Larry Seltzer

The Internet began as an experiment: Did it succeed? Obviously, in many ways it did, but it also failed in important ways. So what do we do about that? Ive thought in the past about the idea of starting all over with the Internet, although I was thinking most of SMTP, rather than the whole […]

Its a recurring theme on security discussion lists: Someone ought to build a worm that infects insecure systems and remedies the problems on them. Every six months or so someone thinks theyre the first one to think of it. So in case any of you think its a good idea, please stop wasting your time. […]

“Were from the government and were here to help you” is a very old and sad joke, but theres a lot of truth to it. Municipal governments, especially in big cities, have a tragic history of policies with unintended consequences for their constituents and others. The movement to have local governments provide wireless Internet access […]

Over the years Ive tried to get better at my use of passwords, especially since Im supposed to tell other people how to manage security. I have to confess: Im not where I want to be, and I bet you arent either. Do you use complex passwords for all of your logins where confidential information […]

Microsoft released a diverse and scary batch of vulnerability announcements and patches for them today. After actually reading the bulletins, I concluded that most of the vulnerabilities arent really that scary, but two caught my eye, and one of them in particular. The two bugs in this bunch that will cause the most real-world problems […]

I was as disturbed as the next guy to see our story about how Google ads are indirectly financing adware campaigns. Disturbed, but not entirely surprised. I had already come across another unsavory use of Googles AdSense program. Its not quite in the same league with malware distribution, but its a problem nonetheless. Have you […]

When users run into trouble using Internet Explorer its not often with innocent and standard HTML functions, but with fancier features like ActiveX controls and scripting. This is why, as we have reported, Microsoft is planning to default IE 7 to a lower rights configuration. The company isnt going into details, but its an easy […]

Its taken so long for e-mail authentication to get to this point that you might assume the whole idea had failed and been forgotten. Not true. The really important work has gone on, out of the spotlight. Yahoo and Ciscos announcement that they will merge their similar public key cryptography-based specs for authentication is a […]

An Israeli industrial espionage scandal that erupted over the weekend really shouldnt be surprising, tempting as surprise might be. In fact, while its impossible to know how much of this sort of thing is going on, its safe and responsible to assume its common. Executives at several large companies were arrested, as well as private […]

It seems like forever since the great battles of the standards bodies last year when the effort to institutionalize SMTP authentication broke down. Since then, just as beforehand, there has been no serious work done in the standards community to address spam, mail worms and other abuse. The only option left has been for private […]

Ive been beating a steady drum for a while now for the cause of getting ISPs to block unrestricted use of TCP port 25. Its not world peace, but its more important than most people recognize. Now the FTC has taken up the cause of fighting “spam zombies,” including port 25 blocking as a means. […]

Theres a lot of confusion out there over VOIP and 911 services. In the wake of Thursdays FCC order to the VOIP industry to provide E911 services within 120 days, I have to count myself among the confused. First, I hope to clear up some confusion. There are a lot of people who think that, […]