Symantec Corp. has confirmed flaws in its most popular consumer security software that could give attackers the means to hijack the Windows PCs that the programs are supposed to protect.

The vulnerabilities are in an ActiveX control that ships with several products, including Norton AntiVirus, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks and Norton 360.

Ironically, Symantec analysts have both cited the popularity of ActiveX bugs and urged caution when using the controls in comments about other companies’ product flaws.

According to alerts released Wednesday by VeriSign Inc.’s iDefense, the ActiveX control SymAData.dll sports two vulnerabilities that could be used “to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the currently logged in user” by attackers able to entice victims to malicious Web sites.

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An innovative virtualization vendor called ScaleMP Inc. is attempting to bring high-performance computing to midsize companies with a model that is essentially the opposite of VMware Inc.’s: Instead of carving an x86 server into numerous partitions, ScaleMP aggregates multiple x86 machines and turns them into one powerful computer.

Aberdeen Group Inc. analyst Jeffrey Hill called ScaleMP’s technology “quite astounding.” Without such technology, a business could join x86 machines in a clustering model, but this would require IT expertise typically beyond what small and midmarket companies possess, he said. ScaleMP makes high-performance computing affordable and easy enough that it becomes obtainable for a workgroup within a midsize business, he said.

ScaleMP started developing its technology in 2003 and began selling it 18 months ago through systems manufacturers, which mainly targeted Global 1,000 businesses, according to ScaleMP founder and CEO Shai Fultheim.

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Q: What kind of tools are required to assemble a slim 5 rack?

Desi Villanueva
Center Interiors

A: The slim 5 racks assemble with ½” hex head nuts and bolts. A socket set with the appropriate size sockets is probably the best, but a ½” wrench or pair of pliers will also work. Some of the panels on the slim 5 require a small allen wrench, but this tool is included with the mounting hardware.

Rackmount Ranger

ISCDFW.com April 2008 Newsletter

With Advanced Micro Devices Inc. pushing out a slew of new products this month, its long-chilled chip war with Intel Corp. may just be heating up again, analysts say.

After struggling with delayed products and bad market and mind-share woes through 2007, a lot of industry pundits started writing off AMD. And while AMD struggled, Intel held strong over the past year and a half, coming out with quad-core chips and a 45-nanometer processor family and staying well ahead of AMD’s road map.

Recently, though, AMD has begun showing some signs of life, pushing out a graphics chip set early this month and a slew of new desktop processors this week. With the first AMD Barcelona-based systems expected to hit in April, and a 65-watt quad-core desktop chip and a triple-core desktop chip now in the mix, AMD may be starting to kick back into gear.

And that kind of renewed competition between the two processor giants can only be good for the industry, said Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz.

“It’s good to see AMD back in the game,” he said. “They’ve still got a lot of issues to handle, especially financially. I don’t know if I’d say they’re in fighting shape. Once you dig a hole, it’s hard to dig out of it. But they’re definitely back in the game.”

But as AMD picks up the pace, Intel isn’t giving it a steady target.

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Tech investors looking for a stock haven amid roiling markets of late have turned to industry consolidator Oracle. Shares of the software company rose nearly 14% over a three-week span in March as investors bet on Oracle’s formidable lead in database software and its aggressive acquisition strategy in business applications as an antidote to the economic malaise that’s throttling IT budgets.

Some of those shareholders reconsidered their strategy on Mar. 26 after Oracle (ORCL) released fiscal third-quarter results that fell short of analysts’ forecasts. Oracle reported sales of new business application software licenses, a barometer of future revenue, that were about $100 million less than Wall Street expected.

Total sales fell $70 million short of expectations in the period that ended Feb. 29, and Oracle shares fell in extended trading. “Our checks suggested [the results] were going to be pretty solid all around, so we’re surprised by this,” says Jeff Gaggin, an enterprise software analyst at Avian Securities.

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Rambus, the developer of memory chip technology, said Wednesday that it won an important ruling in a long-running patent lawsuit, sending its shares 39 percent higher.

The jury rejected claims by three large memory-chip makers — Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology and Nanya Technology — that Rambus deliberately misled the memory chip industry in the 1990s when new standards were being hammered out.

They claim Rambus failed to disclose it was seeking patents on the technology that was then being worked into standards for chip production.

Analysts have estimated Rambus, based in Los Altos, Calif., could eventually collect royalties of hundreds of millions to billions of dollars over the next decade. It is not yet clear when Rambus might receive any back royalties.

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Sun Microsystems is trying to do for computing what all the king’s horses and men failed to do for Humpty Dumpty. For decades, the semiconductor industry has broken silicon wafers into smaller chips to improve manufacturing yields.

Now Sun has found a way to reconnect the chips so they can communicate with each other at such high speeds that computer designers can build a new generation of computers that are faster, more energy-efficient and more compact.

The computer maker, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., plans to announce on Monday that it has received a $44 million contract from the Pentagon to explore the high-risk idea of replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams.

The technology, part of a field of computer science known as silicon photonics, would eradicate the most daunting bottleneck facing today’s supercomputer designers: moving information rapidly to solve problems that require hundreds or thousands of processors.

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Intel and Microsoft said Tuesday that they planned to finance two groups of university researchers to start over and design a new generation of computing systems intended to break the industry out of a technological cul-de-sac that threatens to end decades of performance increases in computers.

If the research efforts succeed, this would enable the development of new kinds of portable computers and would help computer engineers tackle areas as diverse as speech recognition, image processing, health care systems and music. For example, a music professor at the University of California, Berkeley, David L. Wessel, envisions a new era of digital musical instruments that would begin to match the rich versatility of acoustic instruments like violins and pianos.

The research grant, worth $20 million over five years, will create independent laboratories at Berkeley and at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, that will be charting a way to reinvent computing. Each will work on hardware, software and a new generation of applications powered by computer chips containing multiple processors. The University of Illinois plans to contribute an additional $8 million to the project and the Berkeley project is applying for an additional $7 million from a state-supported program to match the industry grants.

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As virtualization technology gains in popularity, it may bring with it new risks, said Don Simard, commercial solutions director at the U.S. National Security Agency, the electronic intelligence and cryptographic agency once so secret its very existence was a secret.

At the same time, virtualization technology may bring new protections, he noted.

One of the NSA’s roles is to work with technology providers to help them make their wares more secure, both to help government agencies using them and to reduce threats that could affect the commercial sector and thus the national economy. Sometimes, the NSA also wants to ensure it has back-door access to commercial systems.

In the case of virtualization, the NSA has worked with EMC’s VMware unit, IBM, AMD, Trusted Computing Group, and others for several years to identify potential threats and suggest workarounds. Later this year, chips from AMD and Intel will include technology that the NSA has helped develop.

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