Jeremy Kirk

U.K. government officials doubt whether a national ID program will be ready by 2008 because of procurement and project management concerns, according to a series of leaked emails published Sunday.

Microsoft Corp. has been hit with a second lawsuit over Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), its antipiracy program that checks if the Windows operating system on a machine has a valid license.

Symantec Corp. said it would release in September a beta version of a security software product that hardens a computer's defenses against e-commerce and banking fraud. The software, Norton Confidential, will detect when a Web site or malicious program is trying to swipe a user name or password, a rising form of Internet crime called phishing, Symantec said.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is notifying 110 people that two laptop computers containing their personal data were stolen from a locked vehicle.n

A new vulnerability has been found in Microsoft Corp.'s Excel spreadsheet program, just a few days after the company fixed problems with several of its applications in its monthly patch distribution.

A British court recently approved a request by the U.S. for the extradition of an unemployed systems administrator who allegedly caused US$700,000 in damage by hacking into U.S. military and government computers.

A mass-mail worm that exploits a vulnerability in Yahoo Inc.'s Web e-mail is making the rounds but the impact appears to be low, security vendor Symantec Corp. said. The worm, which Symantec calls JS.Yamanner@m, is different from others in that a user merely has to open the e-mail to cause it to run.

The result of bad code means spiraling patching costs for both clients and companies, says Mary Ann Davidson, chief security officer for database giant Oracle Corp. She said the record for fixing one defect was 78 patches, which cost the company around US$1 million.