Computer security comes cheap at Easter

It seems Joe Public's mind is somewhat soft-boiled at Easter: research shows four in five of us would volunteer personal information in return for an Easter egg raffle ticket. Infosecurity Europe's annual taking of the public pulse reveals that 82 per cent of those questioned at Victoria handed over all the information necessary to steal their identity in return for being entered into a draw to win ?60 of Easter eggs. The survey was conducted in the run up to the London conference to highlight the ease with which such information can be obtained and was executed under the guise of research into views on Easter and Easter egg consumption. ...more

Hacks in the city: More pictures

More pictures from our war-driving tour... ...more

Open-source rivals isolate Novell

Novell is becoming increasingly isolated as its open-source rivals speak out to distance themselves from the pact it made with Microsoft. In an open letter, the company's CEO Ron Hovsepian outlined Novell's insistence that the patent covenant between it and Microsoft was in no way an admission that Linux infringes Microsoft's IP, and pointed out its continuing efforts in the open-source community. Hovsepian said that its help in founding the Open Innovation Network (OIN), a body tasked with acquiring patents for the good for the open-source community was a case in point. ...more

Government online efforts slammed

An independent report on 20 public-facing government Web sites found three quarters wanting The study, commissioned from the Interactive Bureau Web Design Agency, said the government must halt the ?5bn spend of tax payers' money on creating e-government and concentrate on putting right the sites already online. The main sin is that 'masses of material, full of unexplained jargon and convoluted incomprehensible English has simply been dumped into official Web sites.' Poor and inconsistent design, navigation, slow load speeds and technical errors also contributed to the sites' woeful ratings. ...more

EC grants funding to antiphishing project

The European Commission has awarded undisclosed funding to a joint antiphishing project between commercial, academic and research groups over three years. The AntiPhish project involves Symantec, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Nortel, Katholieke Universiteit KU Leuven and Tiscali. Its task is to develop antiphishing filters that can work outside of recognising phishing mail on a signature basis, but additionally recognise variations of known phishes and anticipate new threats. ...more