eEye Digital Security’s Research Team has released a workaround for the vulnerability of IE as a temporary measure for users until Microsoft issues a patch. This workaround is not meant to replace the forthcoming Microsoft patch, rather it is intended as a temporary protection against this flaw. Organizations should only install this patch if they are not able to disable Active Scripting as a means of mitigation.

The patch may be downloaded here.

A Texas lawyer has lost a patent lawsuit over antipiracy technology embedded in Microsoft’s product activation program.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed a district court’s decision, which said that Microsoft did not infringe on Kenneth Nash’s patent for detecting pirated software by assigning each program a unique ID and verifying it over the Internet.

Walter Brookhart, an attorney for Microsoft, told the panel that the product activation program and Nash’s invention are “fundamentally different.” Microsoft’s program is an “upfront, in-your-face system,” he said, which will not let users proceed past an initial screen unless they activate the software in question via e-mail or telephone or postpone until the grace period runs out.

Source: News.com

VoIP company Skype is the target of an interesting lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California. Filed by Streamcast, makers of the once-popular Morpheus file-sharing software, the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) lawsuit centers around the FastTrack peer-to-peer technology that powered both Morpheus and Kazaa.

RICO is most often associated with organized crime, but companies are sometimes the targets of RICO actions. Most notably, the RIAA was hit with a RICO lawsuit last October by a woman who claims she was mistakenly accused of file-sharing by the recording industry group.

Streamcast says that the technology used in Skype is the same FastTrack technology that was used in Morpheus and Kazaa. More importantly, the company claims that it had the right of first refusal to purchase the technology before it was redirected to Sharman Networks. Streamcast is also alleging that the FastTrack technology has remained under the control of the creators of FastTrack, Zennström and Friis the entire time.

Source: arstechnica

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has published three wireless-related patents filed by Google employees as the search giant seeks to delve deeper into the wireless market.

The patents, filed by Google employees Wesley Chan, Shioupyn Shen and former Google product management director Georges Harik, propose lowering the cost of wireless access by offsetting the costs via advertisements on the service.

Patent application No. 20060058019 seeks to develop a system for dynamically modifying the appearance of browser screens on a client device when connecting to a wireless access point. Under the patent, the browser’s appearance would be modified to reflect the brand associated with the wireless access-point provider.

The two other patents, No. 20060059044 and No. 20060059043, cover ads based on wireless access points and wireless access at a reduced rate, respectively.

Source: News.com

A California man says the RIAA’s so-called Clean Slate program is “hollow and deceptive”.

Eric Parke is suing the association, saying its offer is designed to get people to incriminate themselves and provide the RIAA “and others” with “admissions” through which they could land in court, in spite of having signed the RIAA affidavit.

“The RIAA describes the program as ‘Clean Slate’ but yet does not promise to destroy any data or evidence collected on members of the general public who submit affidavits under the ‘program’ leaving the ’slate’ anything but ‘clean’ for those Copyright owners or Government prosecutors who subpoena such information from the RIAA. This lawsuit seeks a remedy to stop the RIAA from engaging in unlawful, misleading, and fraudulent business practices including advertising an ‘Amnesty Program’ that does not provide real amnesty from lawsuit and a ‘Clean Slate Program’ that does not provide a real ‘clean slate’.”

Source: p2pnet.net

The Federal Reserve on Monday launched a Web page geared just for youngsters from 11 years of age to 14.

A cartoon of a smart-looking eagle - with really big talons - is tour guide of sorts for the site, http://www.federalreserve.gov/kids , which offers a dose of Fed history.

Source: AP

Online music sales will grow rapidly over the next five years, although traditional music sales will still make up almost two thirds of revenues in 2011, a survey by market researcher Forrester said on Monday.

The study forecast a 30 percent decline in European sales of traditional music formats like CDs and DVDs, but music downloads on the web from shops like iTunes Music Store from Apple will fill the gap.

The shift to online music will mean more sales of single tracks rather than whole albums, Forrester said.

Source: Reuters

Microsoft is for the first time encouraging people to give public feedback on Internet Explorer, with the creation of a bug database for the next version of its browser, the IE 7 beta.

The company admitted that customers have often asked why it doesn’t have a public bug database, something that is standard practice for open-source projects such as Mozilla’s Firefox browser.

The bug database is accessible from the Microsoft Connect site and can be accessed by anyone that has a Microsoft Passport account. Security bugs and problems with earlier versions of IE should not be logged in the database.

Source: News.com

Microsoft will step up its assault on Adobe Systems’ customer base with the release early next year of its Expression line of design and development software.

The three-product Expression suite, aimed at graphics designers and illustrators, will be available early next year–about 60 to 90 days after Windows Vista ships, said Forest Key, director of product management for Microsoft Expression designer tools.

Key also said the first version, or community technology preview, of Expression Web Designer will be available in June. That product is for building Web sites with JavaScript and other Web technologies.

Source: News.com

Did you know that Google has its own job search engine?

Google base is the catch all Google’s database where people can post anything they like, from items to sell, thru job posting. Google base has a search engine that scans the posting that people submit, but it also scans the web for items in that category.

Much like other job search engines such as Indeed.com and alljobsearch, Google find job postings from GoogleBase and from job posting sites who use GoogleBase to upload their job postings.

Searching for jobs on GoogeBase will result also hits from other job sites. Google’s job search engine lets you filter your search by keywords, distance from location, industry, job function, job type and employment.

The results of a job search will be displayed along side with a local map that points the job locations.

So next time you are in the market for a new position, don’t forget GoogleBase, you might find some “secret” positions.

Full discloser: Aviran Mordo developed parts of Indeed.com search engine.

Microsoft asked to join the INCITS/V1 Technical Committee on March 15. This committee is responsible for reconciling the votes that are cast by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) over the acceptance of the OpenDocument format.

The Office Open XML file formats will be supported by the upcoming late-running version of Microsoft’s office productivity suite, Office 2007. OpenDocument is already supported by a number of productivity applications including the open-source office suite OpenOffice 2.0 and Sun’s StarOffice 8.

Source: News.com

Panda has innovative anti-rootkit technology to combat the silent epidemic of targeted attacks and cybercrime. Panda’s security solutions against viruses, spyware, hacking tools, etc., Panda Titanium 2006 Antivirus + Antispyware and Panda Platinum 2006 Internet Security, now include a new anti-rootkit technology that scans and detects suspicious processes hidden in memory. This technique is frequently used by rootkits, programs used to hide malicious code. This malicious tool enables cybercrime, viruses and Trojans to remain undetected by antivirus solutions.

All users of Panda Titanium and Platinum 2006 products will receive the free software update which includes the anti-rootkit technology.