At the Niederrhein University future admins implement spam defense mechanisms by attracting the attention of the Viagra Mafia. The results are pertinacious blacklists and expert knowledge of methods for combating the menace.

Host-based authentication is easy to configure, but it doesn't do much to stop uninvited guests.

Counterfeit links are able to deceive the Firefox and Chrome browsers, directing users to unintended websites.

The Web Sandbox project is Microsoft's solution for securing and improving the quality of web content through isolation. It has now provided the source code free under Apache License 2.0.

IBM's motto for the upcoming CeBIT 2009 trade show in Hannover, Germany in March is "Smarter Planet": "You'll see that transistors will be everywhere -- animals, people, clothing," says Martin Jetter, CEO of IBM Germany, in his keynote at yesterday's conference preview in Munich

In the past weeks, Seagate hard drive users have been experiencing failures with their Barracuda drives. Seagate responded with updates, then with a recall, and now promises a resolution.

Advisory Check (advchk), a small tool for monitoring installed software security, is now available in version 2.20. It has extended its source feeds and is now supported on HP-UX.

The Tor Project announces that it has removed all bugs that Coverity Scan had found in its software.