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Inflation hits identity theft economy
Market mechanisms offer an interesting way to look at how things are valued. After all you can't argue with the laws of supply and demand.
Your online identity for instance is worth a measly $300, F-Secure found out. At least that what one online thug is asking for 380Mb of data that he collected from keystroke loggers.
The data is bound to contain login names and passwords for email accounts and online banks, as well as the occasional credit card number. Plenty of candy for the average identity thief.
You would think that such data is valued at more than just $300. But you can't argue with the laws of supply and demand.
technorati tags: identity+theft, crime, security, hacking, f-secure
September 30, 2006 at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yahoo clarifies: no mandatory December holiday
Yahoo won't force its employees to take unpaid time off during the coming holiday season, but will still require its workers to use up all their vacation days.
The clarification comes after staff rallied on company forums against the measure, according to Yahoo blogger Jeremy Zawodny.
Yahoo last week sent out and email to employees to inform them about a mandatory vacation this December. It stated that: "the expectation is that nearly all US Yahoos will participate in the office closure by utilizing their vacation time, personal floaters, or taking unpaid time off."
The email made its way to the Valleywag blog, where Yahoo was portrayed as a "Scrooge". It also sparked speculation that the measure was a desperate attempt by Yahoo to save money to cover up a disappointing earnings growth.
The clarification from Yahoo's management however indicates that the measure is intended to make sure that employees use up all their vacation days more than force the Yahoo workforce to take unpaid leave.
Buying back unused vacation days would cost the company more money. There's a fine line between not having to spend money and saving additional funds.
technorati tags: yahoo, vacation, christmas
September 30, 2006 at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lawyers catch up with HP spying scandal
The first legal complaints have started to fall following the HP spying scandal. Verizon on Thursday (9/28) filed the first legal complaint in the case against a series of unnamed defendants.
The next day Cingular joined in with a legal complaint against both the CAS investigative firm that HP hired and its founder Charles Kelly – and threw in a slew of unnamed individuals and corporations.
Filing the suits against the unnamed people (so-called John and Jane Does) allows for the names to be filled in at a later time, because the providers intend to find their identities through a legal discovery process.
The suits coincide with the congressional hearings this week. HP brass there was apologetic, but refused to take any personal blame or simply refused to testify.
That makes these lawsuits all the more important. HP has settled on a defence strategy that claims that the whole thing simply got out of hand. But these civil claims will allow us to pinpoint the real criminals and have a good old witchhunt.
- For your reading pleasure, below you can find PDF documents with the legal complains from Verizon and Cingular.
Former HP chairman Patricia Dunn dodging questions at the Thursday hearing
technorati tags: hp, spying, hurd, pretexting, cingular, verizon, dunn
September 29, 2006 at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Blackberry going down
Blackberry is facing demotion to the list of pioneering devices that failed to survive, according to analyst firm IDC.
The firm's analysts claims that Nokia and Motorola are finally getting their acts together and have come out with formidable mobile email devices. Mix in the fact that both companies sell millions of mobile phones and have marketing budgets the size of RIM's total revenues, and you understand that it doesn't take a psychic to see a major battle evolving.
If Blackberry fails to maintain its lead, the company will join
companies like Bell Labs, IBM and Xerox Parc on the list of
trendsetting companies that failed to profit from their inventions.
IBM has the bragging rights of inventing the first hard drive as well as the database, but left the market to Seagate and Oracle respectively. Xerox PARC invented both the laser printer and Ethernet, but allowed HP and 3com to reap the rewards of those inventions. And Bell Labs screwed up big time to make any money from Unix.
At least Blackberry will be in good company.
technorati tags: idc, blackberry, RIM, email, wireless, nokia, motorola
September 29, 2006 at 01:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
HP: spying scandal was a crime without any culprits
As this is written, former HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn and other current and former HP employees are testifying before the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about the company's spying scandal.
Dunn best summarized HP's position when she stated that she was sorry for what has happened, but refused to take personal responsibility.
According to HP, this is a crime without any criminals.
Dunn even went so far as to state that she was asked to step down as chairman because the scandal's coverage in the press was "a major distraction to the company." Not because she was on the top of the food chain that ordered an illegal investigation.
It's becoming ever more clear that we'll never hear what exactly happened and who knew what. On the eve of the hearings, HP's general counsel Ann Baskins resigned. She refused to testify, pleading the fifth amendment. That's all too convenient, because Baskins was responsible for the actual investigation.
Baskins receives a golden handshake of $3.6m through stock options in the company that she currently owns. The terms of her unvested options have been changed, promising a pay-off of another $1m on 22 November.
When asked how she felt about this golden parachute, Dunn only showed compassion for Baskin without displaying any desire to hold her accountable for her actions.
"Her career is ruined," Dunn noted. Because Baskin too has done nothing wrong. Everybody at HP is innocent.
Dunn attempts to prevent any more stupid mistakes.
technorati tags: hp, spying, scandal, spy, pretexting, dunn, hurd,
September 28, 2006 at 08:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft study confirms: IE7 rules!
How stupid does Microsoft think we are?
The company today touted a study by 3Sharp that compares eight anti phishing technologies. The study was commissioned (as in paid for by) Microsoft. Amazingly, Internet Explorer 7's phishing filter is found to be most effective anti phishing technology around, ahead of Netcraft and a Google plugin for Firefox.
You would hope that Microsoft at least put some effort in publishing it blatantly skewed research. 3Sharp is a technical marketing firm with ZERO experience as a technology analyst.
The study was performed by Paul Robichaux (photo), who is a software developer and messaging architect specializing in Exchange. After all, writing code and conducting credible research studies are very similar.
Reading the "test methodology" section of the study (PDF download) clearly shows that the test was designed to make IE7 look its best.
A group of 500 control URLs was verified against the IE7 filter to ensure that it didn't contain any false positives. And then in the results, the report trumpeted that IE7 didn’t report any false positives. Isn't that amazing?
The report also values a service that blocks access to a phishing site at double the rate of a service that merely warns the user. IE7 just happens to fall in the first category while GeoTrust falls in the second one. Never mind that Geotrust caught 99 per cent of the phishing sites (but gave false positives on about one third of the legitimate URLs) and IE7 only 89 per cent.
Furthermore, the test only fed 100 phishing URLs into the system, which raises some serious questions about the statistical significance of the findings. Any researcher analyst would know that, but then a true research study probably wouldn't produce such pro-Microsoft results.
Microsoft's marketing department seriously underestimates the intelligence of its customers. Or could it be that their own IQ is severely lacking?
Microsoft pulls another Pinocchio.
technorati tags: microsoft, IE7, phishing, research, paid+research, 3sharp
September 28, 2006 at 06:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Intel goes phishing with vPro (video)
One of the advantages of Intel's vPro business PC platform is that it provides room to a virtual security client that monitors network traffic and the system's security settings.
The difference, as Intel demonstrates in the video below, can save you $49bn... if you ever had that in the first place.
technorati tags: intel, vpro, idf, gelsinger, security, symantec
September 28, 2006 at 05:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Intel makes AMD eat its bubbles (video)
Intel got a little cocky today at the Intel Developer Forum, as the chipmaker stages a race between its latest Xeon quad core processors and AMD's latest quad core Opteron.
I won't spoil the surprise. In the video below you can see who wins.
technorati tags: intel, amd, xeon, opteron, benchmark
September 28, 2006 at 05:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Intel eyes next generation interconnect (video)
After a barage of news from the first day of Intel Developer Forum, it turned out that the chipmaker had been holding back plenty for day two.
In an attempt to counter AMD's Torenza open socket design, Intel said that it had provided Xilinx and Altera with a license that lets them access the front side bus on Intel's processors. This effectively enables a market of application specific co-processors.
But Intel had more in mind. The chipmaker together with IBM unveiled an intiative that aims to build a new interconnect dubbed Geneseo. It pretty much enables the same acceleration devices as providing access to the front side bus, but requires far less openness from Intel.
Below you can watch a video of IBM's Tom Bradicich and Intel's Pat Gelsinger discussing the upcoming standard.
technorati tags: geneseo, intel, ibm, pci-e, interconnect, IDF, gelsinger, bradicich
September 28, 2006 at 05:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Intel touts OLPC competitor (video)
The One Laptop per Child project isn't the only attempt to bring laptop computers to developing nations. Intel earlier this years unveiled its Eduwise laptop.
On Tuesday Intel chief executive Paul Otellini showed off the device and showed a video of it being used in Nigeria.
It can't be a coincidence that Intel picked Nigeria, as the nation is one of the likely buyers of OLPC laptops.
But the video also shows a fundamental difference between the two projects. Where Intel's Windows laptop requires teachers to educate children on how to use the devices, the OLCP is an education project first and a laptop project second.
Open source software is supposed to allow the children to educate themselves. And that's no luxury if you consider that there are plenty of teachers that are happy to cash their monthly paycheck, but never show up to do any actual teaching.
Below you can watch a video of Otellini discussing the Eduwise laptop.
Nigeria video courtesy of Intel.
technorati tags: intel, eduwise, olpc, otellini
September 28, 2006 at 05:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
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