Freaky_Friday wrote with a link to an InfoWorld article about a teenage kid accessing customer information at AOL. The alleged criminal trespass began late last year, and extended up through early April. According to the article, the guy used some 'off-the-shelf' hacking software he downloaded online to gain access to, and then transmit information from, AOL's systems. "The complaint states that Nieves admitted to investigators that he committed the alleged acts because AOL took away his accounts. 'I accessed their internal accounts and their network and used it to try to get my accounts back,' the defendant is quoted as saying in the complaint. He also admitted to posting photos of his exploits in a photo Web site, according to the complaint ... If the defendant was honest about his motivation in his reported confession, it's safe to assume that he wasn't interested in stealing data for financial gain, [Managing director of technology at FTI Consulting Mark] Rasch said. Still, it'll be interesting to find out what steps AOL is taking if customer data was in fact compromised, he said."

DownTownMT asks: "I work as a Windows administrator in a small company with roughly 180 WinXP/2000 and 30 Win98 machines. Our current method for installing Windows patches is WSUS which works great for the non-98 PC's. However, when installing software, such as Adobe, QuickTime and various other tools, our only method is to manually install it on each machine. What are you sysadmins using to deploy software across all of your machines?"