authenticity

"When you strike at a king, you must kill him," said the great Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Apple, in toying with but not killing Microsoft in enterprise computing, has unwittingly granted its rival a new lease on life with Windows 7.

At least, that's the position Likewise CEO Barry Crist is taking in a recent blog post. In some ways, Crist depends upon neither Apple nor Microsoft killing off the other, as his company makes audit and authentication solutions that span different operating systems: Mac OS X, Windows, Unix, and Linux.

The company also makes awesome T-shirts, … Read more

Updated at 1:14 p.m. PST Friday, December 5 with comment from Lenovo.

Editor's note: CNET editor and Crave contributor Dong Ngo is spending the month of December in his homeland of Vietnam and plans to file occasional dispatches chronicling his impressions of how technology has permeated the culture there. Click here for more of Dong's stories from abroad.

HANOI, Vietnam--Regardless of what some people seem to think, we Asians do not all look the same. But according to the current face recognition algorithm used in laptops, our faces are all about as flat as a piece of paper.

That's according to BKIS, the Vietnamese Internetwork Security Center that makes the antivirus software I mentioned in a blog post Monday. At a press conference here Tuesday, the company demonstrated vulnerabilities in laptops' face recognition-based authentication mechanisms that let anyone log in to a computer easily with a "special" photo of the legit owner, even at the highest authentication level.

Using your face as the password to log in to a computer--an alternative to the fingerprint method or the traditional username and password--marks a new trend found in laptops from Lenovo, Asus, and Toshiba. As far as I know, only these three vendors currently offer this technology in their laptops. These computers come with a built-in Webcam that's used to capture and analyze faces.

I've been impressed by this new way to log in and have found it to be so much more convenient than the fingerprint reader of my Dell XPS 1330. The finger scanner is a pain when my finger is wet or dirty. Unfortunately, on Tuesday I discovered that this new and exciting technology may not be such an effective security measure.

I participated in a demonstration on a Lenovo Y430, running Windows Vista, and here's how it panned out:… Read more

It's a few weeks old but still worth pointing out as another recent example of "Disruptive Realism" - a clever twist on the slogan of the New York Times: 'All the news we hope to print:'

Good News! from Blake Whitman on Vimeo.

From the press release (linked to the Prankster group The Yes Men):

"Early this morning, commuters nationwide were delighted to find out that while they were sleeping, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had come to an end. If, that is, they happened to read a "special edition" of today's … Read more

Spammers are going legit, and they're using Yahoo e-mail authentication servers to do it, said Mark Sunner, chief security analyst with MessageLabs.

Most people use the Web interface for Yahoo Mail, which attaches a banner of advertising on the e-mail somewhere within the message. Yahoo also provides a service, Yahoo Plus, that allows the sender to use SMTP and traditional e-mail clients such as Outlook Express or Thunderbird. Mail sent via SMTP passes through Yahoo's servers, signing the mail as legit using the Yahoo Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) service.

What this does is strip out the usual … Read more

The MIT Kerberos Consortium, a security authentication and authorization group, announced Monday that Microsoft has joined its shindig.

The consortium, which launched in September with Google, Apple, Sun Microsystems and a collection of universities, noted Microsoft is coming aboard as a founding sponsor.

Kerberos aims to offer consumers the same single sign-on authentication and authorization system that corporate America has been using to allow employees to access network services with one log-on. Kerberos is an offshoot of MIT's Project Athena, which was developed back in the 1980s.

Microsoft uses the Kerberos network authentication protocol in such products as its … Read more

IBM has snapped up security software maker Encentuate, in a move to broaden its security management software offerings, Big Blue announced Wednesday.

Encentuate develops two-factor authentication software that's designed to let users log on with a single sign-on to all their other applications.

IBM plans to roll Encentuate's software into its Tivoli product line, which includes identity and access management software products. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

IBM also is beefing up its security software efforts by opening a new software security lab in Singapore, the company said Wednesday. The lab will house more than 20 … Read more

Good news for people prone to losing their car keys. Someday soon, all you'll need to start the engine will be the veins in your finger.

Japanese electronics giant Hitachi is bringing its finger vein authentication technology to steering wheels, fitting them with a biometric reader that only starts the engine for drivers with recognizable vein patterns.

Veins can also be used as switches for the car stereo and navigation system, reports Pink Tentacle, as well as to identify driver preferences, such as seat and mirror position or air conditioner setting.

Hitachi's system--already used in ATMs, computers and cardless payment systems… Read more

If MIT has its way, consumers will be enjoying the same single-sign-on authentication and authorization system that large corporations have been able to deploy.

MIT launched on Thursday the Kerberos Consortium, whose backers include Google, Sun Microsystems, Apple, Stanford University and the University of Michigan. The consortium is looking to take the Kerberos network authentication protocol and create a universal authentication platform to safeguard computer networks.

Although the protocol was initially developed for MIT's Project Athena and has been around for more than two decades, it has mainly been available to large corporate networks and not to John Doe … Read more

According to a McKinsey & Company study of US economic activity, "Raising the productivity of employees whose jobs can't be automated is the next big performance challenge." The study argues that "as more companies come to specialize in core activities and outsource the rest, they have greater need for workers who can interact with co-workers, partners, and vendors," supported by highly personalized organizing and communication tools. 40 percent of labor activity, says McKinsey, comes not from making things or from traditional transactions but from what the consultancy calls the "Interaction Economy," which it … Read more