Linux and VMware add up for Connecticut nonprofit

Linux and VMware add up for Connecticut nonprofit

Family Services Woodfield (FSW), a nonprofit organization in Bridgeport, Conn., is dipping its toes in open source waters with the help of virtual machines. FSW helps families through difficult life situations: anything from illiteracy, domestic violence, or HIV, to helping a youth coming out of juvenile delinquency or a family caring for an aging grandparent. FSW maintains partnerships with other agencies it uses as resources, and it is continuously designing new programs to better serve its constituency. The agency receives government funding as well as private donations, and so must keep up with reporting requirements, and since it provides psychiatric care for children, it must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). FSW is always looking for ways to get the most out of its $10 million-plus annual budget in order to better serve its client base...

PacketHop kills access-points model of wireless network

PacketHop kills access-points model of wireless network

Software that creates a wireless mesh network with no need for conventional access points will be launched next month by start-up PacketHop. TrueMesh software works on Windows XP and allows laptops and tablets to create an instant wireless network that dynamically routes data among the computers forming the mesh. It's as if each wireless device incorporated its own wireless LAN access point.

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VoIP security threats: Fact or fiction?

VoIP security threats: Fact or fiction?

Imagine an intruder found his way into your VoIP network undetected and began listening to any conversation he chose, extracting sensitive information, company secrets or even details he could use to blackmail your CEO. Last month, a company called Internet Security Systems (ISS) issued an alert to warn users that Cisco's VoIP offering had a security flaw that would allow just that. According to the company, this implementation flaw in Cisco's Call Manager, which handles call signaling and routing, could allow a buffer overflow that would grant an intruder access to the system to listen in on all calls routed through it.

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Man logs into dabs.com customer account shocker

Man logs into dabs.com customer account shocker

Reg (http://www.theregister.co.uk/) reader Dave (not his real name) recently received emails from dabs.com about an order he'd supposedly placed for a digital camera. He received a receipt and despatch confirmation emails. All well and good except that he hadn't placed the order. In fact, Dave didn't even have an account with dabs.com. At this point we might have suspected some kind of phishing scam but Dave's curiosity was piqued. "I checked the emails and then went to dabs.com and tried logging in with my [Hotmail] email address, I don't have a password, but they have a forgot password box, so I clicked on this. "It then asks for the email address registered against the account, this I put in as my own and clicked send. A few moments later I receive an email with a password for the account," he said. At this point Dave discovered he was able to log into the original customer's account"....

AOL techie jailed for selling email database to spammers

AOL techie jailed for selling email database to spammers

A former AOL engineer was sent to jail for 15 months yesterday after he confessed to stealing 92m screen names and email addresses belonging to an estimated 30m AOL members and selling them to spammers. Jason Smathers, 25, was sentenced on Wednesday after pleading guilty in February to conspiracy and theft charges and to violation of federal anti-spam laws. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein also ordered Smathers to pay $83,000 in compensation or three times the $28,000 he made flogging off AOL screen names and email addresses to a spammer, named in court as Sean Dunaway, 22, of Las Vegas.

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Gmail, MSN, Flikr... struck by security hole

Gmail, MSN, Flikr... struck by security hole

A security hole in a popular development tool has severe implications for a number of the Internet's most popular applications, including Gmail, Flikr and MSN Virtual Earth. Tens of thousands of companies including AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are likely to be affected by the flaw in CPAINT - a toolkit used to create applications using an approach known as AJAX - short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Rather than a technology in itself, AJAX is an approach to putting more dynamic interactivity into Web applications using a combination of HTML, CSS, Document Object Model, JavaScript, and XMLHttpRequest.

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LPI Exam, Objective Changes Underway

LPI Exam, Objective Changes Underway

The Linux Professional Institute said earlier this week that English versions of its LPI Certified (LPIC) 101 exam will require candidates know both RPM and DPKG package management beginning Oct. 1.

The organization announced the upcoming change back in May, citing community consensus that candidates should know both. Previously, candidates were allowed to choose which one they preferred to test on.

LPI said that it does not yet have specific dates for when this change will affected translated versions of the exam. The exam is currently available in Japanese, German, Portuguese and Chinese, among other languages.

Full Story: certcities.com

Prosoft Announces Free CIW Site Designer Beta

Prosoft Announces Free CIW Site Designer Beta

Prosoft Learning Corporation recently announced a free beta opportunity for a new version of its Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) Site Designer exam.

The CIW v5 Site Designer beta exam (1D1-520) will be available Aug. 29 through Sept. 16 at Prometric testing centers in the United States and United Kingdom only.

To take the beta, candidates must register for a voucher through this page on the company's Web site by Sept. 14.

Those who pass the beta may receive credit toward certification if they hold a current CIW Associate title and complete a CIW Certification agreement, the company said.

The final version of the exam will be released in "late 2005."

Source: certcities.com

Cisco To Update CCIE Lab Exams

Cisco To Update CCIE Lab Exams

Cisco announced it will be updating its Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) lab exams Jan. 1, 2006 to reflect “current networking practices,” it said on its Web site. No new technologies will be added to the exams.

The following changes are planned:

• CCIE Routing and Switching written and lab exams will no longer include the following protocols or media types: DLSW, IS-IS, ISDN, PPP-over-Ethernet and ATM.
• CCIE Security lab exams will no longer test on ISDN technology, and ATM will no longer be used as a Layer 2 transport protocol for WAN connectivity.
• CCIE Voice lab exams will no longer use ATM as a Layer 2 transport protocol for WAN connectivity.

The CCIE Service Provider lab exams, however, will continue to test on ATM and IS-IS, as they are widely deployed in service provider networks.

Source :...

Alert over Acrobat bug

Alert over Acrobat bug

Acrobat and Acrobat Reader, two of the most widely used desktop applications, contain serious security flaws that could be used to take over a system, according to Adobe. The company urged users to update the software immediately.

Adobe Reader is Adobe's tool for reading PDF (Portable Document Format) files, while Acrobat can also create PDF files and has other more advanced features. Affected are Reader and Acrobat versions 5.1, 6.0 to 6.0.3, and 7.0 to 7.0.2. Users can update to versions 5.2, 6.0.4 or 7.0.3 via the software's built-in automatic update or via a manual download from Adobe's site.

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