Cisco has raised its offer for videoconferencing company Tandberg to $3.4 billion, IDG News Service reports.
The previous offer was $3.0 billion, and Cisco had struggled to convince the shareholders that it was a fair price.
Obviously, Cisco's raise indicates that the company takes videoconfernecing pretty seriously, and that TelePresence is not enough.
It's a full moon here at Network World, with Halloween stuff bursting forth from every page. Michael Cooney collected a dozen projects that seem to have been inspired by mad scientists. Keith Shaw pulls out the spooky sound effects for the annual podcast, "True Tales of Terrifying Security." Read more
I'm not sure there's any such thing as a small Patch Tuesday. Microsoft this week released 13 patches, many of them critical and many of them getting strong reactions among experts. Read more
Network World's John Fontana writes:
Lotus Software GM Bob Picciano has grown tired of the "hot wind" blowing out of Redmond carrying claims that Exchange is displacing Notes and is singling out CEO Steve Ballmer and COO Kevin Turner as the main culprits spreading "ridiculous and fabricated" information.
Jim Duffy reports that Verizon has filed court documents opposing the sale of Nortel's enterprise business to Avaya.
Verizon fears that support contracts will end and cut off key customers, he writes. More importantly, Verizon says, "Communications networks critical to the operation of the federal government, and the defense, safety, health and security of the American public are at risk."
Read the full article.
Network World's Jim Duffy writes that Cisco has patched a software hole that could lead to a denial-of-service attack on routers and switches.
From the article:
The vulnerability allows attackers to manipulate the state of TCP connections, according to a Cisco security advisory released this week. By manipulating the state of a TCP connection, an attacker could force the TCP connection to remain in a long-lived state, possibly indefinitely.
Verizon Business is testing 100 Gbps links, with the intent of deploying the technology in its backbone next year. Now, Brad Reed reports that Qwest is also upgrading its backbone to 100G. The company says the project will continue throughout 2010.
Analysts recently noted that 100G Ethernet equipment could go to market faster than 40G.
You may remember that researchers last year cracked Wi-Fi's WPA encryption - which was supposed to be vastly improved over the previous standard, WEP.
But Japanese researchers "have taken the attack to a new level," cracking the code in a minute.
The good news, according to IBM, is that spam-based phishing attacks are down noticeably. The bad news is that this probably means attackers are just shifting to other methods for stealing personal data that are more effective.
Russian criminals are apparently the biggest believers in phishing, as Russia is the top country of origin for that type of attack.
Ellen Messmer has details.
Network World's John Fontana notes that Microsoft's newly updated System Center Virtual Machine Manager won't be in the company's booth at the VMworld show next week.
Why not? Microsoft is saying that it's VMware's show, and VMware has set rules that forbid Microsoft from showing the software. VMware, however, says it has no plans to enforce the restriction.
So what's Microsoft doing?
Yesterday, John Fontana reported that the vulnerability in the WINS service on Windows server was being exploited, and now researchers have found that the attacks are coming from China, despite some troubles with the undersea cables linking China to other parts of the world.
This week, blogger Jamey Heary marvels at just how easy it is for him to get his passwords reset. With information that could be found on an airline boarding pass, the gates can be opened.
More details here.
In one of the more exciting Black Hat conferences in recent memory, researchers revealed holes in everything from SSL to Microsoft software to the iPhone's SMS. Here are some of the best stories from the conference: Read more
More holes found in SSL
The truth about new SSL attacks
New features can open up Cisco IOS to hackers
One of the editors here recently started receiving spam that doesn't really look like spam. It looks like a simple request for information, and there's no link to click. Here's a sample:
Do you have to dial a 1 on a wireless phone?
Since you have experience, I was hoping you could give me some clues as to what you look out for.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Thankyou,
Tony
Seems harmless enough, right? And on its own, you might even be tempted to respond in a helpful way. Until you get this one a couple of hours later: Read more
UPDATE: Ellen Messmer has a full story here.
Symantec issued this warning regarding Adobe Acrobat PDF files:
Symantec Security Response recently came into possession of an Adobe Acrobat PDF file that is exploiting a vulnerability and, when opening, drops and executes a malicious binary onto a user’s system. The malicious PDF files are detected as Trojan.Pidief.G and the dropped files as Trojan Horse.
Read more
Botnets are emerging as the shadow network infrastructure of the Internet - the "botsphere," perhaps - one that is available for hire by spammers and others who would like to use a massive cloud-computing infrastructure for denial-of-service attacks and other shady dealings. Read more
We've heard a lot about the technologies - mainly Twitter - that Iranians have been using to communicate with each other and the rest of the world.
Now, Brad Reed looks at five of the technologies and techniques that the Iranian government uses to censor the Internet.
The IDG News Service is reporting that netbooks are flying off the shelves. Research firm DisplaySearch says 16 million netbooks shipped last year, and 32 million could ship this year.
Meanwhile, laptop shipments are expected to be flat, at 129 million.
This is all not very surprising, given the low price point of netbooks, at $300 to $500. But while you may be tempted, netbooks may not be for you.
You may know that Social Security numbers historically have been based in part on geographical location. But a new study suggests that with a little number-crunching, you can figure out someone's full SSN if you know their date and place of birth.
And before you say such information is as hard to come by as the SSN itself, consider what people put on their Facebook pages.
I recently wrote about Nortel's current woes, and how they could (at least in part) be traced back to its acquisition of Bay Networks. That got the attention of Nortel's current VP and GM of its enterprise group, John McHugh, who talked to Tim Greene about resurrecting the old Bay Networks - both the name and the energy. Read more
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