Robert Lemos

Firefox Aims to Unplug Scripting Attacks

Sites that rely on user-created content can unwittingly be employed to attack their own users via JavaScript and other common forms of Web code. This security issue, known as cross-site scripting (XSS), can, for example, allow an attacker to access a victim's account and steal personal data.

Now the makers of the Firefox Web browser plan to adopt a strategy to help block the attacks. The technology, called Content Security Policy (CSP), will let a website's owner specify what Internet domains are allowed to host the scripts that run on its pages.

Technology Review

Hosting Firms Have New Answer to "I Want My Own Server"

Virtualization is great and all, but sometimes a customer just wants their own server. For many companies, however, off-the-shelf servers are too big, too powerful and too hot—making the typical data-center fare too costly.

It's a problem that faced Dell's in-house skunkworks, the Data Center Solutions (DCS) group, last year. Their solution? Build a compact server based on the Via Nano processor -- a low-power, low-cost chip found in increasingly popular netbooks, says Todd Brannon, market development manager for Dell's DCS. The mini-server, known as the XS11-VX8 or Fortuna, almost fits in a 3.5-inch floppy case and requires a fraction of the power of a typical enterprise server.

"The servers we typically build for our mainstream IT customers are too much for these applications," Brannon says. "What we are finding is that the hardware requirements are very different for these massive 'hyperscale' environments."

CIO.com

Cyberwar: Is Offense the New Defense?

Eight months after it started spreading, the Conficker worm remains on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of computer systems. While the furor over the worm has died down, worries over the capabilities of the sleeper botnet continue to concern cybersecurity experts.

The call to do something about the latent threat is growing louder. This week, two German researchers -- Felix Leder and Tillmann Werner, PhD students at the University of Bonn -- advocated attacking back at the botnet, before it's used for another purpose.

"Most counter measures nowadays are reactive, you wait for an attack to happen, and then you take the countermeasure," Werner said at the Conference on Cyber Warfare, an event held by the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallin. "We need something that will stop the attack in advance."

CSO Magazine