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Privacy

Browser Privacy Test 133

Posted by samzenpus from the which-one-works-best-in-a-frozen-home dept.
lazyforker writes "A NYTimes blog post reports the results of security researcher Kate McKinley's tests of various browsers' (FireFox, Chrome, IE, Safari) privacy protection mechanisms. Specifically she tested their cookie handling. She also examined their handling of Flash's cookies. In summary: Safari on Mac OS X (in the 'private browsing' mode) is not so private ('quirky'). Safari on XP is not private at all. Flash behaves awfully everywhere."
The Courts

Submission + - Why Your e-Books Are No Longer Yours 1

Submitted by
Predictions Market
Predictions Market writes: "Gizmodo has an interesting analysis of the issue of reselling and copying e-books downloaded to Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader and an answer to the fundamental question: Are you buying a crippled license to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying an honest-to-God book? In the fine print that you "agree" to, Amazon and Sony say you just get a license to the e-books — you're not paying to own 'em, in spite of the use of the term "buy." Digital retailers say that the first sale doctrine — which would let you hawk your old Harry Potter hardcovers on eBay — no longer applies. It's a license that you can't sell. But is this claim legal? Just because Sony or Amazon call it a license, that doesn't make it so. "That's a factual question determined by courts," says one lawyer. "Even if a publisher calls it a license, if the transaction actually looks more like a sale, users will retain their right to resell the copy.""
Google

Submission + - Google's IT Infrastructure Secrets

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "The Wall Street Journal has an interesting interview with Douglas Merrill, Google Inc.'s chief information officer on how Google gives their workers the technology they need and keeps them safe without imposing too many restrictions on how they do their job. On Google's IT structure: "Google's model is choice. We let employees choose from a bunch of different machines and different operating systems, and [my support group] supports all of them. It's a little bit less cost-efficient — but on the other hand, I get slightly more productivity from my [Google's] employees." On Security: "The traditional security model is to try to tightly lock down endpoints, and it makes people sleep better at night, but it doesn't actually give them security. We have programs in our infrastructure to watch for strange behavior. This means I don't have to worry about the endpoint as much." On Enterprise Software: "Fifteen years ago, enterprise technology was higher-quality than consumer technology. That's not true anymore. It used to be that you used enterprise technology because you wanted uptime, security and speed. None of those things are as good in enterprise software anymore. The biggest thing to ask is, "When consumer software is useful, how can I use it to get costs out of my environment?"""
The Media

Submission + - Journalists Can't Hide News Anymore 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review comments on the story about the 13-year-old girl who took her own life after making friends with a boy she'd met on MySpace who turned on her. The boy didn't exist. 'He' was the creation of the mother of one of the girl's former friends. But the newspaper didn't name the woman, citing concerns for *her* teen daughter. Bloggers went nuts, and soon uncovered the woman's name, her address, phone number and business registration records and plastered them all over the Web. "The lessons for journalists? First, we can't restrict access to information anymore. The crowd will work together to find whatever we withhold," wrote Niles. "Second, I wonder if that the decision to withhold the other mother's name didn't help enflame the audience, by frustrating it and provoking it to do the work of discovering her identity." Here are links to the original story on the girl's suicide, to one of the bloggers who uncovered the woman's identity, and to another look at the journalistic issues involved in naming names."
Software

Submission + - Obama Pledges Support for Open Document Formats (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "ODF first made the headlines in Massachusetts when presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was its governor. Now, another presidential candidate has pledged his support for them as well. On November 14th, Barack Obama revealed his detailed IT plan for a more open and technically enabled government in a speech at Google's Mountainview campus. In that speech, he said: "It's no coincidence that one of the most secretive Administrations in history has favored special interests and pursued policies that could not stand up to sunlight. As President, I'll change that. I'll put government data online in universally accessible formats." In calling for open formats, Obama has introduced an IT hot potato into the presidential debate that has already riled the waters in multiple state legislatures and been the subject of heavy lobbying by vendors. Whether other candidates in general — and Mitt Romney in particular — will respond in kind or opt to keep their distance remains to be seen."
The Gimp

Submission + - GIMP 2.4 released! (gimp.org)

Submitted by
MrDrBob
MrDrBob writes: "Love it or hate it, version 2.4 of our Marmite-favoured graphics editor has been released, and includes quite a few big changes. The selection tools have been rewritten from scratch, including a new way of selecting things with round corners, as requested by web designers. Better zooming code means that whole lines of your image will no longer disappear when zoomed out, and new colour management code should be welcomed by digital photo artists. The GIMP also includes a new Tango-style icon set, which goes hand-in-hand with the redesigned website. Unfortunately, GEGL integration still isn't anywhere to be found, but perhaps it'll make it in a later release."
Security

Submission + - The new ID theft marketplace: Who's paying for you (cio.com)

Submitted by tpimental
tpimental writes: For about $1000, hackers can subscribe to a new service, which lets them view the online transactions, browser history and login accounts of any infected computer. Utilizing the Gozi Trojan to transmit captured form data to a commerce front-end called 76service, hackers have created a marketplace for identity theft. Subscribers to the service can then mine the online transactions of victims for high-value data like bank logins and other personally identifying information.

78service ushers in a new era for identity theft where credit card numbers and passwords are traded as efficiently as stocks.
SuSE

Submission + - openSUSE 10.3 public release

Submitted by Shizawana
Shizawana writes: The latest version of openSUSE is being released today. Here is a sneak peak of all the new features and additions, including highly anticipated changes to the YaST package management.
Security

Submission + - Comparing OpenBSD vs. SELinux (kerneltrap.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: KernelTrap offers an interesting summary of a lengthy debate on OpenBSD's -misc mailing list comparing the security features built into OpenBSD versus the security offered by the Linux kernel's SELinux feature. The main arguments presented against SELinux centered around its complexity and the difficulty of defining a secure policy. 'The first thing people usually do with SELinux is turn it off', suggests the article, noting that the ease with which it can be turned off is another security shortcoming. By contrast, OpenBSD offers numerous security features that are always enabled with minimal overhead, including propolice stack protection, random library mappings, proactive privilege separation, W^X, and systrace.
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft loses anti-trust appeal

Submitted by
Kugrian
Kugrian writes: "Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (£343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute. The European Court of First Instance upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position."
Security

Submission + - Skype reads /etc/passwd 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: According to this post in the Skype Linux Forums Skype tries to read out the /etc/passwd as well as some other files and directories. At this time, there is no official statement from Skype concerning this matter.
Linux Business

Submission + - PWC migrates to OpenBSD after crippling by Windows (computerworld.com.au) 1

Submitted by
Renegade88
Renegade88 writes: "After months of network failures and depleted IT budget, newly hired IT manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Japan was "forced" to migrate half of the company's Windows servers to OpenBSD to stabilize and secure their network. After eliminating the frequent downtime and data loss PWC had experienced for months, Mark Uemura was ordered to reinstate their Checkpoint firewall for political reasons. The Checkpoint server was later overwhelmed by a network virus so rather than taking it offline again, PWC placed an OpenBSD firewall in front of the Checkpoint Firewall! Mark's advice: "My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it — don't ask! [Management] will thank you later.""
Networking

Submission + - Mini-ITX Clusters?

Submitted by
HesAnIndieRocker
HesAnIndieRocker writes: "I've recently become interested in experimenting with Linux cluster technologies (databases, distributed file systems, etc) but have been held back by the availability of cheap server hardware. Via's MiniITX C7-based motherboards look very promising, but all of the enclosures I have seen for the platform look like stereo components or traditional PCs. Are there any solutions out there for putting multiple boards in a single box with shared power and space for hard drives, or must the aspiring supercomputer owner build everything themselves? Is there a cluster hobbyist market or are they only built (and priced) for the enterprise?"

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