Weekly security round-up
John McCormick
Published: 31 May 2005 15:50 BST
For Firefox fans (count me in), Internet services company Netcraft has released its anti-phishing toolbar for Firefox — a welcome security feature that Mozilla seems to have left out of an otherwise reasonably solid Firefox.
Open source switch
Over on the open source front, according to a Forbes report, Larry McVoy, chief executive of BitMover — who made waves in the open source world in April over his firm's BitKeeper software — and long-time open source ally of Linus Torvalds, has jumped the open source ship, proclaiming, "Open source as a business model, in isolation, is pretty much unsustainable."
Spam and scams
I received some interesting spam the other day from Harrison Direct on behalf of DeVry University, essentially offering to teach me best practices in IT so I can get ahead. I wonder what they say about spam and HTML-only emails in their courses on e-commerce and security?
Whatever it is they have to say, I don't think I want to hear it. In fact, I'm doing a quick check because I think the message violates the Can-Spam Act — particularly since I've never had the slightest association or contact with DeVry.
Meanwhile, CipherTrust has built an online ZombieMeter that shows how many PCs (probably unknown to their owners) spammers are currently using to spread unsolicited email. In addition, the ZombieMeter also shows any trends and the geographic location.
Encryption: It's not just for security anymore! Reports are emerging about crooks who are using malware to penetrate systems — not to steal data but to encrypt files. They then offer to decrypt the information for a fee. In legal terms, that's what we call extortion.
Bugs on the move
And finally, just when you thought it was safe to get away from the office and go for a nice relaxing drive with no worries about software bugs, the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has received 13 reports of Toyota's Prius gas-electric hybrid cars (2004 and 2005 models) stalling or shutting down at motorway-driving speeds. The problem appears to be a software glitch in the car's complex computer system. Wow, talk about a software crash! To be fair, there have been no reports of injuries associated with this problem, but there have also been no reports about whether this glitch has caused any crashes.
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