Attacks that rely on “social engineering” tricks to fool users into visiting malicious Web sites are just as dangerous as any that exploit software vulnerabilities, a Microsoft security researcher argued this week.

According to Matt Braverman, a program manager with Microsoft’s Anti-Malware Technology Team, data from the group’s Malicious Software Removal Tool shows that dupes are as crucial to attackers as bugs.

Source: informationweek

When 11-year-old Jessica Lunsford was kidnapped and murdered last year, Joe Dawson immediately began gathering signatures to enact stricter penalties for registered sex offenders. Now, Dawson is teaming up with a California-based technology firm to introduce the first cell phone that uses the Global Positioning System to alert parents when a child is walking near a sexual predator’s home.

CATS Communication Inc. allows parents to build a “geofence” around every listed child predator that lives within their ZIP code. The phone alerts parents through an e-mail, text message or pager if their child enters that zone, said the company’s vice president, Jon Kudla.

Linked with the Family Watchdog’s national database of registered sex offenders, the phone will update with new zones every time the a new name is added to the database.

Source: AP

While Microsoft’s Windows Hypervisor technology, code-named Viridian and currently under development, will not be ready when Windows “Longhorn” Server ships sometime next year, company officials are optimistic that it will be available “sooner rather than later.”

But they are not yet prepared to say exactly when “sooner” might be, especially in light of the recently announced slips in the release of Windows Vista and Office 2007.

Viridian is technology that will run beneath the operating system and manage resources for multiple virtual machines.

“While Viridian will be delivered after Longhorn Server ships, Longhorn will be virtualization-ready,” Mike Neil, product unit manager for Microsoft’s virtualization technologies, told eWEEK at the annual LinuxWorld Conference here.

Source: eWeek

When it comes to security, the enterprise’s Achilles Heel is instant messaging, and overall, IM-related threats are increasingly dangerous because IM has become nearly ubiquitous in both corporations and the home.

So says the newest report on Internet-related security from Symantec. The most recent Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, release in March, estimates that there were 300 million users of home and enterprise IM programs in 2005, and that AIM, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger each have over 1 billion messages sent per day. The report adds that IM traffic is expected to surpass email traffic by the end of this year.

The greatest IM threat, according to the report, are worms, which made up 91 percent of all malicious IM code in the second half of 2005, a ten percent increase over the 84 percent during the first half of 2005.

But IM threats are not limited to worms. The report found that IM is also being used to propagate other kinds of malicious code and threats. In particularly, it found, IM-related phishing attacks are on the rise.

Source: informationweek

High-tech executives know that patents are a problem. The conventional answer is to blame the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and then to blame Congress for not giving it enough money.

In “Innovation and Its Discontents,” a surprisingly riveting account of what went wrong with the patent system, Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner and Brandeis economist Adam Jaffe show that two congressional decisions made long ago are at the root of today’s problems.

The president of Sony Computer Entertainment France and vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, George Fornay, is talking price when it comes to the PlayStation 3. Fornay said that the PlayStation 3 will sell for between €499 and €599. Fornay acknowledged that the price may seem steep, but he emphasized that that price should be seen as inexpensive when one considers that the console will also play Blu-ray movies. Fornay also confirmed that Sony would be going for a simultaneous launch of the console in November of this year.

Source: arstechnica

Office 2007 is due to be released sometimes on 2007. Office 2007 will have two major changes to the office file format. For the first time Microsoft will have file extensions with more than 3 characters, but more importantly it will move from the well know .doc, .xls and .ppt file extensions for the popular Office documents.
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Microsoft has won its biggest contract to date for the use of its Windows Mobile operating system, in a deal with the U.S. Census Bureau.

The agency has signed up for 500,000 smart phones made by handset manufacturer HTC. They will run Windows Mobile 5.0 and be used to take the 2010 census.

It is a high-tech move for the agency. The bureau had previously used paper and pen to take U.S. citizens’ details, which were then digitized by data entry staff.

Source: News.com

Israel’s Emblaze Ltd. launched a service on Wednesday that allows cellular phone, Palm Pilot and Pocket PC users to receive their e-mails for free, in similar fashion to a Blackberry.

The service is aimed at “executives that do not have or cannot afford a Blackberry, students, moms and dads, (and) friends”, the Israeli company says on the website for its new Emoze.com service.

The service is currently limited to a few cellular phone models from Nokia, Samsung and Motorola cellular phone models and all Microsoft Pocket PC devices. Reifman said he expected more than 80 percent of phones as well as Palm Pilots to be supported within three months.

Emblaze also expects to be able to forward corporate email from Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange in a few months.

Source: Reuters

A US government spokesman has been arrested for trying to seduce a 14-year-old girl online, police said.

Brian Doyle, 55, deputy press secretary for the Department of
Homeland Security, was arrested at his home in a Washington suburb late Tuesday, according to a statement released by the sheriff’s office in Polk County, Florida.

Doyle contacted the girl, whose profile was posted on the Internet, on March 12 and “initiated a sexually explicit conversation with her. She was, in fact, an undercover detective in Polk County.

Source: AFP

Security company McAfee has acquired SiteAdvisor in a move to fortify defenses for people before they browse potentially malicious Web sites.

Boston-based SiteAdvisor informs people conducting Web searches whether their results include sites potentially associated with spyware, adware, spam and browser attacks. The safety ratings are displayed next to the search results with red, yellow or green icons.

Source: News.com

The Israeli minister of information instructed cellular operators in the country to block access to sexual explicit sites from the cellular networks.

The new requirement from the cellular operators causes an outrage of the users and media outlets in Israel saying that this kind of censorship can be only heard of in countries like Iran and China, and should not be in a democratic state like Israel, which respects the freedom of speech of its citizens.

The communication minister’s office stated that these steps are taken to protect minors from being exposed to sexual explicit material with their cell phone.

Partner, one of the cellular companies in Israel asked the Supreme Court last week to overturn this decision.