Tuesday, September 14

A widely-circulated rumor has it that Motorola is expected to buy cable modem maker General Instrument in a cashless exchange valued at US$9.5 billion. Motorola has refused comment.

3Com will spin off its Palm division into an independent unit early next year. The Palm division is growing faster than the rest of the company, which has had poor profitability, in part because of cutthroat competition in the analog modem market.

CNN has an extensive piece about Visor, the Palm clone from Handspring.

Sony has pealed back the curtain on the PlayStation II, revealing details such as a DVD-ROM drive and a PC Card Ethernet interface. Expected price will be about $362, a bargain considering that most DVD-ROM players sell for around $300 and can't play Crash Bandicoot. As previously announced, the PlayStation II will not have a 56K modem. Instead, owners can choose between 56K modems (via USB or PC Card), ISDN (ditto), or an Ethernet-connected cable modem or DSL modem for their online play and web surfing.

Microsoft: helping information to be free - to hackers

Bulgarian programmer Georgi Guninski has discovered a new Hotmail security flaw: Hotmail passes JavaScript code which can be used to read the contents of a Hotmail user's inbox. Microsoft is investigating the problem, and plans to hire an outside agency to review their security.

Windows 2000 beta 3 has a serious security problem that can allow a remote user Telnet access without requiring a username and password. The problem affects machines running Windows 2000 beta 3 that are not connected to a network domain.

The U.S. Army's main web site is now hosted on a Macintosh running WebStar, following a string of attacks on the former Windows NT server.

ATTRITION is a gallery of defaced web sites. Interestingly, none of the defaced web sites were running Mac OS, though that's in part due to the Mac's tiny share of the web server market - less than one percent. You can determine what OS and server software a web site is using by examining the MIME http headers, or even more simply by using the Netcraft page.

Non-Microsoft spanking department: CERT has issued an advisory concerning vulnerabilities in CDE (Common Desktop Environment) for UNIX systems.

---

Friday, September 17

Computers.com has a review of the Handspring Visor Deluxe, an 8 MB Palm clone.

The rumor from earlier this week have proven true: Motorola has announced it will buy cable modem maker General Instrument for US$11 billion in stock. (From Thursday's news update)

Cell phones

The US Federal Communications Commission approved the use of GPS-equipped mobile phones. Such systems will transmit their coordinates to emergency personnel to help locate the person in distress.

Magnavox's Mobile 911 is an alternative to buying a cell phone primarily to have in case of emergencies. The Mobile 911 can only call 911, the US emergency service number. The advantage is that it's very simple (the interface is one big red button labeled "911"), you don't have to worry about keeping it charged (it runs for one year on a set of AA batteries), and there are no monthly or annual fees, because cell carriers in the US must carry 911 calls. The Mobile 911 costs $199, and is only available through the Mobile 911 web site.

Reuters reports that Mexico's cell phone structure is overloaded, leading to busy signals or a total lack of call service. The problems stem in part from Mexico's adoption in May of a new rule that makes incoming phone calls free for cell users.

Breakin' the law

CERT has issued an advisory concerning a buffer overflow vulnerability in amd, the Berkeley Automounter Daemon.

Toadie.exe is a Trojan horse making its way through chat rooms and other file sources.

According to an unconfirmed TechWeb article, A Trojan horse called Y2Kcount.exe claims to be a Y2K countdown timer from Microsoft, but makes modifications to your system. The Trojan is being distributed through email, and has no effect unless it is downloaded and run. Note that TechWeb is currently the only source of this information. Anti-virus software makers DataFellows, Dr. Solomon, McAfee, and Symantec have no mention of the virus on their web sites, and no other news outlets are carrying the story. (From Thursday's news update)

A hacker group known as United Loan Gunmen has defaced the NASDAQ/American Stock Exchange web site, just one day after defacing Matt Drudge's site. The hack lasted just a few minutes before the phony messages were removed. (From Thursday's news update)

Previous week