ET Is Out There And He Has An IP Address And A Rap Sheet

Great story found in the USAToday about a  guy named Melin who had a laptop with some
personal information stolen.  He then monitored the SETI(at)home database that was installed on the stolen laptp to see if the laptop would “talk” to the Berkeley servers. Well you guessed it, the laptop checked in several times within a [...]

New Database Startup Has Big Players and High Hopes

A new startup leads by industry bigwigs called Vertica has developed a new grid-enabled, column-oriented relational
database management system (RDBMS) that runs on industry-standard,
Linux-based hardware. According to their site “The Vertica Database® provides extremely fast ad
hoc SQL query performance, even for very large databases, making it
well suited for:

Data warehousing
Data marts
Clickstream analysis
Fraud detection
Call detail analysis
Consumer customer analytics
Business [...]

Open Linux Router Project – Grass Roots Routing

The Open Linux Router Project is a very interesting offering that emphasizes a simple interface that allows users to configure the router and add new features without excessive technical knowledge about the device.  Even though this project is early stage, it is part of a growing interest in using open source offerings to
compete with much [...]

11.38 petabits per second? Really?

It is true…according to an article on CNET online titled “Inside the Lucasfilm data center”, their datacenter has the total capacity of 11.38 petabits per second.  Of course this is theoritical…but impressive none the less.  In the story “Kevin Clark, Lucasfilm’s director of IT operations, said, the data center “far exceeds” the computing power of [...]

Symantec Offers Zero-Day Protection That Doesn’t Rely On Threat Signatures

Beginning in February, Symantec’s will provide Symantec Online Network for Advanced Response (SONAR) as a free add-on to Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus 2007 and Norton Internet Security 2007 products.  According to this article in InfoWorldThis zero-day protection tool will look at the behavior of programs running on the computer in order to decide whether they are [...]

MYSQL Offers New Storage Engine Falcon

Although its an Alpha release MYSQL’s new storage engine called Falcon will provide a very good alternative for large Web 2.0 applications running on web farms. The article in InfoWorld points out that “the storage engine is geared for high-performance environments while still supporting transactional and logging requirements, according to MySQL.”

Anatomy of a DNS DDoS Amplification Attack

“Anatomy of a DNS DDos Amplification Attack” is a great article that describes in great detail the nuts and bolts of DNS DDos attack and how to survive and reduce the threat of this devastating attack.  For security experts and professionals this is a must read as this particular type of attack can affect large [...]

Tricky Issue – Why Management Doesn’t Get IT Security

A must read article on the Bruce Schneier weblog which states “Most C-level executives view security as an operational issue — kind of like facilities management — and not as a strategic review. As such, they don’t have direct responsibility for security.”.  Another important point is that cost of business operation is a strong point [...]

Microsoft To Release Patch For Zero-Day XML Flaw On November 14th

On November 14th, Microsoft will release a important bulletin with a “critical” fix for a security hole in its XML Core Services software, the company stated on its Web site Thursday morning. This particular vulnerability is a zero-day flaw that’s already being exploited for attacks.  This fix is part of their monthly security patch strategy [...]

What DoesThe Democrats’ Win Mean For The Tech Industry?

Great article on CNET regarding the effect the Democrats’ win will have for the tech industry.  For instance a GOP committee recently failed to approve rules that all Internet traffic be treated the same no matter what its “source” or “destination” might be.  This is an important item for the tech industry and the [...]