Thread: latest computer news

Palo Alto introduces traffic shaping
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Palo Alto Networks has launched the latest version of its operating system, PAN-OS. The firewall vendor said that the new enhancements would improve the options available for enterprises, offering them new ways to handle applications.

The new operating system has two new features: application shaping - using quality of service - and a fully integrated SSL VPN that the company said would improve remote access.

The main feature introduced by PAN-OS 3.0 is traffic shaping. This will enabling enterprises to ensure that priority is given to business critical functions, offering organisations a more flexible approach to applications: allowing, denying, resticting, and in the new release, shaping.

Lee Klarich, vice president of Product Management for Palo Alto said that the traffic shaping technology would "guarantee priorities for important applications as well 'deprioritise' non-essential ones."

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Companies wanted more sophistication, he said, with certain applications getting a higher priority, or some departments getting a high priority.

He said that companies wanted some flexibility. "For example," said Klarich, "some companies might want to allow BitTorrent as a means of distributing software or some companies would want to ban social media sites like Facebook to all but the marketing department."

In addition to the traffic shaping and the VPNs, there are some other new features added to the firewall, among them the ability for Palo Alto users to add their own approved applications to the company's apps library. Previously users had to stick with Palo Alto's own list of applications.

The new software, which is a free upgrade to existing users, reinforces Palo Alto's belief that the firewall must become more sophisticated; "the firewall hasn't changed for 15 years," said Klarich. "We're introducing a new way of looking at things."

Symantec kills GoEverywhere service
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Symantec's GoEverywhere online data-sharing service is going to the scrap heap.

The company has started notifying users that it is terminating the product, which it has been beta testing since January.

GoEverywhere was an experimental 'Webtop' service designed to give users a single point of access to their different web-based applications. Users could sync up different files from services such as Zoho and Google Docs, save passwords, and manage different web programs all from a single website.

The project was one of the first to emerge from Symantec's new in-house technology development group, known as Incubator, but it didn't last long after the company switched CEOs in April. Neither did the head of Incubator, Art Wong, who had been with the company since its 2002 acquisition of SecurityFocus. Wong left the company last Friday, Symantec said.

A company representative could not give a reason for Wong's departure. He could not be reached for comment on this story.

Although Wong's departure raises questions about the future of Incubator, Symantec president and CEO Enrique Salem said on Thursday that he had not shuttered the effort, but merely reined in some of the Incubator products launched before he took over. "What you do with an incubator is you place some bets and you do a review and you say, 'What do you think the long-term bets are going to be?'" he said. "We tried four or five things, we picked two to go forward with, and we'll fund some other new things to put in the incubator."

Symantec senior vice president of strategy Ken Berryman is now in charge of Incubator.

According to a source familiar with the situation, Incubator, which was supposed to operate like an internal startup company generator, is now a shadow of its former self. "The original concept is dead," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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Symantec's Online Protection Network was built through the incubator group and another undisclosed project relating to health care is still going forward, Salem said. With Online Protection Network now spun into a business unit, the health project, called Electronic Health Group, is the only remaining Incubator project.

Under Salem's predecessor, John Thompson, Symantec moved into a wide range of new businesses, capped by its $13.5 billion acquisition of storage vendor Veritas in 2005.

But under his watch, the focus is on building market share in Symantec's core businesses, Salem said. That means fewer acquisitions and a greater focus on internal development. "I've got to integrate all these great things we bought over the last 10 years," he said.

"We bought 30 companies," Salem noted. "We've got enough breadth. Now we need more depth and better integration so we can cross-sell more."

Dell offers Microsoft software for download
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Dell is now offering Microsoft Office products for download, making it the first vendor other than Microsoft to do so.

The Microsoft products are only available to US customers. Software applications include versions of the Office suite and its lower-end counterpart, Works, plus Word, Excel, Outlook and Groove, according to a search on Dell's Download Store.

Prices are discounted from the suggested retail price. For example, Microsoft's suggested retail price for its Office Home and Student 2007 suite is $149.99, but Dell will sell it for $129.99. Microsoft sells that suite for $149.95 on its own Web site.

Microsoft's site also displays what other retail partners are charging for physical copies of Office Home and Student 2007. Retailers Best Buy and Staples stick with the suggested price of $149.99, while Amazon.com comes in the cheapest at $84.99 for a version that includes licenses for three PCs.

Dell opened its Download Store in January and says 10,000 people visit it on average every week. Other vendor partners include McAfee, Nero, CA, Symantec and Webroot.

People who have a problem with their PC will be allowed by Dell to download the software they have purchased again.

Mozilla fixes six critical Firefox flaws
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Mozilla patched 11 vulnerabilities in Firefox, last week, more than half of them labelled "critical."

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The update was the first since late April, when Mozilla rushed out a refresh to plug a hole that the company's developers has inadvertently introduced in the Windows version of the browser, and came just days after the launching of a "tweener" build of the upcoming Firefox 3.5.

Of the 11 flaws fixed in Firefox 3.0.11, six were rated critical, one "high," two "moderate" and two "low" in Mozilla's four-step system.

Three of the six critical bugs were in the browser's rendering and JavaScript engines, a frequent target of Mozilla's patching. "Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances and we presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code," Mozilla said in the advisory for the engine patches, using its now-standard boilerplate language.

The SSL tampering vulnerability was reported to Mozilla by three researchers working for browser rival Microsoft, and a fourth at Purdue University. The four -- Shuo Chen, Ziqing Mao, Yi-Min Wang and Ming Zhang -- co-wrote a paper titled "Pretty-Bad-Proxy: An Overlooked Adversary in Browsers' HTTPS Deployments," that they published May 1 (download PDF). Mozilla ranked the vulnerability as "high."

Other patches prevent hackers from pinching browser cookies, executing JavaScript attack code and spoofing Web addresses.

The update was the fifth this year for Firefox 3.x, but not the first for Mozilla's browsers this week.
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On Monday, Mozilla rolled out Firefox 3.5 Preview, a build the company said is a near-finished version of the official Release Candidate, or RC. Although new-found bugs had delayed the RC's release yet again, Mozilla wanted to get something in testers' hands, and so took the unusual step of delivering the Preview.

At this point, Mozilla has not set a scheduled for posting Firefox 3.5 RC, once slated to appear the first week of June. In notes on a status meeting the company held Wednesday, Mozilla simply noted that it would release the RC "you know, when it's ready."

Firefox 3.5 Preview is being offered only to users who have already installed Beta 4 of the browser upgrade.

Kingston launches 'World's first' 128GB USB Flash drive
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Kingston Technology, a leader in memory products, has announced the release of the Kingston DataTraveler 200, billed as the world’s first 128GB USB Flash drive.

The Kingston DataTraveler 200 provides users with the option to password protect files - on Windows machines and although it isn't clear in the press release on Macs as well - and carry vast amounts of data in a pocket or wallet.

Compatible with Mac, Windows and Linux, the DataTraveler 200 is available in 128GB, 64GB and 32GB versions.

The DataTraveler 200/128GB retails for £334.22, the DataTraveler 200/64GB for £111.16 while the DataTraveler 200/32GB costs £63.55. Each comes with a five-year warranty.

Warning over wireless keyboard use
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A warning is being issued by the security firm Symantec over a potential problem that could affect users of the Microsoft and Logitech wireless keyboards.

The problem is coming from a group named remote-exploit.org, which has been working on an open source project for almost two years that can effectively intercept all of the keystrokes made on a wireless keyboard using the 27 MHz wireless radio transmission frequency.

It works by analysing the electromagnetic patterns that occur when the wireless keyboard is being used.

The good news is that the device has to be around ten metre away from the target in order to read the signals.

The bad news is that each keystroke can be picked up, including passwords and just about anything else that is typed on the keyboard.

Microsoft’s Morro almost ready
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The software giant Microsoft is getting ready to launch “Morro” the codename for the firm’s free anti-virus software.

The software is said to be in an early stage of development, but it is already being tested by Microsoft staff to see just how good or bad it is.

But the firm is not going to be hanging around as it expects to have a beta version available as soon as possible, although no timeline has been given as of yet.

Before, it was LiveOneCare that spearheaded the Microsoft entry into the anti virus software market but, for one reason or another, this product turned out to be a failure, resulting in the product being pulled last year.

Microsoft said at the time that a new security suite would be available towards the end of 2009.

More laptops with Orange mobile broadband
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The mobile broadband provider, Orange, will be adding a range of new laptops and netbooks to its mobile broadband packages, giving consumers a wider choice of equipment in conjunction with its mobile broadband service.

The provider claims that there is a package suitable for all private and business customers.

These will include the Asus Eee PC 1000H Go and the HP 6735b, which come with an integrated sim card that offers instant access to the internet.

Other hardware includes the Compaq Mini 110 and Toshiba L300 with the Huawei E160 dongle, and the HP 4515s with the ZTE MF636 wireless device.

Orange will also be stocking the great looking Samsung N310 with a 10.2 inch screen and built in webcam.

This computer is available on a number of packages starting at £24.47 per month.

Parents not monitoring kids’ online activities
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Every now and then an issue arises that sparks parents’ interest in what their children are getting up to online.

This can be a news story or something they may have heard from other parents, but the good thing is that they take more control over children’s online activities.

However this may not last, probably due to work and other commitments.

In fact, according to the security firm McAfee, out of those parents who introduce parental control software, around eighty per cent do not turn it on.

Further to this, over half of the parents who took part in the research never change any of their security settings on the parental controls.

In fact they were not even sure at what level is was set.

Hole in Chrome plugged for second time
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For the second time in less than two weeks Google’s browser, Chrome, has been patched in an attempt to fix a critical security issue, while repairing a few other known bugs too.

It was only just under two weeks ago when the browser went through a similar process in order to fix issues that had come to light in the open course browser engine WebKit.

The flaw that has just been fixed made the browser vulnerable to a buffer overflow, caused when the system handled certain responses from HTTP servers.

This issue on its own is not serious, but if a specially created response from a server was picked up, this would cause the computer to crash and therefore allow an attacker to run a code on the crashed computer.