As the iPhone and other devices keep us connected to the Internet in more locations, are we opening ourselves up to malicious data attacks? Glenn Fleishman explains sidejacking, a potentially damaging weakness in the way Web traffic is handled, and why the easiest solution is the least likely to be utilized. Also in this issue, Adam appears with a look at Teleport, a utility that lets him share two machines easily, along with a revised version of the TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary for use with Typinator. And how do you get six tons of uninterruptible power supply into a top-floor data center? Glenn points to the top-down solution employed by our Internet host digital.forest. We round out this issue with news of the releases of Microsoft Office 2004 11.3.7, iPhone 1.0.2, iMovie 7.0.1, and iWeb 2.0.1.
The next TidBITS issue will arrive on 10-Sep-07, due to the Labor Day holiday in the United States.
Apple has released iPhone 1.0.2, iMovie 7.0.1, and iWeb 2.0.1 to fix bugs and address issues with publishing .Mac Web galleries.
AT&T finally sees the light about sending fully itemized paper bills to iPhone customers; everyone will now receive summarized paper bills unless they desperately need to help with global deforestation.
It turns out the programming language Erlang has been around for about 20 years, making it almost old enough to drink. Alcohol would definitely enhance the Erlang video experience.
Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac has been updated yet again to block potential security issues.
Win a copy of Nisus Software's powerful word processor Nisus Writer Pro in our latest DealBITS drawing!
The free Teleport utility enables you to control multiple networked Macs from a single keyboard and mouse. It's very cool, and worth using for anyone who wants to use multiple Macs at the same time.
Our long-time co-location facility, Digital Forest - the folks that house our servers and provide juice, cooling, and connectivity - needed to add additional capacity for their power backup. Even though the large new units would slide through the building, it was unclear whether certain paths along the way were engineered to handle that much point weight. Why not rip open the roof, instead?
The addition of the 2,300-word TidBITS AutoCorrect Dictionary makes Typinator even more useful for correcting typos and misspellings.
"Sidejacking" has entered the lexicon of network attacks. This newly defined term refers to a method of hijacking an in-progress Web session with a remote service - like Gmail - by intercepting and re-using the credentials that identify you to that server. Protecting against sidejacking may take a rethink on the part of Web site operators, users, and browser makers.
Find out what the TidBITS community is talking about this week!