Can Microsoft Security Essentials beat Norton?

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

What do Microsoft and Symantec have in common? The obvious answer is that both are offering a new security package. In Symantec’s case it’s Norton Internet Security 2010, which I looked at a few weeks back. Microsoft, meanwhile, is today due to release Security Essentials, its free replacement for OneCare, formerly codenamed Morro.

They’re also both companies dogged by the sins of products past. (more…)

Intel kicks off IDF with an own goal

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Greetings from San Francisco! Back in the UK, I know most of you are probably gearing up to go home for the day; but out here it’s 8.15 in the morning and the Intel Developer Forum starts in 45 minutes. Over the next three days we’ll be learning more about 32nm CPUs, scoping out the successor (already) to Nehalem and – inevitably – enjoying more talk about Larrabee, Intel’s multi-core x86-based graphic system, now coming up to a glorious three years of development with no release in sight.

Still, leaving that aside, Intel’s doing pretty well right now. With Lynnfield barely out of the traps and a die-shrink already rumoured before Christmas, it’s clear that the company is, right now, at the top of its game in terms of innovation and engineering.

Which is why I was amused this morning when my very first interaction with IDF – the registration process – exposed a glaring security slip.

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How to keep freeloaders off your Wi-Fi connection

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Here’s an ever-so-slightly ingenious way of keeping spongers, hackers and the proletariat off your home or office Wi-Fi connection – just rename your router as follows:

(Image via F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen)

Meet Bustadrive, a home-made hard disk destroyer

Friday, August 14th, 2009

If your job involves having to destroy hard disks and make sure that their data is impossible to recover, you’ll know that it can be an expensive business: properly disposing of each hard disk can cost between £5 and £10 and, when you’re managing the IT affairs of potentially large businesses, these costs can mount up.

One IT Manager has had enough, though, and taken the matter into this own hands by creating the Bustadrive, a machine that uses a powerful “hydraulic punch” to physically deform a hard disk, rendering it virtually unreadable.

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Twitter goes down (again) but will it soon be counted out for good?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Earlier today (Tuesday 11th August) Twitter went down, albeit briefly for around half an hour, with the official status blog reporting first “a site outage” but then changing tone later to say it was busy analysing traffic data to “determine the nature of this attack”.

Of course, while the Twitter servers may well have been up and running in under an hour of going down, the same cannot be said of third party applications which took considerably longer to recover it would seem. Not, it has to be said, as bad as last week following the 15 fat Russians in a revolving door DDoS attack which saw the Twitter service impacted for days and some third party apps struggling to get back up to speed for days after that. (more…)

HMG, the social contract, and the elephant joke

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

According to the BBC, the man who used to be in charge of listening to you, thinks all of us should be listened to a lot more. Not ‘listening’ in the sense of careful, attentive and responsive duty to serve: rather, listening in the sneaky, all-encompassing, watching out for bad guys style of listening.

I can’t help thinking that this is an echo of a dried-up, bureaucratic and increasingly irrelevant administration: reading the plaintive call of the uber-spook side-by-side with the quiet and simple statements of the man brokering the expenses leaks gives some idea of the error being made by the modern British civil servant.

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Does your printer really need internet access?

Friday, February 13th, 2009

I should say from the outset that all the words of wisdom below don’t belong to me, but to Rob Nichols from Hydro-Logic who was kind enough to write in after reading one of the bizarrer articles to appear on the website: HP warns LaserJet owners to patch their printers. Over to Rob.

Your article highlights an important security issue ignored by many people when setting up network equipment. That is “does this piece of equipment need to access the internet?”. (more…)

Will Microsoft put bloggers back in their box after IE scare?

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

The new-found hole in Internet Explorer has certainly sparked a mainstream media storm. My security-expert colleague, Darien Graham-Smith, has been getting more media exposure than the X-Factor winner over the past couple of days, culminating in an appearance on BBC News last night. Meanwhile, I fielded a last-minute call from that veritable hot-house of technical gossip – the Chris Evans show on Radio 2.

The widespread coverage of the IE flaw will be doing Microsoft no favours at a time when it’s struggling to fend off the emerging Google Chrome and the enduringly popular Firefox. Even worse, the pain was entirely self-inflicted.

News of the hole broke on Microsoft’s own Malware Protection Center blog, and while you have to admire the company’s candour, you can’t help but wonder if the bloggers inadvertently spun the threat for more than it was actually worth. 

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Windows 7: tools for IT departments

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

Windows 7 boasts several new features that could make PCs easier to manage and secure for IT departments. They include:

BitLocker To Go

Government departments pay attention: Microsoft is expanding the BitLocker drive encryption found in business and Ultimate versions of Vista to include USB flash drives. “The problem with these little buggers is people lose them,” said the unusually frank Boettcher.

IT departments can set a group policy that forces USB drives to be encrypted before the employee’s allowed to copy files off the corporate network on to the stick, saving IT departments from employing more drastic measures, such as disabling USB ports.

Alternatively, employees can easily encrypt their own drives with the Bitlocker Drive Encryption option in Windows 7’s System and Security settings. Remembering the password might be a stiffer challenge, however.

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WHSmith’s strange idea of security

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

I’ve been attempting to buy an Ebook reader from WHSmith over the past couple of days… with “attempting” being the operative word.

The WHSmith website sensibly allows you to enter a delivery and billing address for your goods, and so I opted to have the reader sent here to PC Pro Towers.  The website took my order, the confirmation email duly arrived, and all was well and good.

Until a day after I placed the order, I received an email saying:

“Unfortunately we have been unable to obtain name and address verification from the card issuer for this transaction. As such I would appreciate your assistance by faxing to us a copy of your bank statement. (Please note that we do not need to see your current balance).”

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