Internet gambling ads aren't the only things bedeviling Yahoo in terms of litigation: The Web portal/search giant has been hit with a potential class action suit accusing it of sheltering anonymous users who harass message board users electronically. Filed Aug. 4 in Los Angeles, the suit by attorney Stephen Galton came after Yahoo refused to give him the name of message board posters Galton believes harassed him. Yahoo has yet to comment on the action, but Galton is seeking others to join him in the suit, posting his own message board comment that reportedly challenged an abusive posting and touched off what he called a "barrage of harassing, defamatory and abusive messages" from his original correspondent and other board users.
At least one analyst thinks the revived and short-lived MyDoom bug won't really hurt you anymore – but its descendants just might. CNET.com analyst Robert Vamosi says MyDoom.m may have had a short shelf life – it disabled some major search engines, though only long enough for the engines to trace and stop it – but it was one of a series of "test viruses" he says were written to test what might work and what won't work. "MyDoom.m and events such as the July 27, 2004 distributed denial-of-service attack that targeted DoubleClick and last month's Akamai attack make it clear, I think, that crackers are attempting to take down the Internet," Vamosi wrote in a new analysis. "Of course, they won't. The Internet links too many different types of computers and is far too robust to fail entirely. Nonetheless, popular sites such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Apple can go dark, and I predict we'll see more attacks like this in the coming months."
But hack defense is becoming a more acute issue these days, and one company thinks they have a pretty good way of shoring it up a little further, at least as far as the wireless Internet is concerned: stealth wallpaper, a kind that stops Wi-Fi signals escaping from a source without blocking mobile phone signals, developed by British defense contractor British Aerospace. "The technology is designed to stop outsiders gaining access to a secure network by using Wi-Fi networks casually set up by workers at the office," says New Scientist. "... [I]t is... the work of moments... for an outsider to breach [a] company's computer security using the Wi-Fi connection. Unless the Wi-Fi base station is protected by security measures that most amateur users would not bother to set up, it gives anyone up to 100 meters away the chance to bypass the corporate firewall and wirelessly hack straight into the network." BAE's anti-Wi-Fi wallpaper, the publication said, is made from a 0.1-millimetre-thick sheet of kapton, the same plastic used to make flexible printed circuit boards in lightweight portable gadgets like camcorders. The kapton is coated on each side with a thin film of copper – the element used to shield radar antennae from warships or aircraft.
Speaking of defense, no one much beyond IBM, DaimlerChrysler, Novell, and AutoZone will have to worry about defending themselves against SCO Group litigation involving Linux. The company says they'll concentrate for now on the incumbent litigation with IBM, Novell, and AutoZone, with chief executive Darl McBride saying the results of those cases will determine whether or how SCO goes forward with future litigation. SCO contends Linux uses its Unix intellectual property elements and wants to establish and exert its control over Unix. McBride insists SCO can win the litigation.
Microsoft wants to establish and exert a bigger foothold in the popular instant messaging market, and to that end it launched a beta test version of MSN Web Messenger Aug. 4. This is aimed at giving MSN Messenger users IM service with the kind of remote access available to competing IM service users – like America Online and Yahoo – for several years. A full release is expected later in the year, with the beta version mostly aimed at gaining feedback from users, Microsoft said.
