Sean Michael Kerner

While Microsoft Windows is built by an army of the software giant’s paid engineers, Linux is written by a community of contributors. Yet joining that community isn’t as easy e-mailing a piece of code to, say, Linus Torvalds, the OS’s originator. That fact has long dogged the Linux community, supporters say, fostering a belief that […]

From the “adios 1GbE” files: 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) has been available for some time, but is is only now that it is really hitting full stride.  According to a new report from market research firm Dell’Oro Group, for the second quarter of 2008 10GbE switch revenues exceeded $600 million. Over 250,000 10GbE switch […]

Spam is once again on the rise, and this time it’s apparently being fueled by spam vendors that can’t scale. That’s the accusation being leveled by Google, which today revealed some surprising new spam figures. The fight against spam has increased in traction for Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) with the acquisition of vendor Postini for $625 […]

Linux vendor Canonical is working hard to get more software and hardware certifications for its Ubuntu Linux distribution. In its latest round of partnerships, Canonical is expanding its relationship with IBM (NYSE: IBM), Alfresco, Zimbra, Likewise, Centrify and others. Yet though Canonical is trying valiantly to show momentum in its alliances, at least two notable […]

From the “we’re not just a search company anymore” files: Cryptography and open source are being joined together in a new effort called Keyczar. The project is being hosted on Google Code under the Apache 2.0 license and includes both Java and Python implementation (nope no PHP or C++). According to Google’s Steve Weiss: Keyczar […]

Did Dan Kaminsky save the Internet? Yes and no. If you were at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, you might have caught a glimpse of him parading around the press room. (In the limited time I was there I was avoiding being hacked by French journalists/hackers). There he was, like a conquering […]

Mozilla is moving forward on a number of initiatives to ensure that Internet security improves. Among the efforts is a new approach for determining and measuring security metrics. With more than 170 million users, Mozilla has a large footprint of Web surfers using its Firefox browser. As such it’s in an enviable position to help […]

From the “don’t talk don’t tell” files: A Federal Judge successfully prevented a pair of MIT students from presenting a paper at Defcon on Sunday that could have exposed flaws in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) system. According the the AP  MBTA argued that they weren’t properly notified of the flaws that the students […]

LAS VEGAS — Journalists hacking other journalists? Say it ain’t so. I’m never a fan of press rooms and tend to spend most of my time in sessions which is a good thing this year for me at Black Hat. There were a pair of French journalists who actually sniffed out journalist user/pswrd on the […]

From the “he’s not just an evil Disney character anymore” files: LAS VEGAS — We’ve known that image files could potentially be malicious for some time, but there is now the potential for a super blended attack that could cause widespread damage. In a session today at Black Hat Ernst and Young security researcher Nate […]

From the “more cool session titles” files: LAS VEGAS — Microsoft hacker (that’s right Microsoft?!)  Bryan Sullivan has got some news for Web Services developers : REST can be a panacea for attackers. Sullivan’s official title is Security Program Manager on the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) team at Microsoft and he spent an hour at […]

LAS VEGAS — Millions of people use social networks globally, and many of them are potentially at risk to be exploited by hackers. Security researchers Nathan Hamiel and Shawn Moyer took the stage at Black Hat here today to explain to attendees how easily various social networks could be compromised. With attacks ranging from the […]