Sean Michael Kerner

From the “Freedom is about more than just code” files: Debian is on the verge of its next major release codenamed “Lenny” – but before it gets released, Debian developers will have to vote on it. Debian developers have until 23:59:59 UTC on Saturday, December 21st, 2008 to vote on six key issues collectively titled […]

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is updating its Mac OS X to version 10.5.6 with a security patch update that fixes at least 21 security vulnerabilities ranging from a kernel fix to an update for Adobe Flash Player. US-CERT has issued a Technical Cyber Security Alert on the National Cyber Alert System warning about the severity of […]

Networking giant Cisco today revealed its take on the current state of IT security. The major trends? Vulnerabilities are on the rise, with blended and virtualization attacks becoming increasingly the norm. According to Cisco, as of the end of October 2008, over 5971 IT vulnerabilities had been tallied, which is a year over year increase […]

From the “some technologies never die” files: The open source Apache Foundation is updating the newest iteration of its HTTP Web server to Apache HTTP Server 2.2.11. The update is a bug and stability fix and (so far at least) does not include any reported vulnerabilities or vuln fixes. The actual changes list details what […]

From the “lessons Microsoft should learn from open source” files: Windows users have a real problem when it comes to updates. Sure they have Microsoft Update and certainly many applications include their own update mechanisms. Yet despite that, there seems to be a problem with Windows users actually updating. So allow me to make a […]

Did Microsoft miss a vulnerability in its latest Internet Explorer (IE) patch roundup — or several? Late Thursday, Microsoft updated its advisory on a zero-day vulnerability affecting its IE 7 Web browser. The updated advisory now indicates that older and newer versions of IE are also at risk from the XML zero-day flaw. As a […]

Commentary: Count me among the surprised to see Google’s Chrome browser officially out of beta yesterday. Sure, I had heard the rumors ahead of the news, and they didn’t make sense to me. So here’s why I think Google’s Chrome needs to stay in beta. It has not gone through the same process of development […]

The Free Software Foundation (FSF), the group behind the popular GPL open source license, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Cisco and wants an injunction against the networking giant. The suit, filed in a federal court in New York today, alleges that Cisco’s (NASDAQ: CSCO) Linksys consumer network equipment divisions violated the license terms […]

From the “read Andy Patrizio’s story first then come back” files: So Google Chrome is finally out of beta. From a detailed point of view this means that my version of Chrome (stable) jumped from 0.4.154.31 all the way to non-beta 1.0.154.36 version. That’s quite a jump. But on the dev-channel version of Chrome, I’m […]

From the “yes they’re still alive and kicking” files: Slackware Linux – yes that Slackware, the original Linux distro itself is out now with Slackware version 12.2. And the big top line item – it’s now exclusively using the Linux 2.6 kernel! Yes I know that seem almost anachronistic considering that the 2.6 kernel has […]

Some breakups are more expensive than others. Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) today announced that its privatization deal, at one time valued at nearly US$50 billion, will not go forward. As a result, it said it’s now seeking a US$1.2 billion breakup fee from its would-be purchasers. The Canadian Telecom giant, which has phone, Internet, wireless, […]

Barely a day after Microsoft updated its Internet Explorer browser to patch no less than four separate vulnerabilities, a new flaw has emerged that could allow remote code execution. In a public advisory issued late Wednesday, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) confirmed that it is investigating public reports of attacks take advantage of the new IE vulnerability, […]