Katt Catches Suns New Servers Red Hatted

El Gato thinks some Sun staffers might not be as comfortable with the companys new Sun Linux 5.0 as Scott McNealy would like.

A Tabby tattler said Red Hat executives were astounded during last weeks LinuxWorld in San Francisco to see some of Suns new LX50 edge servers—on public display for the first time at the companys Moscone Center booth—were not running Sun Linux but rather Red Hat Linux. Unable to believe his furry ears, Spencer infiltrated the show floor and was flabbergasted to find some of the Sun servers were indeed running Red Hat Linux.

A booth attendant told the Kitty that Sun had tested and run its servers on Red Hats product while Sun Linux 5.0 was in development. Now, with Suns product completed, the tech staffers at the booth were reluctant to demo the servers with an operating system they were not very familiar with. “Anyway, our Linux distribution is pretty similar to Red Hats, and the servers dont ship widely until the end of the month, so we still have time to fine-tune our Linux offering,” a staffer said. “And I thought Microsoft exhibiting at the show was shocking enough,” mused the Mouser.

Spencer was intrigued when he heard about the Wireless Information Security Experiment, a wireless honey net designed to snare Wi-Fi hackers in the D.C. area and examine the methods used by snoops.

Science Applications International is using open access points, unsecure computers and antennas to examine and identify—but not apprehend—wireless hackers, intruders and bandwidth stealers. Besides examining hackers modus operandi, the WISE project wants to gauge the prevalence of 802.11b attacks. Assuming the new wave of wireless hackers in a city like Washington is totally tuned in to online tech news and chat boards, the Puss pondered why Science Applications is making its honey net operation publicly known when the intent seems not to challenge hackers but to quietly examine the ways the trap gets tapped.

The Katt asked Lance Spitzner, whose Honeynet Project has been capturing, identifying and profiling hacker activity since 1999, his thoughts on whether publicizing the WISE project would adversely affect its usefulness. “Personally, I feel that announcing this is not a problem,” said Spitzner. “If you build and deploy a honey net/honey pot correctly, the bad guys cant tell the difference, and they will not realize they are on a wireless honey net.”

Check out Spencers latest Kattoon: Verizon Claims $6 Million Saved by Moving to Linux.