Transglobal fiber networks that crisscrossed the planet were the most visible and expensive manifestation of the broadband boom (and later the bubble) of 1990s. Thanks to overbuilding, collapsing prices and shady dealings, the boom turned to a bust, and before we knew it, long haul networks became a four letter word.

Seems like blackbox testing tools (fuzzers) gain more ground, but not in the way I would expect.I expected software/networking vendors to be buying commercial fuzzers to check their products for security holes (or using open source fuzzing tools as part of the development cycle). Surprisingly, most companies I know that have implemented fuzzers are not [...]

New worm spreading with Skype has been reported recently.According to Websense Blog a message via Skype Chat is received. * the filename is called sp.exe* assuming the file is run it appears to drop and run a password stealing Trojan Horse* the file also appears to run another set of code that uses Skype to [...]

  In addition to the MP Authoring Guide new to this release, an update to SDK documentation appeared on the Connect site today (connect.microsoft.com) with samples on APIs and connector framework.
  12/19/2006 OpsMgr 2007 RC2 - SDK docs and samples 4837 Document

This package contains the OpsMgr 2007 RC2 SDK documentation chm. It also includes samples that show a number of scenarios around using the SDK apis to insert data into OpsMgr 2007 and also using the Operations Manager connector framework.

When we talk about security awareness, we sometimes say that a certain company “does not get it”. It’s hard to define how we measure that and what makes us say that a certain company does or does not “get it” (or even what “it” is) - we just know, just like you can tell which [...]

When we talk about security awareness, we sometimes say that a certain company “does not get it”. It’s hard to define how we measure that and what makes us say that a certain company does or does not “get it” (or even what “it” is) - we just know, just like you can tell which [...]

The folks over at techcrunch have had a look at Adobe’s Apollo.

2007 will bring the launch of the much anticipated Adobe Apollo platform, a cross platform run time that will allow developers to take rich Internet applications, whether they be built on Flash, HTML, JavaScript and/or Ajax, and turn them into desktop applications.

Filed under: Security, Web services

Craigsnumber's tagline is simple and to the point: "Listing online? Protect your privacy." And that's all there is to it. Craigsnumber is a dead simple online service that will give you a disposable phone number for conducting business online. Want to provide a phone number on your eBay auction, but don't want your real number out there forever? Just go to Craigsnumber, enter your real number and when you want the disposable number to expire (one hour, one day, or one week), and you'll be assigned a Craigsnumber (which is an ordinary phone number and extension) that will forward calls to you only until it expires. When someone calls your Craigsnumber, they'll be prompted to record a greeting before they're connected, which allows you to screen incoming calls. If you want the number to be in a particular area code, you can choose from between San Francisco, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. One feature that would be nice to have is finer-grained control over expiration times. Being able to set it to 10 days or two weeks would be very welcome.

So, where's the business model? I have no idea, but it's a neat service that doesn't require any registration, another big plus for the privacy-conscious. As a big minus, however, the site doesn't appear to have any privacy policy. I've put in a query to the site's creators about that, and will update this post if they reply.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

You know that Nokia manufactures RFID cell phones but I am not hear to tell you about whether Nokia has launched any new model of RFID phone or not rather I will tell you that the company is using...

Brady Forrest over on the O'Reilly Radar blog just announced that Google Deprecates Their SOAP Search API where he states

Do I need to complete that thought?

Still plenty of time for last-minute gadget shopping for Christmas. (And for Chanukah, too, for that matter.)

The timing of ZDNet's Marc Orchant's post could about my launching the Working Anywhere project could not have been better.

Everyon, Xian has some Live Meeting sessions scheduled for tomorrow to show off their offerings for Operations Manager 2007. Dial in and check it out. You need to confirm with Claudia Ricaldez at claudia.ricaldez@jalasoft.com for meeting details.    

Wednesday, December 20

Not all Google acquisitions have a $1.65B price tag - in fact very few do. Google has gone back to snapping-up small interesting technology companies, with the acquisition of Endoxon, an internet mapping solutions company (actually, they only acquired 3 of the company’s 6 business units).The Endoxon team has demonstrated passion and innovation in [...]

Earlier today I noticed a link from Mike Torres to a press release from ComScore Media Metrix entitled The Score: Blogs Gain Favor Worldwide which states

You have to get up pretty darn early, if you want to try and game Digg. Your best bet to get traffic from Digg is to simply create something that is “Digg-worthy”. Sending an email to the Top 30 Digg users and asking them to help promote your company, is just dumb. Unfortunately for one top digger, he fell for the pitch and ended up having his account suspended.

My eagle eyes all over the world just reported this. I was waiting for stuff like this to happen and this is only the beginning of a probably very serious problem. I think the worst thing that could happen is that some worm is being created that will take down the widely spread p2p (super)nodes or something that will cause latency on the call. But anyways, that is just a thought. Here goes the current problem: « Skype Worm Breaks Out in APAC. By Stephen Withers. Tuesday, 19 December 2006. Symantec and Websense have warned Skype users of a new worm that spreads itself via Skype text messages.

Dubbed Chatosky by Symantec, the cycle starts with a Skype user receiving a message offering a file called sp.exe. According to Websense's preliminary analysis, when that file is run it installs a password-stealing Trojan and propagates itself via Skype. The malware also tries to connect to a now-disabled remote server to collect additional code.

Following up on their May study, McAfee reports that search results have become safer on Google, Ask and AOL. Yahoo and MSN now return riskier results than they did in May.

TechCrunch points to a new web-based face-recognition service called Polar Rose. With similar goals to those of Riya, Polar Rose wants to help you recognize or locate faces in online images. Riya didn't have much success at this and has changed their business model and my guess is that Polar Rose won't be far behind.

ESJ just published my forecasts for 2007, which I call the Lucky 7.  Feel free to have a read.  I think it is one of my better pieces, and I am usually my harshest critic.Special thanks goes out to