In today`s technology roundup: Comcast threatened by teenage hackers, final Skynet satellite to launch, Safari flaw worse than first thought, and Sun offers SPARC for the public.
Comcast threatened by teenage hackers
Comcast lost control of its Web mail portal for more than five hours late on Wednesday night, when hackers unleashed chaos on the site, says eNews.
The hackers, two groups from the Kryogeniks, redirected the site traffic, shut down the service and did not allow users to access their personal e-mails. Two hundred domain names were breached by the two groups.
Whenever the site was accessed, the user was directed towards another site where the following text message appeared: “KRYOGENIKS Defiant and EBK RoXed COMCAST sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven.”
Final Skynet satellite to launch
The third and final military communications satellite of the £3.6 billion Skynet 5 programme is set to launch into space today, says Computing.co.uk.
The system will provide secure military communications for the Ministry of Defence. The first two satellites entered space in April and November last year.
They will provide a high-bandwidth secure communication network for voice, data and video traffic.
Safari flaw worse than first thought
Microsoft warns that a previously-disclosed flaw in Apple`s Safari browser could have dire consequences for Windows users, says IT World.
The Safari bug, originally disclosed on 15 May by security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani, allows attackers to litter a victim`s desktop with executable files, an attack known as "carpet bombing".
It turns out that if this flaw is exploited in combination with a second unpatched bug in Internet Explorer (IE), attackers can run unauthorised software on a victim`s computer, according to Aviv Raff, a security researcher. Raff says he originally reported the IE flaw to Microsoft more than a year ago, and then told the company about how it could be combined with the carpet bombing bug just over a week ago.
Sun offers SPARC for the public
Sun Microsystems is looking to add some more spark to its Microelectronics division, reports eWeek.
In the last year, Sun created the microelectronics unit to not only develop the company`s own microprocessor technology, but also as a way to license and sell its silicon technology to other vendors and customers.
Sun said a new partner, Themis Computer, would buy Sun`s UltraSPARC T2 processors, formerly called Niagara 2, for a new line of blade systems called T2BC. Themis, which specialises in selling hardware to the military, other government agencies and telecommunication companies, already licenses Sun`s Solaris operating system.
