Web Server

by Carol Sliwa ; IDG A growing number of companies from Victorias Secret to Barnesandnoble.com and Readers Digest Association Inc. are outsourcing or considering offloading pieces of their ecommerce operations, particularly Web server hosting. ; Earlier this week, Barnesandnoble.com LLC CEO Jonathan Bulkeley told a Fall Internet World audienceWere not going to be in the server business. I want to run the interface, the content, the user experience. But I dont want to have to power it myself.

by Cheri Paquet From... ; IDG A Stanford University professor has created what is believed to be the worlds smallest Web server, the size of matchbox, which was designed to ultimately be worn by a user.;Using offtheshelf hardware and software, computer science professor Vaughan Pratt invented a Web server measuring less than 1.75 inches high, 2.75 inches wide and .25 inches thick. ;The tiny Web server consists of an Advanced Micro Devices 486SX computer that has a 66MHz central processing unit, 16M bytes of RAM and 16M bytes of flash ROM. The server connects to the Internet through a parallel port and runs a simplified version of Linux, according to a Stanford News Service statement.

; by Eric Bender ; IDG Want a basic server cheap ; Released on Monday, Cybernets NetMAX thin server software packages promise just that. Based on Red Hat Softwares Linux distribution, the 99 packages install on any Intelcompatible PC in as little as 15 minutes, claims Charles Jacobus, Cybernet president. ; The NetMAX packages come in three flavors fileprint, Web, or firewall service. Each is fully precooked for its specific role. Cybernet emphasizes ease of installation and maintenance, with a graphical interface to get started and then a simple browser interface for all other tasks.

by Stuart McClure and Joel Scambray From... ; IDG Another hacking contest was held recently, offering a reward to the first individual able to subvert the secured versions of a Windows NT or Linux Web server. Although this particular challenge to the public is great for publicity, it does little to prove one platforms superiority over anothers at least as it pertains to security. ; In our minds, the real measure of a secure OS is not how secure you can make an operating system, but how secure it is 90 percent of the time.

by Ellen Messmer From... ; IDG On Wednesday, an unknown attacker broke into Microsofts Web server for public information in Taiwan, leaving the message Hi, Bill, welcome to the real Y2K bug. ; The hacker, who signed himself as inferno.vr, apparently exploited a known Web server vulnerability in the Microsoft Internet Information Server that hadnt been fixed. The server has hosted at the Taiwanese company, AUNET, a Microsoft spokesman says. ;Microsoft public relations manager Adam Sohn says the server in Taiwan has been shut down, and the intent is to restage the Web information at one of the three data facilities around the world operated by Microsoft itself rather than a thirdparty hosting facility.

Internet services vendor GlobalCenter and Novell teamed up Wednesday to offer a managed network-based service designed to speed the performance of Web site content.GlobalCenter's Content Acceleration Exchange service increases the capacity of existing Web servers by tapping the company's worldwide network of data centers, which blast content worldwide in order to eliminate Web server bottlenecks, officials said. The service leverages Provo, Utah-based Novell's Content Exchange, which provides caching and other acceleration features coupled with the ability to dynamically prepare Web content for distribution over other content delivery networks.

IDG Federal and industry security teams are warning agencies about malicious code embedded in Internet links on World Wide Web sites and in emails that could allow hackers to capture any information entered by the user. ;MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCEnIDG.net home pagenHow to safeguard your personal information, your PCand your childrennDiary of a hack attacknReviews indepth info at IDG.netnSubscribe to IDG.nets free daily newslettersnNews RadionFusion audio primersnComputerworld Minute;The Computer Emergency Response Team CERT Coordination Center, the Defense Department CERT, the DOD Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defense, the Federal Computer Incident Response Capability and the FBIs National Infrastructure Protection Center jointly issued the alert on Wednesday.

IDG Internet Security Systems Inc. ISS says it has identified a backdoor password in the Red Hat Linux Piranha product that could allow an attacker to compromise a Web server and deface and destroy a Web site. ;Piranha is a package distributed by Durham, N.C.based Red Hat Inc. that contains Linux Virtual Server LVS software, a Webbased graphical user interface GUI and monitoring and failover components. A backdoor password exists in the GUI portion of Piranha, Version 0.4.12 of piranhagui that may allow remote attackers to execute commands on the server.

by Jeff Partyka ; IDG Companies offering free PCs have attracted a lot of recent attention, but Encanto Networks is taking the idea one step further to the server. ;The company is offering a free Web server with every twoyear InstantConnect Internet connection service contract, which costs 69.95 per month. The deal is scheduled to be available June 1 and is aimed at small businesses. ;;MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCEnIDG.net home pagenPC World home pagen FileWorld find free software fastn Make your PC work harder with these tipsnReviews indepth info at IDG.netnn IDG.nets desktop PC pagen IDG.nets portable PC pagen IDG.nets Windows software pagen IDG.nets personal news pagenQuestions about computers Let IDG.nets editors help youn Subscribe to IDG.nets free daily newsletter for computer geniuses newbiesnSearch IDG.net in 12 languagesnNews RadionFusion audio primersnComputerworld Minute nnn;;The biggest barriers for small businesses that want to have a server have been cost and complexity, says Tom Blaisdell, Encantos marketing communications director.

; by John Fontana From... ; IDG A handful of Linux vendors this week will introduce new products and features that should make the operating system more attractive for use in enterprise networks. ; Leading the charge is Red Hat Software, which develops the leading commercial version of Linux. The company is introducing Red Hat Linux 6.1, which is based on the 2.2.12 kernel and features graphical installation tools for deploying desktop GNOME and KDE, server or custom interfaces.

Claims of unhackable products come and go in the computer industry, with the unhackable product always ending with a crack in its once-shiny armor. Last week, yet another company claimed to have an unhackable product, this time a Web server, but according to at least one user, the claim may be right. Barrington, Illinois-based Bodacion Technologies LLC, last week announced its Hydra Web server. The Hydra is a rack-mountable Web server, aimed at the government, financial services and hosting markets.

If you thought computer security was bad in 2001, you're not going to enjoy 2002. That was the message from SecurityFocus co-founder and CEO Arthur Wong in a presentation he gave at the RSA Conference 2002. Wong's message to attendees was sobering. Despite such major security incidents as the "Code Red" and "Nimda" worms, "2001 wasn't as bad as it could have been," he said in a presentation at the start of the show. In 2001, about 30 new software vulnerabilities were discovered each week, Wong said, marking a decrease in a trend that had seen the number of new vulnerabilities doubling every year for much of the late '90s.

Lockstep Systems Tuesday announced a new version of its WebAgain automated Web site repair software, with the new version adding detection and removal of Trojan horses and backdoor programs, better support for VPNs, expanded protocol support, and international language editions. WebAgain allows Web sites that are compromised or modified by attackers to automatically be restored to their proper state, according to Mark Dixon, vice president of business development at Lockstep. The software does this by sitting on a server placed between Web designers and the Web servers they publish their work to, he says.

The number of vandalized Web sites recorded by defacement archive Alldas.de jumped in 2001 to 22,379, over five times more than the 4,393 defacements logged in 2000. Mostly Brazilian cybervandals are responsible for the surge in defacements, according to Fredrik Ostergren, a Sweden-based security analyst and spokesperson for Alldas.de. He also said that more Internet users in general are trying out tools to hack into Web sites. "Many of the defacers we have in the scene today are located in Brazil," he said.

A new hacking tool using the instant messaging platform Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is rapidly spreading across the Internet and has the potential to shut down Web servers. Called "Voyager Alpha Force," the tool has already been used to infect about 300 computers, according to various reports, but its biggest threat lies in its ability to be used in distributed denial-of-service attacks, according to security experts. "It is a malicious program you download from the Internet.

One in every 300 e-mails circulating now contains a virus, up from one in every 700 in October last year, according to e-mail security company MessageLabs. Viruses are growing in sophistication and are thus able to propagate themselves faster and more effectively, the company said in a statement regarding the Nimda virus. Nimda is a hybrid virus that contains a mass-mailing component, enabling it to spread very quickly. As it spreads, it attempts to infect Web servers with a version of the Code Red program which caused serious disruption last month.

In the ongoing battle to attract and retain customers online, more businesses are turning to site personalization to deliver dynamic, relevant content that can be tailored to enrich user experience. The process, however, can quickly bring servers to their knees. In a multitiered Web architecture, frequent calls to application servers and databases place enormous strain on back-end resources and cause throughput bottlenecks, inducing companies to invest in additional hardware and bandwidth to keep pace with demand.

Internet services vendor GlobalCenter and Novell teamed up Wednesday to offer a managed network-based service designed to speed the performance of Web site content.GlobalCenter's Content Acceleration Exchange service increases the capacity of existing Web servers by tapping the company's worldwide network of data centers, which blast content worldwide in order to eliminate Web server bottlenecks, officials said. The service leverages Provo, Utah-based Novell's Content Exchange, which provides caching and other acceleration features coupled with the ability to dynamically prepare Web content for distribution over other content delivery networks.

What if IT managers discovered a magic way to shield e-commerce from all things illegal, such as online credit-card heists, denial-of-service attacks, Web page destruction, viruses and data thefts? Achieving all that doesn't take a magic wand. What it does take is changing how your organization thinks about security so that the lines between security and business processes no longer exist. It also takes an evolutionary restructuring of the security infrastructure. The goal: proactive, scalable and flexible security that can easily accommodate new applications, mergers and network changes.

The Internet provides a unique glimpse into the lives of ordinary people, much like newspapers of old, but little is being done to preserve Web pages for future historians. One non-profit company is trying to change that. "We have a shadow of the world that we're able to capture and make available to the future," said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a massive collection of Web sites donated by the Alexa Internet, an arm of Amazon.com.