Security Bullet In
Communiques from the security front, sir
Wednesday 31 October 2007, 3:45 PM
Gmail spam decreases
Google has claimed that its spam filters are discouraging spammers, after a decline in attmepts to spam Gmail users.
In a post on the Official Google Blog, Brad Taylor, Google "Spam Czar", claimed that:
"Attempts to spam Gmail users have been leveling off over the last year and more recently, even declining slightly."
A YouTube video, linked to in the blog post, seems to be pitching Gmail primarily at businesses, with an explanation of what Google spam filters do, in layman's terms.
In the video Google does not go into intellectual property concerns surrounding the use of its software by businesses.
Wednesday 31 October 2007, 3:06 PM
Dell criticises OLPC, Negroponte hits back
The chief executive officer of Dell computers, Michael Dell, has criticised the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.
Speaking to an audience of CIOs at the Gartner ITxpo conference in Orlando on 10 October, Dell said that kids in developing "need food and medicine," and not laptops.
Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC founder and chairman, told ZDNet.co.uk at the Paliament and Internet conference in Westminster on 18 October that Dell was "being silly".
"That's ridiculous," said Negroponte. "Substitute the word 'education' for 'laptop'. I'm surprised that Michael can't see that. The educational benefit is called 'passion' - [we've succeeded] if kids are passionate about learning."
Dell also said that there was no guarantee that governments receiving the educational laptops would not be "corrupt", and use the laptops for purposes other than education.
Negroponte disagreed with the criticism, saying:
"He's being silly. We have a security system called BitFrost. It's not a perfect control, but that's not a reason to stop."
Wednesday 31 October 2007, 2:28 PM
Ukrainian presidential website under attack
The website of the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has been suffering a prolonged distributed denial of service attack, according to a post on antivirus vendor F-Secure's blog.
According to F-Secure, Russian groups are being blamed for the attack, in a case which the company says has similarities to the attacks against Estonia in the spring.
Last week Mikhel Tammet, director of the Estonian communication and information technology department, told ZDNet .co.uk he believed forces within the Russian government may have initiated and sponsored attacks against his country's critical national infrastructure earlier this year.
Tuesday 30 October 2007, 1:50 PM
Lords lashes out at government's personal internet security retort
A prominent Lord has hit out at the government's reaction to a House of Lords Science and Technology Committee report into personal internet security.
The government reaction was less than enthusiastic to many of the points raised by the Lords, and included a rejection, for now, of the Lords recommendation to institute a data breach notification law a la California.
Lord Erroll, who sits on the Lords Committee, said:
"Throughout our inquiry we tried to think outside the box, to look ahead ten years at what the Internet might be like, taking into account the emerging risks and challenges today. That’s why our recommendations concentrated on incentives - we must ensure that everyone is motivated to improve security. Unfortunately, the Government dismissed every recommendation out of hand, and their approach seems to solely consist of putting their head in the sand."
Please see ZDNet.co.uk for news coverage of this story.
Friday 26 October 2007, 3:48 PM
Gates, a geek?
A Microsoft supremo has said that Bill Gates does not help young people's perceptions of IT professionals.
Speaking at a Westminster eForum event on the IT skills crisis, Stephen Uden, head of skills and economic affairs for Microsoft UK, said Gates does not help improve the street cred of the IT industry.
"The IT business needs to roll up its sleeves and address the profound image problems we have," Uden told the eForum delegates. "Ask any young person their image of an IT person, and its someone very geeky. I guess our chairman doesn't help that image," said Uden.
Meanwhile, at the Parliament and Internet conference last week, I spotted Microsoft UK's chief security adviser Ed Gibson having a little snooze - during a presentation by another Microsoft exec. Oops!
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