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| | | March 14, 2004
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Sunday, March 14, 2004 |
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U.S. eyes Internet wiretapping
U.S. authorities may be thinking of Internet-based services as a dangerously impenetrable method of communication. The Federal Bureau for Investigation (FBI) made a proposal to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to let law enforcement authorities wiretap broadband communications such as Voice over IP (VoIP).
Using extremely broad language, the drafted proposal calls for significantly increased powers which may have extraordinarily widespread repercussions. If adopted in this form, the document may require broadband Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to rewire their networks and force software developers to plant back doors into their products allowing police to eavesdrop on suspects' communications.
FBI's request may also put cable providers under the jurisdiction of the 1994 U.S. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) which currently requires telecommunications carriers to help federal authorities upon request.
More from: CNET News.com | UPI (via The Washington Times) | The Washington Post
Spammers sued under new U.S. law
The four largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the United States field joint lawsuits against what they called some of the biggest spam operations in the U.S. America Online, EarthLink, Microsoft and Yahoo! used the newly enacted CAN-SPAM act to sue 222 defendants in six separate lawsuits alleging they e-mailed hundreds of millions of unwanted messages to their users. Of the 222 defendants only seven were identified by name.
The companies claim the defendants falsified their e-mail addresses, used open relay proxy servers to mail their messages and employed deceptive solicitations to trick the users into clicking on the links included in the e-mails. Company officials said they were delighted by the CAN-SPAM act as it imposed nationwide standards and tougher penalties for spammers.
More from: CNET News.com | eWeek | NewsFactor | The Register | Reuters | The Washington Post 1 2
A faulty blitz of security updates from Microsoft
 Microsoft issued three security updates, fixing faulty code in Office XP, Windows 2000 and the MSN Messenger application. Initially rated 'important', the software maker increased the severity level of an Outlook 2002 flaw to 'critical' after discovering all users to be vulnerable to remote code execution. A hole in the Windows Media Service in Windows 2000 was found to enable an attacker to cause the component to stop accelerating requests, and a flaw in MSN Messenger 6.0 and 6.1 could let a hacker access files on the user's hard drive.
More from: CNET News.com 1 2 | Computerworld 1 2 | CRN 1 2 | InternetNews.com | Reuters | TechWeb
Microsoft released Service Pack 3 for the popular Office XP and Office 2000 software suites. According to the company, the updates include significant security and performance enhancements, but some Outlook users found out the fixes came with new problems. A new feature which restricts access to Outlook's Address Book caused problems with popular spam filtering products attempting to intercept incoming junk mail. Major software developers, among which Symantec, Cloudmark and others, said they were working closely with Microsoft to handle the problem.
More from: CNET News.com 1 2 | InfoWorld | TechWeb
Topping the pie, Hotmail and MSN Messenger users were left without access to the services for hours on Friday. A spokesman for the software giant confirmed some of Microsoft's services were only intermittently accessible and put the finger on an internal issue rather than an external denial of service (DoS) attack.
More from: CNET News.com | Microsoft Watch | Reuters | TechWeb
BayStar confirms a Microsoft link in SCO deal
Investment firm BayStar Capital confirmed there's a link between Microsoft and The SCO Group, two of the most prominent opponents of the Linux operating system and the open-source community at large. Last week, Eric Raymond, a vehement open-source advocate, published a leaked SCO memo which identified Microsoft as the actual source for a $50 million investment in SCO by BayStar. But a BayStar spokesman rejected the idea that Microsoft actually funded SCO, acknowledging only that "Microsoft did introduce BayStar to SCO."
Microsoft has consistently denied it put money into The SCO Group, while SCO executives said the memo should not be taken seriously since its author, an analyst with S2 Strategic Consulting, misunderstood the facts.
In 2003, Utah-based SCO which claims ownership of UNIX copyrights launched a large-scale multipronged attack on Linux alleging that the operating system includes illegally copied UNIX intellectual property. At the same time, software powerhouse Microsoft sees the growth of Linux's popularity as the primary challenger of its desktop software ubiquity and a major obstacle in its quest for high-end server dominance.
More from: BusinessWeek | CNET News.com | Computerworld | eWeek | NewsFactor | NewsForge | The Register | TechWeb
In Other News...
The European Commission has sent Oracle a statement of objections on its proposed $9.4 billion buyout of enterprise business software maker PeopleSoft. Oracle has asked for clarification about the EU's stance and is widely expected to respond in defense of the deal.
A U.S. federal judge rejected Microsoft's request to move an antitrust lawsuit by RealNetworks from California to Washington. The software maker argued that the case has to be relocated as both companies are based in Washington.
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