A public claim by hackers that Mozilla’s Firefox browser is vulnerable to multiple code execution vulnerabilities may be an overblown hoax. On the heels of a ToorCon presentation where two security researchers–Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi–warned that Firefox’s implementation of JavaScript was badly flawed and could allow PC takeover attacks, Mozilla’s engineers say the risk is limited to a denial-of-service issue. Spiegelmock, a developer at Six Apart, a blog software company in San Francisco, now says the ToorCon talk was meant "to be humorous" and insists the code presented at the conference cannot result in code execution.

Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd may have known as early as in July 2005 the company was looking into private phone records as part of its leak investigation, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on Monday. A memo from the computer maker’s outside law firm suggests Hurd may have learned about the use of phone records within a few months of the start of the leak probe, though he may not have known if the phone records were obtained illegally.

Microsoft has acquired DesktopStandard, a developer of group policy-based enterprise desktop management products, in a move designed help customers leverage the value of policy-based management and their investments in Active Directory, the two companies said Oct. 2. Larry Orecklin, general manager, Microsoft’s Windows Enterprise Management division, said that the acquisition enhances the company’s ability to meet the needs of its customers to perform group policy lifecycle management, consolidate the number of policy objects being managed, and increase desktop management functionality.

The open-source Firefox Web browser is critically flawed in the way it handles JavaScript, two hackers said Saturday afternoon. An attacker could commandeer a computer running the browser simply by crafting a Web page that contains some malicious JavaScript code, Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi said in a presentation at the ToorCon hacker conference. The flaw affects Firefox on Windows, Apple Computer’s Mac OS X and Linux, they said.

Over 200 major incidents have been detected by PandaLabs in a two-hour span due to the mass-mailing of spam messages carrying files infected with the Spamta worm. Spamta.CY reaches computers in an email message with a variable subject, selected at random from a list of options. The message body contains a text warning users that email messages are being sent from their computers because it is infected with a malicious code.

Six men have been charged with orchestrating a phishing scheme that targeted AOL users, the U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday. The men are accused of harvesting thousands of AOL e-mail addresses and then infecting victims’ PCs with malicious software that would prevent them from logging on to AOL without entering their credit card numbers, bank account numbers and other personal information.

Microsoft has partnered with Hughes Network Systems to set up a network of 5,000 kiosks connected by broadband across 200 towns in rural India. Entrepreneurs will set up the kiosks to offer e-commerce, education, e-government and other services, said Tarun Malik, head of rural computing at Microsoft India, on Thursday.

Internet Explorer 7.0’s antiphishing security is superior to any of its rivals, the first significant study to rate this element of browser security has concluded. The tests by U.S. Microsoft consultants 3Sharp pitted a range of browser plug-ins for antiphishing security against the phishing filter, in beta three of IE 7.0, finding the Microsoft technology to be the most effective.

The BBC has signed an agreement with Microsoft to explore ways of developing its digital services. The non-exclusive memorandum of understanding sets out a framework for joint projects between the two organisations. This includes plans for next-generation Web 2.0 and ways to share online content in the future.

Microsoft Windows will not suffer irreparable damage on the server side at the hands of the Linux operating system over the next five years, Gartner analyst George Weiss told attendees at the Gartner Open Source Summit. In fact, in terms of worldwide server operating system revenue, Linux would come in below both Windows and Unix by 2011 in spite of its enormous growth, he told attendees in a session entitled "Enterprise Linux: Has it Arrived?"