An Opera Update And A Farewell to Netscape

A new version of the Opera Web browser fixes at least three security vulnerabilities in the software. Separately, a security patch from AOL marks the final update for the venerable Netscape browser.
The latest update from AOL will be the last for Netscape: AOL officially ends support for it on March 1, meaning it has no further plans to ship security updates for Netscape or otherwise maintain the browser.
While Netscape's share of the browser market today is practically negligible compared to that of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera, this final version is a bit of an unceremonious goodbye for a browser that helped introduce so many people to the World Wide Web back in the mid-1990s. In 1998, Netscape released the source code for the Netscape Communicator browser. By doing so, it helped formed the basis of the Mozilla.org project -- an open source initiative that laid the groundwork for Firefox (For more background on the storied relationship between Netscape, AOL and Mozilla, see these links here). [...]


Read More ...
Brian Krebs on Computer Security. The Washington Post Company.

When Blocking Porn Isn't Enough

Last year, Security Fix looked at a free service that helps parents and other network administrators block adult Web sites for all of the PCs they control, without installing any software. Now, the company and community that built that service has expanded it to allow administrators to filter a wide range of online content, from hate speech sites and social networking forums to sites promoting drugs and alcohol.

The service comes from OpenDNS, the company responsible for Phishtank.com, a community-based effort that collects data on phishing sites. Phishtank's data about scam sites is fed to anti-phishing features built into Web browsers like Firefox and Opera. [...]

Read More ...

Brian Krebs on Computer Security. The Washington Post Company.

YouTube Censorship Sheds Light on Internet Trust

If you happened to be searching for a video at YouTube.com Sunday afternoon, there's a good chance your browser told you it was unable to locate the entire Web site. Turns out, much of the world was blocked from getting to YouTube for part of the weekend due to a censorship order passed by the government of Pakistan, which was apparently upset that YouTube refused to remove digital images many consider blasphemous to Islam.

According to wire reports, Pakistan ordered all in-country Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to YouTube.com, complaining that the site contained controversial sketches of the Prophet Mohammed which were republished by Danish newspapers earlier this month. The people running the country's ISPs obliged, but evidently someone at Pakistan Telecom - the primary upstream provider for most of the ISPs in Pakistan - forgot to flip the switch that prevented those blocking instructions from propagating out to the rest of the Internet.

To understand how a decision by bureaucrats in Islamabad could prevent the rest of the world from accessing arguably one of the Web's most popular destinations, it may first help to accept the basic notion that when the Internet was designed decades ago, everyone on the network pretty much knew and trusted one another. While the close-knit family of individuals responsible for keeping the Internet humming along has since grown into a larger community, it is still a fairly small community based largely on trust and everyone playing nice with one another. [...]

Read more ...
Brian Krebs on Computer Security. The Washington Post Company.