charging a 27-year-old Russian programmer with violations of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A day after he gave a speech at the Def Con hacking conference, ElcomSoft employee Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested and charged by the FBI under the criminal provisions of the DMCA, which prohibits the trafficking in software and devices that break the informational locks on digital content. Sklyarov is one of the authors of a program known as the Advanced eBook Processor that strips the copy protection from Adobe's eBook format and converts the files to unprotected PDF format. A conviction could yield five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Senator calls for hearings on Windows XP
A Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday said he will call for congressional hearings into Microsoft's "anticompetitive practices." Sen. Charles Schumer, of New York, issued a statement saying he will hold a press conference on Tuesday to call for committee hearings to investigate Microsoft and "demand that Windows XP allow users to choose their media player, messenger service and other applications instead of being forced to use Microsoft applications." The statement said Schumer will "discuss the possibility of enjoining the release of Windows XP," the upcoming version of the PC operating system. It says he has written a letter to Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer demanding changes to Windows XP, which is scheduled for release in October.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd

AOL files "open" messaging plans with FCC
America Online says it will test a new system later this summer that would allow users of its popular instant messaging service to communicate with users of other products, like Microsoft's MSN Messenger. AOL, the nation's largest Internet provider, said it's almost finished developing the technology that would allow its messaging services to operate with those offered by other industry players. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, the company laid out the steps it has taken to reach this goal. The company has selected a standard, developed new customer software, and created systems that enable different services to talk to one another.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd

Siemens offers mobile music in a flash
No. 3 handset maker Siemens on Monday started selling a device designed to quickly load music or text files into mobile phones via flash memory cards. Siemens, a German electronics giant, has built a phone that doubles as an MP3 player. But instead of storing the music on the phone, which has very sparse memory, the music is kept on a flash memory card that is popped into the phone like a floppy disk is popped into a personal computer. These cards, which provide removable storage for many devices, can store up to 45 minutes of music, but can take several minutes to prepare. Using current methods, owners of these high-end handsets must connect their phones to a computer to transfer data, even if their phone has a flash memory card.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=mn_hd

A Library to End All Libraries
Record companies have fought digital distribution of music with every weapon at their disposal. They've won a series of tactical victories, but what do you gain if you win a war against your own customers? The record producers might want to take a page from stodgy old book publishers, who are quietly building a system to distribute digital text, which could help see to it that owners of that text get paid for its use. Along the way, publishers are developing a system for locating and retrieving material on the Web -- especially the sort of copyright works now found mostly in libraries.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...0/b3742031.htm

Citizen Hacker: The Joy of Dedicated Play
To the ordinary ear, the word "hacker" is hardly a complimentary one. It makes most people think of geeky teenage boys breaking into corporate and federal computers when they ought to be playing sports or chasing girls. It also conjures images of a new type of terrorist capable of wreaking international havoc with a few devastatingly well-placed keystrokes. But these are popular misconceptions of the term, which any computer programmer will tell you really refers to people who just love to play with their machines. As Eric Raymond, a well-known hacker, defines it in his oft-cited Jargon File, a hacker is "a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary." Those other guys, the guys who give real hackers a bad name, are more properly known as "crackers."
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/a...4&homepage=yes

More news later on... yippie !!

23-07-01, 08:55 PM	#1
netcoco Posts: n/a	The Newspaper Shop -- Monday edition WalkTalker is baking cookies now.. But yet it's time to read now Flaw gives hackers key to Unix computers A flaw in widely used Unix software could allow attackers to gain control over computers running Solaris, HP-UX and several versions of Linux, security analysts and the company selling the software warned Monday. SSH Communications Security, a Finnish company, reported Monday that the latest edition of its SSH Secure Shell software, version 3.0.0, released June 21, can let an attacker gain control over some Unix or Linux computers. SSH is software designed to secure the text-based user interface -- or "shell" -- people use to remotely log in to computers and send them commands. SSH checks people's passwords and lets authorized individuals open and use the shell by way of an encrypted communications channel. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01 House pulls Carnivore into the light A bill requiring federal law-enforcement officials to be more forthright when answering questions about electronic surveillance systems has passed the U.S. House. The bill, which passed by a unanimous voice vote Monday afternoon, would require the attorney general and the FBI director to submit a detailed report on the use of systems including Carnivore and its successor, DCS1000. The surveillance systems let law enforcement intercept electronic transmissions such as e-mail. The bill requires that the federal government reveal in its report the following, among other points: how many times DCS1000 has been used; how the approval process to use it works; and any unauthorized information that has been gathered by the system. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02 SirCam worm puts secrets at risk Like many other worms, SirCam spreads by e-mailing copies of itself to everyone in the infected computer's Microsoft Outlook address book. An added twist with SirCam is that the worm sends a random file from the infected computer's hard drive, potentially sending confidential business data or embarrassing personal information along with the virus. The subject line matches the name of the file being sent. "That's a far more serious consequence for a person or business," Weafer said. "Once a document is gone from your organization, it's gone." Pennsylvania e-mail user Carl Schaad said he had received numerous infected messages by Monday morning, including many with sensitive attachments. "I've already received memos, resumes, job listings and, in one case, a Visa number in a letter written to Amazon.com," he said. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02 Voice-over-DSL: Once again the talk of the town One of the technological casualties of the telecommunications collapse is gaining a second wind as companies again look for cheap ways to offer voice services over high-speed Net connections. Voice-over-DSL (VoDSL), which uses a single regular phone wire to offer the equivalent of many phone lines, once teetered on the edge of mainstream technology before falling back into obscurity. At a time when finding investment capital was easy, start-up phone companies touted it as a way to break into the local phone companies' business cheaply and easily. That never happened. The bottom dropped out of the telecommunications market, and the start-up network companies found themselves too busy trying to stay alive to test and offer new technology. But the voice technology appears to be on the cusp of a renaissance. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02 Microsoft, U.S. say nukes are secure Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Energy are disputing claims that bugs in Microsoft's database software threatened nuclear security in the United States and Russia. Earlier this month, Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, a nonprofit military research organization based in Washington, D.C., wrote that Russian nuclear scientists last year found a bug in Microsoft's SQL Server database software that threatened the security not only of Russian nuclear weapons materials, but also of U.S. nuclear materials. Microsoft executives and Energy Department representatives scoff at the charge, saying Blair is making too much of a trivial matter. They say that the two bugs were never a threat, that no data was ever lost, and that the issues Russia had with the software have been resolved. U.S. nuclear data was never at risk, they say. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02 Digital copyright tug o' war The European Union wants desperately to transform its 15 member nations into an "information society" capable of not just competing in, but leading the world economy. But manufacturers of computers, cellular telephones and other electronic equipment say that goal will be impossible to achieve unless the EU's copyright laws are changed. At the core of the debate are "collection societies," powerful private-sector groups authorized by law in most European nations to impose levies on equipment that can be used to copy commercial products. The fees raised by the societies are disbursed among copyright holders as compensation for unauthorized copying of their works. The laws were originally intended to apply to copy machines and tape recorders, but collection societies in several nations have attempted recently to use the laws to impose levies on computers. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...784806,00.html Net music in a post-Napster world With Napster and other online threats to major record labels on the ropes, the task of challenging the status quo at a major Net music gathering here fell to one of the industry's biggest profit generators: singer Alanis Morissette. In an incendiary keynote speech at the Jupiter Media Metrix annual Plug-In music conference Monday, the platinum-selling pop star highlighted the shattered promise of the online music revolution, blaming everyone from major record label executives to radio stations and music publishers for their role in stifling the Internet's ability to promote unknown musicians. "The development of the Internet was an option for these artists," Morissette said. "We are now seeing the Internet turned into a bottleneck for creativity." Morissette's remarks underscore how suddenly the tables have turned on start-ups out to challenge entrenched media interests with file sharing. A year ago, the question was not so much whether the labels would shut down Napster, but whether Napster might somehow shut down the labels. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=tp_pr Napster to name new CEO Napster is expected to name a new chief executive as early as Tuesday, according to sources close to the company, bringing current CEO Hank Barry's tumultuous term to a close. A Napster representative refused to comment on the impending executive switch, which has been expected for some time. Neither Barry nor his replacement, whose identity was not immediately clear, could be reached for comment late Monday. Barry joined Napster as "interim" head of the company 13 months ago, when venture capitalist firm Hummer Winblad invested $15 million in the burgeoning file-swapping firm. In that time, the company became one of the most familiar names on the Internet and the standard-bearer of what many saw as a digital revolution -- and ultimately the most visible symbol of that revolution's decline. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd Adobe: Free the Russian programmer In the wake of worldwide criticism, Adobe Systems agreed Monday to withdraw from a case charging a 27-year-old Russian programmer with violations of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A day after he gave a speech at the Def Con hacking conference, ElcomSoft employee Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested and charged by the FBI under the criminal provisions of the DMCA, which prohibits the trafficking in software and devices that break the informational locks on digital content. Sklyarov is one of the authors of a program known as the Advanced eBook Processor that strips the copy protection from Adobe's eBook format and converts the files to unprotected PDF format. A conviction could yield five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd Senator calls for hearings on Windows XP A Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday said he will call for congressional hearings into Microsoft's "anticompetitive practices." Sen. Charles Schumer, of New York, issued a statement saying he will hold a press conference on Tuesday to call for committee hearings to investigate Microsoft and "demand that Windows XP allow users to choose their media player, messenger service and other applications instead of being forced to use Microsoft applications." The statement said Schumer will "discuss the possibility of enjoining the release of Windows XP," the upcoming version of the PC operating system. It says he has written a letter to Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer demanding changes to Windows XP, which is scheduled for release in October. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd AOL files "open" messaging plans with FCC America Online says it will test a new system later this summer that would allow users of its popular instant messaging service to communicate with users of other products, like Microsoft's MSN Messenger. AOL, the nation's largest Internet provider, said it's almost finished developing the technology that would allow its messaging services to operate with those offered by other industry players. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, the company laid out the steps it has taken to reach this goal. The company has selected a standard, developed new customer software, and created systems that enable different services to talk to one another. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd Siemens offers mobile music in a flash No. 3 handset maker Siemens on Monday started selling a device designed to quickly load music or text files into mobile phones via flash memory cards. Siemens, a German electronics giant, has built a phone that doubles as an MP3 player. But instead of storing the music on the phone, which has very sparse memory, the music is kept on a flash memory card that is popped into the phone like a floppy disk is popped into a personal computer. These cards, which provide removable storage for many devices, can store up to 45 minutes of music, but can take several minutes to prepare. Using current methods, owners of these high-end handsets must connect their phones to a computer to transfer data, even if their phone has a flash memory card. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=mn_hd A Library to End All Libraries Record companies have fought digital distribution of music with every weapon at their disposal. They've won a series of tactical victories, but what do you gain if you win a war against your own customers? The record producers might want to take a page from stodgy old book publishers, who are quietly building a system to distribute digital text, which could help see to it that owners of that text get paid for its use. Along the way, publishers are developing a system for locating and retrieving material on the Web -- especially the sort of copyright works now found mostly in libraries. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...0/b3742031.htm Citizen Hacker: The Joy of Dedicated Play To the ordinary ear, the word "hacker" is hardly a complimentary one. It makes most people think of geeky teenage boys breaking into corporate and federal computers when they ought to be playing sports or chasing girls. It also conjures images of a new type of terrorist capable of wreaking international havoc with a few devastatingly well-placed keystrokes. But these are popular misconceptions of the term, which any computer programmer will tell you really refers to people who just love to play with their machines. As Eric Raymond, a well-known hacker, defines it in his oft-cited Jargon File, a hacker is "a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary." Those other guys, the guys who give real hackers a bad name, are more properly known as "crackers." http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/a...4&homepage=yes More news later on... yippie !!