Technical Tidbits™

Posts Tagged ‘Yahoo’

I am doing the happy dance of joy today!

Although the article – a financial one – states:

Microsoft needs to revive these franchises with Windows 7 at a time when it is increasingly under attack by cloud-based productivity apps from Google and others. But Windows 7 should give Microsoft some cover as corporations go through their robotic upgrade exercises. The company recorded $1.5 billion in deferral revenue associated with Windows 7, which pretty much covers the gap from last year.

First, this article is making the assumption that corporations will go through their robotic upgrade exercise. There’s no guarantee that businesses who have been hit by the recession anyway, and resisted Vista upgrades are going to jump on the Windows 7 bandwagon any time soon!

Secondly, it states that the deferral revenue associated with Windows 7 covers the gap from last year. If Windows 7 doesn’t catch on – as it’s appearing is the case – then what about the losses this year?

The next section in this article discusses the online revenue and losses. Another good sign that people are fed up with Microsoft’s hype, false advertising, and poorly made products.

Looking at Microsoft’s online business, once again the loss in that business ($480 million) almost matched its revenues ($490 million). We saw the same trend last quarter, as Microsoft continues to invest heavily in this business via Bing and other products. Online advertising revenues were down 3 percent (at least that was better than Yahoo’s 12 percent decline), and search ads from Bing saw a “mid single digit” increase.

So, not only are users not buying into the whole “Bing is better” hype, it seems like those of us who used to trust Yahoo are abandoning it by the dozens!

I applaud all the end-users out there who have helped to make this happy news! You have restored my faith in you! You are a very wise group of people!

And know that you made my day a BEAUTIFUL one! And thanks to TechCrunch for publishing the article!

To view the full TechCrunch article: Microsoft Reports Pre-Windows 7 Declines For Revenues And Profits. No More Excuses..

I was getting ready to write a post on the news of the month – so far, that is – regarding the hijacking of Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL passwords – to name a few.

According to the article: Gmail and Yahoo Mail passwords exposed | Security Central – InfoWorld:

Google’s Gmail and Yahoo’s Mail were also targeted by a large-scale phishing attack, perhaps the same one that harvested at least 10,000 passwords from Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail, according to a report by the BBC.

…..The BBC also said it has seen a list of some 20,000 hijacked e-mail accounts; the list included accounts from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Comcast and EarthLink. The latter two are major U.S. Internet service providers.

Now, you’ll notice that the article states in the quote above, and then later reports by Google and Microsoft, that this hijacking was part of a large scale phishing attempt.

But wait! Not so fast Google and Microsoft!

Mary Landesman, a senior security researcher at San Francisco-based ScanSafe thinks there’s another explanation. And frankly, I have to agree with her!

In a follow-up article in Info World |Researcher Refutes Google’s Microsoft’s accounts of hijacked passwords Ms. Landesman states her case:

Landesman based her speculation on an accidental find in August of a cache of usernames and passwords, including those from Windows Live ID, the umbrella log-on service that Microsoft offers users to access Hotmail, Messenger and a slew of other online services.

That cache contained about 5,000 Windows Live ID username/password combinations, said Landesman, who found the trove while researching a new piece of malware. “From the organization [of that cache] and what the data looked like in raw form, I think it’s more likely that this latest was the result of keylogging or data theft, not phishing,” Landesman said.

She also goes on to point out that the sheer numbers of compromised accounts are beyond the norm for a phishing attack of any kind.

And to be honest with you, I agree with Ms. Landesman. The numbers are just too high to be indicative of a phishing attack – large scale or otherwise.

As I’ve stated in the recent Radio Show on Frontline-Results, in preparing course material for our security professionals course, I’ve demonstrated through a simple, and legal process called Google Hacking, that I’ve obtained files with personally identifying information from credit card numbers through social security numbers and CV numbers that are stored online – whether knowingly or unknowingly.  And our students will attest to that because they’ve found the same!

I don’t know how many times I need to repeat it, but you give your information away more than you know!

Either way, change your passwords to all your mail accounts!

Debbie Mahler

I was reading my Yahoo news this morning and came across an article that I wanted to share.

As you all know, we support Net Neutrality in all aspects of what the term means.

According to the report that I read,

The Washington Post and New York Times said the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, will announced the proposed rules in a speech Monday at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

The implications are that the FCC rules will restrict Internet Service Provider’s (ISP’s) from prohibiting or blocking bandwidth consumption by services and applications.

If this is true, this will stop the major ISP’s from blocking services like the free download sites that consume a lot of bandwidth like Torrent sites and other similar services.

As much as we hear from the ISP’s that they are concerned about keeping traffic flowing over the Internet fair for all their subscribers, remember that there are load balancing appliances and traffic monitoring devices that can be deployed to make sure the bandwidth is fair for all it’s users on a specific node.

What’s really behind the ISP’s refusal to allow the high bandwidth consuming applications? Money.

The U.S. is a society that runs on Capitalism. All major ISP’s are traded on the Stock Market. That means that they have shareholders they are accountable to and profits must be made or the CEO loses his/her job, the stocks fall, and the shareholders don’t get their dividend checks.

If an ISP can legally block the bandwidth hogs, they can then charge more for folks who want to pay for the service, and hence, more profits.

I’m not proposing that I know the answer to solving the problem of balance between providing a cost-effective consumer service to all, while still maintaining a high profit margin so that capitalism can continue to work.  I’m just explaining how it works and why for those who might not know. (Remember, I told you I was going to teach more!)

However, knowing what I do know about how networks work – including the huge ISP networks and the backbone to the Internet – I can see where it’s possible to adjust the flow of traffic to balance things out and keep the costs down with a bit of a capital investment by the ISPs.

If the FCC does rule in the favor of net neutrality, then the ISP CEO’s may have to ask the question of themselves and the shareholders, “How much profit is enough?”

And maybe, in this post-bailout economy, CEO’s of all industries should be asking that question.