IEEE sets standard for USB drive authentication

The IEEE has approved a new standard for the authentication of USB flash drives and other personal storage devices. The standard, IEEE 1667 'Standard Protocol for Authentication in Host Attachments of Transient Storage Devices', was developed to address information security concerns. Specifically, defining uniform authentication methods to validate devices when they are connected to a computer. ...more

Real patches three critical flaws

Real Networks has issued patches for three critical flaws in its Real Player media software. The flaws could let a malicious hacker create a skin file or a RealMedia File that could cause a stack overflow which could have allowed an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a customer's machine. Fixes are available for the Windows, Mac, Linux and Enterprise versions of Real Player from http://service. ...more

New machine detects tiredness

Feeling a little run down? Thinking of knocking off early? Well a new device developed by Japanese scientists can tell if you are genuinely tired or just trying to pull a fast one. The new gizmo has been designed for the aerospace industry to detect if pilots or air traffic controllers are tired, according to a piece in the New Scientist. The fatigue detector uses changes in voice patterns to detect whether or not the subject is overly tired. ...more

Record Real revenues reported

Real Networks has reported record quarterly revenues of $68mn, thanks in part to the recent Harmony promotion when its online music store sold three million half-price songs in three weeks. Excluding the cost of ongoing antitrust litigation, Real lost $4mn, but expects to reach profitability soon. 'We are extremely pleased to achieve the highest revenue quarter in the company's history, highlighted by the growth of our music and games revenue,' said CEO Rob Glaser. ...more

OS X sports FTP flaw

Security firm Secunia has reported a vulnerability in Mac OS X's FTP support that could potentially be exploited to compromise a system. The flaw is caused by to a boundary error in ftpd when handling commands with globbing characters (such as *) and can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow. Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code. ...more