Sean Michael Kerner

From the ‘Flaws Without Fixes’ files: US-CERT is now warning against a potentially dangerous flaw in the SSL-VPN implementations from over two dozen vendors including industry giant Cisco. “Clientless SSL VPN products from multiple vendors operate in a way that breaks fundamental browser security mechanisms,” US-CERT warns. “An attacker could use these devices to bypass […]

Symbian, the OS used on a majority of the world’s mobile phones, is getting some new support in the latest version of Qt. That’s a move that could benefit both Symbian and Nokia, Qt’s owner and the OS’s chief backer. LinuxPlanet has the story. Nokia is ramping up development of its Qt open source user […]

Think open source security scanner Metasploit isn’t ready for the prime time in the enterprise? Rapid7 begs to differ. eSecurityPlanet details how Metasploit is now integrated into the latest version of NeXpose Enterprise Edition as Rapid7 looks to capture a bigger share of the market for enterprise vulnerability scanning. For many IT pros, the free, […]

From the ‘Unbelievable Exchange Rules‘ files: I’ve covered many of Cisco’s acquisitions over the last 7 years and I’ve never seen one like Tandberg.  Today Cisco revealed that they have 84 percent of the voting shares of Tandberg committed to the deal, which normally would be more than enough to complete any acquisition, in any […]

CentOS has earned no small amount of interest thanks to its pedigree — it’s based on the source code powering the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offering. Until now, CentOS has lacked the kind of commercial support that helped make RHEL popular among businesses, and hasn’t really been viewed as much of a rival. […]

From the ‘How Linux Vendors Make $‘ files: I wrote a story yesterday about CentOS (the Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone) getting commercial support from OpenLogic. One thing that isn’t in the posted story, that I’ve always been curious about, is why Red Hat itself doesn’t go after CentOS users in an effort to convert […]

Cisco’s keeping its efforts going strong to target the small and midsized business (SMB) segment, now resulting in its latest push: New products and services aimed at wireless networking and security options for small companies. And in a change for Cisco, it’s relying on Linux to do the heavy lifting. EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet.com has the story.

From the ‘Web Apps at Risk‘ files: Pligg, which is an open source attempt at a Digg-like social networking voting site application is being updated this week for some serious security vulnerabilities. As opposed to many other vendors/projects which typically release an update alongside security advisories, that’s not the case with the new Pligg 1.0.3 […]

From the ‘Linux Nomenclature‘ files: Among the bits of minutiae that I personally find entertaining about the Linux distribution release cycle is how different distros come up with their respective release names. Ubuntu with its ‘interesting’  animal inspired names like Dapper Drake and Karmic Koala gets its names from it’s Dictator-for-Life Mark Shuttleworth.  Rival Linux […]

What does building and maintaining Linux-based software appliances have to do with datacenter automation? A whole lot, according to appliance vendor rPath. Back in 2006, rPath jumpstarted the market for Linux appliance development, where the operating system and applications are built together for easier software deployment and management. As it turns out, the process and […]

From the ‘Still Working Today‘ files: While many organizations are winding down for the U.S Thanksgiving holiday, Mozilla is ramping with a new milestone development release of its open source Firefox web browser. Mozilla is planning on releasing Firefox 3.6 Beta 4 late today or early Thursday. The Beta 4 release follows the Beta 3 […]

Nortel today announced the winning bidder for its GSM and GSM-R wireless business units — a $103 million, all-cash joint bid from Swedish mobile vendor Ericsson and Austrian telecom Kapsch CarrierCom. GSM and GSM-R (GSM for railroads) are popular wireless technology standards that Nortel has been deploying with customers around the world. Nortel is set […]