Analysis of security, technology, and attempts to filter random noise
Mozilla has patched a memory-consumption issue in Firefox caused by leaky add-ons, but has found the patch may not be 100 percent successful.Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote tested a patch by fellow developer Kyle Huey for six add-ons, including McAfee SiteAdvisor 3.
Dell is working on plans, known as 'Sputnik', to sell laptops running the Ubuntu open source operating system, aimed at web developers.Dell wants to sell developers XPS13 laptops pre-loaded with Ubuntu 12.
An Apple Mac OSX Lion update has left passwords encrypted using an older version of FileVault exposed to people with root or administrator access to Lion systems, according to security researcher David Emery.Apple turned on a debug switch called DEBUGLOG in its February update to Lion, 10.
Technologists and engineers involved in computer conservation projects have been invited to compete for an award named in honour of the late Tony Sale, who led the rebuilding project of the Colossus code-breaking computer.The Tony Sale Award will recognise achievements in computer conservation, and is named after the late Colossus rebuilder (pictured).
The BBC has condemned Chinese censorship of BBC satellite broadcasts and website pages.The latest satellite broadcast to be blocked by the Chinese authorities was a piece on BBC World News on Wednesday about blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks said in a blog post on Thursday.
The European Space Agency will send a probe to Jupiter's icy moons to look for signs of life under the ice, and to see if life could be sustained there, the agency has announced.The Jupiter Icy moons Explorer — Juice — will embark on a mission of over a decade to study Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto as potential habitats, the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement on Wednesday.
The European Space Agency has said that a group of hackers called 'The Unknowns' successfully hacked into external servers and got access to user identity information.The Unknowns used SQL injection to attack databases through the European Space Agency (ESA) website, ESA security office manager Stefano Zatti told ZDNet UK on Thursday.
Nokia has alleged that HTC, RIM and ViewSonic have infringed on 45 Nokia patents in lawsuits filed in the US and Germany.Nokia alleged on Wednesday that the companies have variously infringed on patents covering dual function antennas, power management and multimode radios, application stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption and retrieval of email attachments on a mobile device.
Parliament has amended UK information law in an attempt to make open data easier for developers and companies to use and commercialise.The Protection of Freedoms Act, which contained amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, was passed by royal assent on Tuesday.
ICANN has said it will tell gTLD applicants by early next week whether their information was exposed by a security glitch in ICANN's application system.Internet address coordinator ICANN said on Friday that it would tell applicants for generic top level domains (gTLDs) whether their application details had been exposed by the glitch.
The G-Cloud programme will cost £4.93m, but save £340m, according to Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.
The Information Commissioner's Office is to look into a report by US regulators that found Google could have been aware that its Street View cars were collecting personal data for three years.The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report claimed a Google engineer, named by the New York Times as Marius Milner, told colleagues and a senior manager about collecting unencrypted Wi-Fi data.
Oracle has recommended workarounds for a zero-day Oracle Database flaw that was not fixed in the company's April critical patch update.The flaw in the Transport Network Substrate (TNS) Listener database component, which Oracle has known about for at least four years, could allow a hacker to break into a database without a username or password, Oracle said in a security advisory on Monday.
The Information Commissioner's Office is to spend around £3m on upcoming IT services and security procurement, or around 20 percent of its data protection budget, according to information commissioner Christopher Graham.The procurement would be announced in the Official Journal of the European Union in late May, the data protection regulator told the Infosec Conference on Wednesday.
Police forces are monitoring social networks to harvest evidence on crimes, and use undercover officers to interact with people on Facebook, according to a senior police officer.Police have gathered evidence on murder, theft, burglary, fraud, arson, and sex crimes through people not applying privacy settings on Facebook, ACPO e-crime prevention lead and deputy chief constable Stuart Hyde told the Counter Terror Expo on Thursday.
