News briefs: SBC to retain AT&T name, report says

Network World
October 10, 2005 12:08 AM ET

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Although no official word has come from the company, press reports continue to become more emphatic regarding SBC's apparent intent to use the AT&T corporate and brand name instead of its own once its acquisition of the 130-year-old storied franchise has cleared regulatory hurdles. USA Today has reported that the decision to go with AT&T has been reached by SBC executives, although the newspaper said its sources indicated that SBC might retain the SBC brand in some capacity, perhaps within the 13 states it now provides with local phone service. The FCC is expected to take up the SBC/AT&T deal at its Oct. 28 meeting. SBC CEO Ed Whitacre had indicated earlier that he was leaning toward retaining the AT&T moniker.
Users of Symantec's AntiVirus Scan Engine are being advised to upgrade their software after the company revealed a critical security bug in the product. The flaw could theoretically let an attacker take control of an affected system, according to Symantec. Because of a bug in the Scan Engine's administrative interface, it's possible for an attacker to take over a system running the software by creating a specially crafted HTTP request, Symantec says. The attacker would need to gain access to an exposed administrative port on the server for this attack, the report said. Users of versions 4.0 and 4.3 of the Scan Engine product are advised to upgrade to Version 4.3.12. Symantec was not the only security vendor last week to report a major security bug in its products. Kaspersky Labs also reported a similarly critical flaw in its Antivirus Library, which is used by a wide range of the company's anti-virus products.
Check Point Software last week announced the acquisition of Sourcefire for $225 million. Sourcefire was founded in 2001 by Martin Roesch to commercialize the open source intrusion-detection system he had created and fostered through communal input. In a conference call with Wall Street analysts last week, Check Point CEO Gil Shwed said Sourcefire was not profitable, though he expected to see that change next year. Sourcefire might contribute up to 8% of Check Point's revenue, he said. Check Point plans to "keep the Snort technology open," he said. He added that Check Point was impressed by Sourcefire's Defense Center event-management console and the Real-time Network Awareness sensor for analyzing security threats by reviewing internal network traffic flows. Sourcefire has 140 employees, and Wayne Jackson, Sourcefire's CEO, said plans call for Roesch and other Sourcefire employees to join Check Point.
Craig Conway, ousted as PeopleSoft's CEO, is taking a small step back into the CRM software market - and another jab at his nemesis, Oracle. Hosted CRM provider Salesforce.com said last week that Conway is joining its board of directors. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff praised Conway as a veteran executive whose strong operational skills and knowledge of the CRM industry will benefit Salesforce.com. The company is an increasingly fierce rival of Oracle, which acquired PeopleSoft last year, soon after PeopleSoft's board dismissed Conway. Conway has stayed away from the IT industry since leaving PeopleSoft one year ago, at the height of its resistance to Oracle's hostile-takeover bid.
A unit of Sprint Nextel last week sued Vonage and another VoIP provider, alleging that the companies are infringing on its patents. Sprint says the companies violated seven patents on technology for processing and delivering packetized voice and data, including VoIP. Its suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas seeks an injunction against further infringement and unspecified monetary damages. In addition to Vonage, the suit names Voiceglo Holdings. Vonage is one of the biggest VoIP service providers in the U.S., with more than 1 million active lines, according to the company. Voiceglo also provides packet-based phone service over the Internet. Vonage and Voiceglo were not immediately available for comment.
VeriSign last week announced it has bought the network infrastructure that underlies key services for bloggers from owner Scripting News for $2.3 million. The infrastructure includes Weblogs.com, which shows a list of recently updated blogs, and its "ping" server, which lets bloggers send notifications to one another when they update their blogs.