eWEEK EDITORS

President Bush signed a new identity theft bill into law Thursday that adds two years to prison sentences for criminals convicted of using stolen credit card numbers and other personal data to commit crimes. Violators who use that data to commit “terrorist offenses” would get five extra years. Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), the bills sponsor, […]

Mobile devices are the next target for virus writers and hackers, said Sal Viveros, wireless security evangelist at McAfee. Malicious code attacks on wireless networks, including mobile phones, could cost European mobile operators as much as $2.2 billion per attack by 2005 and affect up to 30 percent of the mobile population, according to research […]

E-mail security firm MessageLabs Inc. this week expressed concern over the Trojan Backdoor-CGT that spreads through spam. “The scary thing about this is that it was spammed out, which allowed it to move rapidly in a short period of time,” said Natasha Staley, an information security analyst for MessageLabs. The program–also known as Xebiz-A, Troj/Xebix-A, […]

Officials from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Wednesday addressed a U.S. House subcommittee about using radio frequency identification (RFID) devices to collect personally identifiable information. The public advocates recommended baseline legislation to cover any digital devices collecting personally identifiable information. “RFID tags enable remote, even […]

Retail giant Walmart has said a US law enforcing privacy rules for RFID is not needed because companies experimenting with the technology are committed to protecting privacy. Wal-Mart Stores continues to move forward with plans for case- and pallet-level tagging of products with RFID chips. But item-level tagging, where individual products are identified with RFID […]

Microsoft plans to add support for radio-frequency identification directly to its server software and potentially to the Windows operating system. Work is under way now to add RFID support to BizTalk Server, the companys XML-based integration server, said Paul Flessner, senior VP of Microsofts server platform division. Flessner characterized BizTalk Servers role as providing “high-level […]

While radio frequency identification technology (RFID) may offer potential benefits, it also raises privacy fears. Despite these fears, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) argues in a recent report that these fears should not lead to legislative controls of RFID. Rather, the CEI believes that “prompt deployment of, and experimentation with, RFID would best serve the […]

Having identified RFID technology as “an engine of growth,” Singapore will spend US$ 5.8 million, mainly on research and training, to promote the development and deployment of RFID by the end of 2006. The worlds second largest port outside the U.S., Southeast Asian city-state is a major Asian trading and transportation hub. Singapore had earlier […]

The Wall Street Transcript, a 41-year-old investment publication, is launching a “VOIP Implementation Conference” at the Harvard Club in New York City on August 9 and 10. According to Patrick Hambrecht, marketing manager, the event is expected to attract 60 to 80 enterprise IT executives and will engage them in a one-track series of presentations […]

BlueArc Corp. this week announced that it will use computing switches from Brocade Communications Systems. BlueArcs Titan SiliconServer will now ship with Brocades SilkWorm 3250 8-port switch or SilkWorm 3850 16-port switch. In the second quarter of shipping Titan SiliconServer, BlueArc is finding that adding Brocades name to its product mix is enabling it to […]

Taiwan is on track to become the second largest supplier of DVD recorders, according to the Market Intelligence Center, or MIC. Companies like Lite-On IT Corp. and Mustek Systems Inc. will sell four times as many DVD recorders in 2004 than in 2003 after retail prices halved in the past year. Arthur Lai, a technology […]

Fibre Channel vendors in 2004 continue to face pricing pressures, according to the Yankee Group. The research firm estimates that the total Fibre Channel SAN component market in the first quarter of 2004 was about $434 million, below the groups forecast of a 2004 quarterly average of $475.8 million. Most Fibre Channel SAN component vendors […]