This week, security stayed firmly in the industry's collective consciousness, with a spate of worms, vulnerabilities and reports forcing IT professionals to take stock.
Australian CIOs, in particular, will be hanging their heads in shame after a recent Ernst and Young report revealed that 91 percent of Australian respondents experienced breaches, compared with just 75 percent globally. To make matters worse, 50 percent of the antipodean respondents believed they were more at risk from internal attacks, compared to 41 percent whose concern focussed on external threats.
On the worm front, a new variant of the Fbound worm wriggled into Australia from Japan, threatening to wreak havoc on our e-mail systems. However, anti-virus vendors downplayed its reach, stating that it was unlikely to do much damage in Australia because the industry is becoming smarter about e-mail management and protection.
Slightly more malicious than this -- in theory, but not practice -- was the MyLife worm which limped, rather than wriggled, into e-mail systems this week. Anti-virus vendors were not as excited about this worm, given that a flaw in its own code rendered it quite harmless once it hit in-boxes.
Offering a safe-guard against these, and other worms, was security vendor Cenzic, which introduced a new product this week. Cenzic's Hailstorm injects computer networks with randomly generated malicious code in order to build the necessary defenses against worm strikes, and attacks on vulnerabilities.
One such vulnerability reported this week managed to expose not only a flaw in open-source code, but also a flaw in Microsoft's aggressive stance against the open-source community. Early in the week, it was reported that a software-compression library used in all versions of Linux could leave the lion's share of systems based on the open-source operating system open to attack. Later in the week came the news that this flaw could also affect certain Microsoft products due to its use of open-source code. Is it time for a certain software giant to apologise for some of its anti-open source comments?
Speaking of apologies...
The ongoing saga of the so-called Hughes -cover-up" apparently reached a crescendo this week, as the man at the centre of the industry soap opera, Dr Ronald Gander, issued an apology to -anyone who feels they were misled by the initial advertisement". If the feedback ZDNet Australia has received over the incident is anything to go by, the apology is cold comfort to those who feel they've been deliberately ripped-off. Only time will tell if the punters at large accept the apology or take the matter further.
Telstra managed to find its way into the media spotlight again this week, although this time, it wasn't entirely for negative reasons. The telco announced late this week that it would begin phoning its broadband users with explanations as to why its high-speed Internet service has been experiencing extended downtime.
While many of its customers may view this gesture as -too little, too late", Telstra still deserves some brownie points for finally abandoning its worn-out -we didn't do it" line in favour of some good old-fashioned accountability.
A sign that the telco hasn't completely ditched its habit of shirking blame, however, comes courtesy of a report released this week over the death of a Victorian schoolboy , whose parents have cited laziness on Telstra's part as the main contributing factor to the tragedy. The report, paid for by Telstra and compiled by a third party auditor, accepted that Telstra had played a part in the incident, but handed most of the blame to Mother Nature, whose inclement weather conditions allegedly hampered the repair of the family's phone lines.
Proving that it's not immune to online security breaches, Telstra's online WhitePages were hacked this week, as a code pirate redirected some visitors to a site which has been referred to as a -granny porn portal" . There's still no word on how many users actually complained about the anomaly, but the incident still proved to be a great source of embarrassment to the embattled telecommunications giant who has only just started to recover from revelations that one of its own staff members was busted messing with another's Web site.
Capping the week off was an example of the technology marketing juggernaut at it's best (or worst, depending on your point-of-view). After many months of hype and millions of dollars of advertising dollars, Microsoft finally launched its offering in the consumer games market - the Xbox . Keen to get their hands on Microsoft's answer to PlayStation 2 and the impending GameCube from Nintendo, punters lined up outside retail outlets in the wee hours of Thursday morning to secure their very own little black box, with many viewing such commitment as a valid reason to take a sickie from work the next day.
