Larry Seltzer

I have to admit upfront that Ive never been enamored of the One Laptop Per Child project. I think computers are way down the list of assistance needed in the countries targeted by this program. Still, some very smart people have put a lot of sincere, hard work into it, and its always interesting to […]

Why will you love Safari for Windows? One reason, according to the Safari Web site, is that “Apple engineers designed Safari to be secure from day one.” I guess were at Day 0 now, because no program in my experience has had a more brutal first few hours on the Internet than Safari for Windows. […]

Its no surprise that people at Dell were bothered by my column two weeks ago about “crapware” on their systems. They responded in e-mail. What the hey, Ill include their entire e-mail from Anne Camden of Dells Corporate Communications: “I guess you havent been to Dell.com in a while to see how customers now have […]

We know from court decisions in the last few years in Virginia and California that its OK for third parties (anywhere in the world) to hack into your computer to hunt for kiddie porn. The police encourage them and the courts look the other way. But what about the police? A recent F-Secure blog by […]

Its SOP when you buy a new OEM PC: First, you install all the updates to Windows and Office since your system was built (not as big a problem as it used to be), then you delete all the garbage your OEM preloaded with Windows on your computer. This software, often called “crapware” or “crapplets” […]

If you havent been under a rock for the last couple of years, then you know that a major problem has developed with numerous exploits of subtle vulnerabilities in the old, pre-2007 Microsoft Office file formats. The usual scenario is that we find out about them after a “targeted attack,” probably an attempt to compromise […]

There has been a lot of action on the ICANN site and blog in the last couple of days. First, it was announced that a deal has been struck with Registerfly that will make all domains, even those protected by their anonymous registration service, available to registrants. Click here for some background on the problems […]

I was excited when I began reading a recent research paper by a group of people at Google on Web-based malware. As the paper says, Google has an interesting position with respect to the problem. But it doesnt seem to me that their research adds much thats helpful. Of course, they need to get up […]

Hows NAC working for you? Are you even implementing or planning for it? Depending on whom you talk to, youll hear that network access control is either dead or its being widely studied and implemented. The good news story says that compliance, SOX in particular, is the main force driving implementations. This makes sense to […]

Symantec is reporting on a Trojan horse that mimics the Windows activation interface. What they are calling Trojan.Kardphisher doesnt do most of the technical things that Trojan horses usually do; its a pure social engineering attack, aimed at stealing credit card information. In a sense, its a standalone phishing program. Once you reboot your PC […]