Kevin Mitnick once said in his book, The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security:
When trusted employees are deceived, influenced, or manipulated into revealing sensitive information, or performing actions that create a security hole for the attacker to slip through, no technology in the world can protect a business.
In the ongoing format battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the main focus has been on consumer applications, and in particular, the home movie market. This week, in fact, Blockbuster announced plans to increase the availability of Blu-ray discs in its stores. The video rental company said that customers were favoring the Sony-backed format over the Toshiba-sponsored HD-DVD, leaving many quick to suggest that this marks the beginning of the end of the latest format war.
Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos’s global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have welcomed the news that a man has been sentenced to 70 months in prison after phishing credit card information from internet users.
47-year-old Jeffrey Brett Goodin of Azusa, California, has been sent to jail for nearly six years after using several different compromised Earthlink email accounts to send thousands of unsolicited emails posing as AOL’s billing department. The phishing emails directed recipients to bogus payment websites. Goodin was also convicted on a number of other counts including wire fraud, possession of unauthorized credit cards, misuse of the AOL trademark, and attempted witness harassment.
The court heard that it cost Earthlink nearly $1 million to detect and fight the phishing attempt, and he was ordered to pay a total of $1,002,885.58 to victims by US District Judge Christina Snyder. Read more (Sophos)…
Online criminals have launched a widespread Web attack that has turned tens of thousands of legitimate Web sites into weapons, security vendors said Monday.
The attack began late last week and by Monday morning, more than 10,000 Web sites had been compromised, according to security firms Trend Micro Inc. and Websense Inc. Read more (PC World)…
Apple’s Safari may not be rewriting the rules for Web browsing on Windows just yet, but it’s leading the way with one significant change: photographs with better color.
Unlike the prevailing browsers on the Internet–Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox–the Apple browser supports different ways of encoding images that can mean richer, deeper colors. With the beta version of Safari now on Windows, Mac OS X users aren’t the only ones who’ll be able to see the difference.
However, Apple won’t keep that edge for long. Mozilla’s forthcoming Firefox 3 browser, due to ship in beta form this July, likely will include support for richer color, said Vlad Vukicevic, a technical leader at Mozilla and a photo enthusiast. Read more (CNET News)…
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Blockbuster Inc. will rent high-definition DVDs only in the Blu-ray format in 1,450 stores when it expands its high-def offerings next month, dealing a major blow to the rival HD DVD format.
The move, announced Monday, could be the first step in resolving a format war that has kept confused consumers from rushing to buy new DVD players until they can determine which format will dominate the market. Read more (CNN)…
Microsoft said on Monday that it has filed suit against Immersion, a company whose technology adds tactile feedback to joysticks and other controllers.
Immersion had originally sued Microsoft, along with Sony, back in 2002, but the two companies reached a settlement in 2003. Under that deal, Microsoft agreed to pay Immersion $26 million for licensing rights and for a stake in the company. However, Microsoft said Monday that Immersion has not lived up to other terms of that deal, including a provision that requires Immersion to pay Microsoft “based on certain business and IP licensing arrangements.” Read more (GameSpot)…
It was a short entry from The IT Articles that made me realize the power of colors in blogs. The entry tells us the important role of colors in communicating your message online.
The entry also tells us that the color wheel allows us to see groups of colors that are harmonious and those that might clash. Understanding the emotions that these colors represent can greatly help communicate a message with a stronger impact. To begin with, below is a list of common colors and their psychological associations (from the book, The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web):
In less than 2 weeks, Microsoft signed another Linux deal. This time, it’s with Linux desktop distributor Linspire Inc. In the report by BusinessWeek, Microsoft will license instant messaging and digital media technology to Linspire. Because of this, Linspire users will be able to voice-chat with Windows Live Messenger buddies, watch Windows Media video and audio files on open-source media players, and view and create documents using familiar typefaces. Linspire also agreed to set its default Web search engine to MSN Live Search.
Listed below are the other terms of the deal, according to the report:
Windows users should pull up Windows Update today. Microsoft just released 6 patches for the 15 vulnerabilities found in a variety of Windows programs such as Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Windows Vista.
BBC News also gave a tip that the second Tuesday of every month is the date on which Microsoft typically issues security patches for its software programs.
Good news for Web designers and Web developers! Apple has announced the availability of its Web browser, Safari in Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems.
Safari 3 for Windows XP and Windows Vista is in its public beta stages.
Reasons why you’ll love Safari:
Visit the Safari home page for more details.
Download the beta version from the Safari download page (around 8 MB).
