Blog

Mail servers are major target for malicious email attacks, security experts have warned.

With businesses of all types becoming increasingly reliant on the internet and electronic communication, unsolicited email is a growing threat.

The security industry to protect against viruses, worms and phishing scams is booming as firms of all sizes look to protect their revenue streams.

‘Mail is a major channel for the distribution of malicious software,’ said Jeff Aliber, senior director of product marketing at security specialist Kaspersky Lab.

‘One targeted attack can reap significant losses to an organisation and the various elements of the ecosystem in which it operates.’

Kaspersky has just launched its new security package for the 2007 Microsoft Exchange Server.

It is likely to have no shortage of customers as businesses take a growing interest in electronic security.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Mozilla has said its latest web browser version of Firefox would make changes to the way people conduct their online searches.

Firefox 3, which is still going through its third stage of beta testing, will combine searching and bookmarking features through the URL bar as well as offline working.

If a user wanted to search for magnets for example by typing it into the URL bar, a list of sites previously visited by the user would show up and offline working would allow users to retrieve pertinent data once an internet connection was lost.

Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, told BBC World Service’s Digital Planet programme: “In terms of features, we’ve tried very hard not to bloat the interface but to keep it simple, the way people like it, and to have new things appear when you need them.”

Firefox is currently the second most popular browser with 12 per cent of the sector, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remains number one.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

One year after the release of Internet Explorer 7 the first information about IE8 has been published: on the IE weblog it was announced that it will be called IE8 (not a surprise, really). It’s still unknown which features will be included, but it’s clear that Microsoft is listening carefully to the needs of web developers. They are also feeling the heat from Opera, which has sued Microsoft over proprietary features in IE. However, based on our own web statistics and those of W3Schools, it seems that IE6 is still more popular than IE7, so unfortunately it will take a while before we can optimize applications for IE7, let alone IE8.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Microsoft warned companies on Monday that a flaw in the way Windows searches for Web proxies could allow an attacker the ability to reroute traffic through a malicious server.

The security issues occur when a Windows computer attempts to find a proxy server using Microsoft’s Web Proxy Automatic Discovery (WPAD) technology and the organization’s domain name starts at the third level or deeper, such as somecompany.co.jp, the software giant stated in an advisory. The WPAD search first attempts to find the server using the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN), and if it doesn’t find the server will try the next higher level of the domain name. For example, a search for a proxy server in somecompany.co.jp will look for servername.somecompany.co.jp and then move on to servername.co.jp, which could be a malicious server outside the company’s network.

“At this time, we are not aware of attacks attempting to use the reported vulnerability, but we will continue to track this issue,” Tim Rains, a spokesman for the Microsoft Security Response Center, said on the teams’ blog. “The advisory contains several mitigations that customers can use to help protect themselves from attackers.”

Read more

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

About £3 billion of investment could be being thrown away by British small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on sites that have little search engine presence.

This is according to a new study conducted by Microsoft’s adCenter unit, which suggested that not enough time and money is being devoted to effective search marketing strategies, leading to little visibility for SMEs’ websites.

Although more than three-quarters of SMEs have experienced a surge in sales as a direct resulting of making sure their sites show up in search results, 44 per cent of respondents said they found search marketing too time consuming.

A further 56 per cent said they thought it was too expensive a process, while 33 per cent cited complexity as an off-putting factor.

‘UK SMEs are missing a trick by not investing in search marketing campaigns,’ commented Nigel Leggatt, Microsoft adCenter’s marketing manager, according to vnunet.com.

‘In today’s world, just having a website is not enough.’

The Search Marketing Expo is set to take place in London on November 15th and 16th to advise marketers on how to improve their campaigns and boost site visitor numbers as a result.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Search engine giant Google has announced that it is to allow developers to create applications based on its own open system.

The OpenSocial system will enable developers to come up with applications, which will potentially be able to be used across a number of different social networking websites, using three application programming interfaces.

Google’s new initiative follows in the footsteps of Facebook’s highly popular system, where developers can create numerous applications that users can install on their profile pages.

About a dozen OpenSocial partners have been signed up by Google so far, including Friendster, Orkut and LinkedIn.

‘The distribution message is really useful for developers in getting their applications spread across multiple sites,’ Google product manager Joe Kraus told eWeek.

Google was recently trumped by Microsoft in the race to secure a stake in Facebook.

Microsoft eventually paid $240 million (£115 million) for a 1.6 per cent holding, valuing Facebook at $15 billion.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!