Every month in our 200 OK newsletter we highlight industry trends in a section we call "HTTP Bytes". Here are some links of note from our Port80 November e-mail chatter:
This month's required reading is Hacking: Fight Back from this month's issue of TechNet Magazine:
> The first installment, "Anatomy of a Hack":
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2005/01/AnatomyofaHack/default.aspx
> And the series index:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/#topic1
Everybody knows you can buy a domain name, but did you know that the .net registry is up for sale? Makes us wish we'd had the foresight to trademark the "http" in HTTP Bytes!
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/111504dotnet.html?net
A subject near and dear to our hearts, here's a good article on Server 2003 performance tuning:
http://www.newsandtech.com/issues/2004/11-04/ot/11-04_goodman.htm
Microsoft is targeting smaller hosting providers with its new version 3.0 of Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting:
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3436921
(Did we mention that HTTP compression can work wonders for your margin in the ultra-competitive hosting industry?)
For all of you on the other side of the pond, Microsoft has also been busy talking with the European IT community about their security concerns and strategies...
http://www.noticias.info/Asp/aspComunicados.asp?nid=38871&src=0
Netcraft's November Web server survey actually agrees with us on something: that Web server market shares have remained relatively unchanged:
http://www.serverwatch.com/stats/netcraft/article.php/3430741
Zombies? Oh I love zombie movies...have you seen Shaun of the Dead yet? And Phish, yeah that was a great rock band, shame they broke up. Oh, different "zombies" & "phish"...my bad.
http://www.developer.com/security/article.php/3435701
R2-D2? Oh, I loved that little robot in Star Wars! Oh, just R2. And we have to wait a year for it?!
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/nt/2004/1115nt1.html
(We might actually see R2-D2 before R2!)
A great interview with one of the biggest voices in IT security, Stuart McClure, author of Hacking Exposed and a VP at McAfee.
http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&lid=1&sid=57287
Getting back to the hacking basics, apparently a growing number of IT pros have taken up the hobby of picking locks...
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/110804widernetlocks.html
Meanwhile, this Security Penetration Tester gets paid to pick locks (of the digital kind)...
http://www.biosmagazine.co.uk/op.php?id=183
Fasten your seat belts...Morris, the world's first computer worm, just got his driver's license!
http://news.com.com/16+candles+for+first+Internet+worm/2100-7349_3-5438291.html
Our favorite quasi-paranoid rant this month comes from U.S. congressman Tom Davis, who warns us that terrorists may try to disrupt the world's power grids and other critical infrastructure with a virus or other computer attack...
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=615531
While were on the subject of the US government and computer security, we came across this in the September Harper's Magazine Index:
"Access code to the computer controls of the U.S. nuclear-tipped missile arsenal between 1968 and 1976 : 0000000"
On that note, see you next month!
Port80 Software