'Nasa hacker' McKinnon wins right to Lords hearing

One last chance to appeal US extradition for the man who broke into Pentagon and Nasa systems from his home in North London...

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HSBC sees big savings from global IT as profits climb

HSBC has said that its use use of standardised IT globally is continuing to contribute strongly to group profits, with its Whirl global credit card platform in particular enabling it to cut IT costs.

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Researchers expose Microsoft Vista's kernel security

A security feature in the 64-bit version of Windows Vista can be easily circumvented with a free utility that loads unsigned drivers into the kernel, according to researchers at Symantec.

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Government wastes money by holding onto IT assets too long

At least 60% of UK government bodies are paying specialist companies to dispose of their unwanted information and communication technology (ICT) equipment, rather than taking steps to sell their ICT assets while they are still worth something, the National Audit Office has warned.

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Security not a benefit of virtualisation, study finds

Security has been touted as one of the benign by-products of virtualisation – but according to a recent study that’s no longer the case.

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Ofcom spectrum auction to spark UK mobile WiMax scramble

It's expected that BT Group and Vodafone Group, as well as wireless Internet service providers, will be among those interested in buying licenses for part of the spectrum

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Failed electronic application system cost Identity and Passport Service £5m

The Identity and Passport Service has been forced to write off £5.5m of software development costs after the failed launch of its EPA2 electronic passport application system last year.

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Blackhat conference: US immigration refuses entry to presenter

A German security expert has been turned away at the US border by immigration officials while on his way to present at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

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Newcastle council did not disclose data breach for a week

Newcastle city council says it waited a week before advising the public that personal data and payment card details of thousands of local residents had been stolen because it did not want to hamper investigation of the incident.

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NHS Choose and Book system fails to meet half target uptake

Flagship IT project for Britain's National Health Service is still in trouble

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First iPhone compatible enterprise apps announced

CRM and ERP vendors Netsuite and Etelos have begun porting their applications to the iPhone, despite warnings from analysts that the Apple product is not enterprise-ready.

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Spying scandal uncovers first phone switch rootkit

A highly sophisticated spying operation that tapped into the mobile phones of Greece's prime minister and other top government officials has highlighted weaknesses in telecommunications systems that still use decades-old computer code.

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Creaking systems means 5m 'may be paying wrong tax'

Up to five million people in the UK may be paying the wrong income tax because HM Revenue and Customs’ computer systems are “no longer well suited” to handling the tax, the National Audit Office has warned.

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Huge PDF spam spike reported

Spammers dump images, pump stocks with Adobe documents

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Microsoft Open Office XML spec 'dangerously flawed'

Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format specification is flawed with many functions associated with spreadsheets riddled with careless errors, according to a critic.

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IT problems cost UK businesses billions

Mid-sized and large businesses lose an average of £500,000 a year due to application performance problems, a survey has found. One in 10 such businesses loses around £2m a year.

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Sacked chief executive explains IT fiasco over farm payments

Rural Agency former chief executive says it was always a ‘high risk affair’

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Sun patch strategy 'leaves Java users vulnerable'

Sun Microsystems is putting millions of Java users at risk of attack by staggering the release of security patches, according to security researchers at eEye.

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Samba developers switch to GPLv3

Samba developers have definitively switched future versions of the software to the GPL v3 licence, which could have a serious impact on companies maintaining software patent covenants.

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FIX Protocol riddled with security holes, say security firm

Financial firms well used protocol is riddled with vulnerabilities, which could leave apps open to denial of service attacks.

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Firefox 3.0 Beta delayed in sudden backtrack

Last week we were told it was on time, now it is slipping. Should we be worried?

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Government left IT costs out of London Olympic bid

The government failed to include IT systems for its Olympic Delivery Authority in its costing for the 2012 Olympics – and did not budget for them until 16 months after the games were awarded to London.

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Novell promises protection to Linux users worried by Microsoft’s GPLv3 stan

Novell will continue to ship the complete version of its Linux enterprise server even though Microsoft is attempting to distance itself legally from the new General Public License (GPL) v3 open source license.

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Dell will sell Linux on PCs outside the US

More details will be revealed shortly, according toLionel Menchaca, digital media manager for Dell on a company blog

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Richard Granger: National Audit Office ‘singled me out for special treatment

NHS IT chief Richard Granger has claimed the costs of his National Programme for IT (NPfIT) have been inflated and the £12.4bn price tag now attached to the scheme is a figure he agreed to under “significant pressure” from the National Audit Office.

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Linux official lines up with Microsoft against GPLv3

The new GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 is not a fit for Linux because switching would require permission from the kernel's thousands of de-facto owners, a leading developer said, while at the same time Microsoft said it had no responsibilities under GPLv3, despite its tie-up with Novell

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Tax error hits one million people

Believe it or not, IT systems are making things better according to government auditor

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Security firm launches online auction site for hackers

Free market in software vulnerabilites could prove dangerous ....

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Child Support Agency IT will cost £320m to fix say MPs

A scathing report on the failed agency by the powerful Commons public accounts committee says reforms to the child support system have already cost more than £539m since 2000, but the IT system introduced to implement them has “never fully supported” the objective of processing maintenance applications accurately and quickly.

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Linux guru calls for coordinated drive on open source desktop

Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth is urging the three large desktop projects of KDE, GNOME, and OpenOffice.org to agree on a common and regular release cycle.

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Pensions chief to oversee government IT

Alexis Cleveland, chief executive of the Pension Service, is expected to be appointed to a top delivery role at the Cabinet Office that will include overseeing the government’s IT efforts. It is understood that government chief information officer John Suffolk is likely to report to Cleveland in her new role.

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Developer angers open source community over code release

Open-source developer Parallels finally released the source code for the Wine software used by Parallels Desktop 3.0 - but only after weeks of prodding by Wine developers and negative publicity on the IT forum Slashdot.

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Windows loses ground to Linux on desktop

Skill sets of developers changing, as Linux and open source grows in popularity

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Apple making 100% mark-up on iPhone manufacturing costs

Hackers are not the only people to take apart Apple's new phone. iSuppli analysts have disassembled the 8GB iPhone since its Friday debut in the US The analysts dissected the components used to create the device and furnished estimates of the likely cost of the parts used.

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IT systems slammed in FSA insider trading report

City watchdog highlights best and worst IT practice

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SAP admits to 'some inappropriate downloads' in Oracle case

Not quite 'corporate theft on a grand scale' that Oracle claims, says SAP CEO

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Are top Linux developers losing the will to code?

Core Linux developers are finding themselves managing and checking, rather than coding, as the number of kernel contributors grows and the contributor network becomes more complex.

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Hackers target executives and their families

Hackers appear to have stepped up their efforts to trick corporate executives into downloading malicious software programs that can steal company data over the past year, according to new data released today.

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Rising wages drive search firm out of India

Image search firm Riya is to pull its research and engineering operations out of India to consolidate in the US due to rising wages in Bangalore.

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Hackers 'don't time exploits for maximum impact'

The belief that cybercriminals stockpile exploits, then time their release to do the most damage gives them too much credit, according ro security researchers.

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