Microsoft to hand over Windows secrets to Samba team, Dec 21, 2007

Developers of open-source Samba software will find their work a little easier thanks to an agreement with Microsoft, signed Thursday, that will give them access to previously secret data on how the Windows operating system works.

Even criminals are branching out from the Windows operating system, eBay's security chief says.

The Nasdaq stock exchange has given The SCO Group Inc. a little more time to get its financial house in order.

Just days after a security researcher blasted its Java patching system, Sun Microsystems has issued a critical update to the consumer version of its Java software.

Red Hat Linux received a new level of security certification that should make the software appealing to government agencies.

Companies like Google that build their business on software such as Linux have a moral imperative to contribute back to the free software community, a prominent open-source advocate said Tuesday.

Users of the open-source Samba software are being urged to patch their code following the discovery of a critical bug in the file-and-print software.

'I'm still going to tell you [to buy] Windows, Windows, Windows,' says Microsoft's CEO

With Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite now being targeted by hackers, researchers at the French Ministry of Defense say users of the OpenOffice.org software may be at even greater risk from computer viruses.

More than a dozen technology companies, including IBM, Red Hat Inc. and Novell Inc., plan to support a new integrated server and desktop Linux standard being unveiled at next week's Linux Desktop Summit by the Free Standards Group (FSG).

Hoping to counter the public perception that the open-source Apache Web server is losing ground to Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Information Server (IIS), Linux advocate Bruce Perens has launched a free domain-parking service.

Hackers have released a sample code for a virus that could infect both Linux and Windows PCs.

The Norwegian hacker who was arrested, and ultimately exonerated, for reverse-engineering DVD copy protection has taken a job with Michael Robertson's latest venture, a digital music company called MP3tunes. Jon Lech Johansen, also known as DVD Jon, began work on Monday for the San Diego company, Robertson said Wednesday in an interview.

An Austrian hacker earned the dubious distinction of writing what are thought to be the first known viruses for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system. Written in July, the viruses take advantage of a new command shell, code-named Monad, that is included in the Windows Vista beta code.

The Mozilla Foundation has released a workaround for a critical buffer overflow vulnerability in the Firefox browser that was first made public early Friday.

Microsoft Corp. may be softening its rhetoric against Linux and open-source software, but that doesn't mean the company is ever going to be able to hire Eric Raymond.

A small Utah-based company has developed a portable Linux server that can be plugged into the USB (Universal Serial Bus) port of a Windows PCs.

Hewlett-Packard this week plans to release Linux versions of its Virus Throttler security technology and ProLiant Essentials Intelligent Networking Pack, the company confirmed Friday.

IBM executives declined to comment on the company's use of Wine for this article, and while the software is mentioned occasionally on IBM's Web site, it is generally not endorsed as a tool for moving Windows desktops to Linux.

Open source advocate Bruce Perens has a new job. He's taken the role of vice president of developer relations and policy with open-source startup SourceLabs.