A security flaw has been found in the default installation process for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Outlook and Outlook Express, according to eEye Digital Security.

A common thread with these applications is the potential for a buffer overflow, which in turn could allow an attacker to gain access to users’ systems remotely, said Mike Puterbaugh, eEye’s senior director of product marketing.

eEye, which issued an announcement about the problem late last week, noted that systems at risk include those running Windows XP with Service Pack 0 or 1 and Windows 2000. The security specialist noted that it is still conducting reviews of the flaw and could find that other versions of the operating system are affected.

Microsoft is unaware of any attacks involving the reported vulnerability or any customers who have been affected, a company representative said.

Currently, eEye is readying 12 vulnerability advisories for publication after patches or workarounds are released by vendors. Of these, nine are related to Microsoft.

Source: News.com

The free software foundation said on Tuesday it would start adapting rules for development and use of free software by including penalties against those who patent software or use anti-piracy technology.

Free software needs to be licensed under specific rules to guarantee that it can be freely studied, copied, modified, reused, shared and redistributed. The Linux operating system kernel is one of the best known examples of free software.

The license needs to be adapted to a world in which e-commerce firms like Amazon.com have patented ’one click ordering’ which prevents software makers from freely using such a feature in their programs, said the president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, Georg Greve.

“Software patents are clearly a menace to society and innovation. We like this to be more explicit,�? Greve said.

The idea is that if someone uses software patents against free software, that company or person loses the right to distribute that particular program and use it in their product, he added.

Such a clause may have some impact, because many commercial companies have benefited from free software. The GPL is employed by tens of thousands of software projects, and companies and governments around the world use it in their software or services.

Source: MSNBC

Samsung Electronics is set to lure thrifty users with the world’s first notebook to come with a reusable monitor.

The Korean giant unveiled its latest innovation, the M70, at IFA Berlin 2005 on Friday and said that its unique design will compete with both notebooks and desktops thanks to a mammoth 19in detachable monitor.

The M70’s LCD monitor can be placed in a dock to give the appearance of a conventional desktop PC, but Samsung’s real selling point is that the M70 will allow users to upgrade with minimum expense. Owners will simply need to replace the main body rather than the entire device - so they don’t have to fork out for a screen that they don’t necessarily need to upgrade.

Source: pcpro

Yahoo! is hosting thousands of fraudulent websites that have domain names containing the words “bank”, “PayPal” or “eBay”, according to a leading anti-spam group Spamhaus.

Spamhaus claims Yahoo! is hosting almost 5,000 domain names using these words, many of which are linked to phishing scams.

Richard Cox, CIO at Spamhaus, said: “They are hosted on Yahoo! I just took three hot words, but there are dozens of others including misspellings. They are mostly phishing websites,w hich shows that the situation is out of control.”

Spamhaus, a non-profit organisation, currently has around 20 entries relating to Yahoo! on its block list SBL.

Cox said that Spamhaus had written to Yahoo! about a number of cases, but received no replies.

Source: Silicon.com

When a pervert exposed himself on a Manhattan subway last week, Thao Nguyen reached for her secret weapon - her camera phone.

The quick-thinking 22-year-old snapped a shot of the smirking sicko, took it to cops and then posted it on the Internet.

After her campaign to nail the flasher raced through cyberspaceand and also made it to the printed press the hunt was too wide and the pervert finally turned himself in to the police.

Manhattan restaurateur Dan Hoyt, 43, hung his head on the way to Central Booking after he was picked out of a lineup by four women and charged with public lewdness.

“Well he finally turned himself in and hopefully he will get some therapy or counseling to help him stop flashing people.” said Nguyen, “We caught this guy because of you folks. Whether or not you were supportive, I really appreciate everyone who took the time to pass around the image and the story. If it weren’t for you folks, then this man would probably still be out there. I always wanted to make a difference in the world but I didn’t think it would be through this way.”

Symantec has issued a patch for a vulnerability in its corporate antivirus software that could allow an unauthorized person to access a company’s servers.

The flaw, in version 9 of its AntiVirus Corporate Edition product, exposes the server login name and password used by the administrator who authorizes updates to the software, Symantec says.

The AntiVirus product comes with a LiveUpdate client that can be set to check for product updates. After the client receives the updates from the LiveUpdate server, information about the transaction is stored in a local log file.

The LiveUpdate server login and password are included in that log file as clear text, Symantec says.

Source: PCWorld

Samsung Electronics Co. will bring out a DVD machine next year capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD if backers of the rival standards fail to agree on a unified format, a newspaper said.

Competition between the two camps has hampered the launch of the next generation of optical disks, which will have greater capacity and higher definition, as movie studios hesitate to commit to printing disks on either standard.

Samsung’s head of consumer electronics, Choi Gee-sung, told the Financial Times Deutschland: “We would welcome a unified standard but if this doesn’t come, which looks likely, we’ll bring a unified solution to market.”

Source: Reuters

Japanese automaker Toyota has developed a safety technology that it says will keep the driver’s eyes on the road.

An image-processing computer system developed by Toyota Motor Corp. and a Toyota affiliate uses a camera near the steering wheel to detect when the driver stops looking straight ahead.

The system flashes a light on the dashboard display and emits a beeping noise when the eyes start to wander. If the driver still doesn’t respond, brakes kick in, Toyota said Tuesday.

The feature will be offered in Lexus luxury models set to be sold in Japan in spring next year. Toyota won’t comment on whether it will be offered in models sold abroad, company spokeswoman Keiko Nakajima said.

Research shows that most accidents happen because the driver isn’t paying attention, according to Toyota.

Source: AP

Borland Software on Tuesday will announce an upgrade to its JBuilder IDE. But the future of the commercial IDE market is clouded, with Eclipse providing base technologies for free.

Shipping in mid-September, Borland JBuilder 2006 boasts peer-to-peer developer collaboration, new Java standards support and productivity enhancements. But the company, like rival BEA Systems, intends to base future versions of its IDE on the Eclipse platform, which features an IDE itself.

Officials at Borland are confident of JBuilder’s ability to maintain market presence by offering features that Eclipse doesn’t yet have, such as visual designers and advanced re-factoring. The officials acknowledge that Eclipse will continue to add new capabilities. However, “Borland is always focused higher and higher” when it comes to feature differentiation, said Rob Cheng, Borland’s director of product marketing for developer solutions.

Borland officials are touting the new features in JBuilder 2006, particularly peer-to-peer collaboration. “What this virtually enables is the notion of peer-to-peer programming,�? letting developers collaborate around the world, Cheng said. Developers can share source code securely in JBuilder 2006.

J2EE 1.4 Web services support is featured in JBuilder 2006, as is support for a variety of application servers including JBoss 4.0.x and 3.2, and Tomcat 5.5.9 and 4.2.

Productivity enhancements include new refactorings, more search options and improved error navigation, according to Borland. Refactoring options now include functions such as Extract Inner, which extracts an inner class to the same file or to a new file in the package.

Active Difference Editing in JBuilder 2006 reveals source changes in-line within the editor and boosts collaborative programming, the company said.

Borland Optimizeit, which provides for application performance management and code quality, has been integrated into JBuilder 2006. Optimizeit 2006 is being introduced as well, with profiling and new batch-mode testing features.

JBuilder 2006 will be available in three editions. The Enterprise Edition, which features the peer-to-peer functions, visual designers, code quality tools and other enterprise-level capabilities, costs $3,500 per developer. The Developer Edition, which offers lower-level visual editors, costs $500 per seat. The free Foundation edition provides code and IDE productivity features but lacks the more enterprise-related functions.

Source: InfoWorld