Tuesday, March 30

Following up on last week's discussion of alphanumeric paging, John Shute suggested Avenger, a freeware program that brokers information between the Internet and your pager.

Mainpine has introduced Rockforce, which they claim is the first multiport PCI modem designed for the European market.

Hayes, Cardinal, Practical Peripherals remnants

Hayes went bankrupt last month, taking subsidiaries Cardinal Technologies and Practical Peripherals with them. People are already scrambling to locate drivers and upgrades. Here's a rundown of what's standing and what's gone

• Hayes Australia is still online
• Hayes Europe is still online
• The Hayes.com domain has been bought by Modem Express, a modem sales and repair outfit.
• A limited selection of drivers for Hayes, Practical Peripherals, and Cardinal modems is available at http://www.hayes.com/drivers. Get them now because they may not last.
• The Practical Peripherals web site we linked to last Tuesday has since disappeared.
• The 56kstandard.com web site is still online, but the upgrade center script is not responding. The site had V.90 upgrades for Hayes, Cardinal, and Practical Peripherals modems.

Computer security

Kevin Mitnick pleaded guilty to computer security violations after spending four years in jail awaiting trial. Early reports indicate that he could be released as early as next year, on condition that he not use computers for three years. A Mitnick biography is available at the companion site for Takedown, the book that chronicles Mitnick's capture.

The Melissa virus author may have been found. As reported a few weeks ago, Microsoft Word documents contain an ID number that corresponds the the document's author. Using the ID number from the original Melissa Word file, two engineers have traced the file to someone known as SkyRoket or VicodinES. He has an AOL account, posted the original file to alt.sex, and has a history of malicious hacking. His AOL personal home page has a macro virus authoring kit.

The Melissa virus is focusing new attention on Word macro viruses. Though the file containing Melissa is usually delivered via email, it can just as easily be transmitted by disk or over a network. Likewise, the subject line of the email is most often "Important Message From <name>", but it could be anything, and the file name of list.doc could likewise be anything. Variations of the virus are already popping up, including the Papa virus.

To prevent infection by Melissa and other macro viruses, disable macros. This page explains how, though the server may be too busy to access.

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Friday, April 2

Windows magazine has more information about the Windows GUID and a link to a site that can show your ID. The GUID is stored in the Windows registry and transmitted to Microsoft during Windows 98 registration. Web sites can also read the GUID to uniquely identify a visitor.

A bug in Netscape Communicator 4.06 and later can allow web sites to view information in other web browsing windows. The bug takes advantage of a flaw in the JavaScript console. The next version of Communicator will fix the bug. In the meantime, the only workaround is to disable JavaScript. The bug's discoverer has a demonstration page to show the bug in action.

Jim Delong notes that Windrivers.com has drivers for Hayes, Cardinal, and Practical Peripherals modems.

Silly site of the week: rock-paper-scissors online. Brunching.com has lots of other fun pages: Do you Yahoo, you Yahoo?, Christian Heavy Metal Band or Star Trek Episode?, and The 100-Question Parody Test.

Afternoon updates

The alleged Melissa virus author has been arrested in New Jersey. The suspect, thirty year old David Smith of Aberdeen, was released on $100,000 bail. One report has it that Melissa was named after a topless dancer in Florida, where Smith used to live.

As reported Tuesday at 56K.COM, there was strong suspicion that the virus was written by someone named VicodinES, and that he used an AOL account with the screen name of Sky Roket. The owner of the Sky Roket account claims that his account was hijacked. What's more, the GUID used to track the virus to VicodinES may have come from an eariler virus.

Yahoo! is buying Broadcast.com for US$5.7 billion. The deal will give Yahoo! a place in the high-bandwidth era of cable modems and DSL.

Jamie Zawinski, one of the lead software engineers of Netscape's Mozilla project, has resigned, citing a lack of progress in releasing code and attracting outside developers. JWZ posted his resignation on his web site, which is a pretty fascinating place in itself. The /gruntle directory is full of gems.

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