"Use your Bluetooth enabled phone or PDA as a key to automatically lock and unlock any door with ECKey. The brilliant new ECKey technology simply integrates with your existing door. After a one-time registration, your phone will automatically lock the door when you leave and unlock the door when you return, all without the press of a button."

Interesting idea, but I'm not really sold on the security of Bluetooth to secure my house. How secure is Bluetooth anyway, in terms of spoofing in particular?

"So says Jeff Waugh of open source advocacy group Waugh Partners, fed up after a series of personal attacks directed at the heads of government agencies... [after] adoption of open source software had been stalled by security concerns... While Waugh believes the open source model holds better security outcomes than its proprietary equivalent, he equally describes the vitriolic reaction to Gibson's comments as being 'disgraceful' and says they achieve nothing for the industry."

Indeed level-heads are what's needed in open-source. Plus it's kinda ironic they say people don't know enough about open-source, when many of them know nearly nothing about closed-source software.

"More recently, we've started to see moves towards even greater integration of these Web 2.0 applications, with Redhat promoting the concept of the "online desktop", with a focus on using SaaS applications rather than locally installed ones. But what about security? Although the BBC made reference to issues with privacy, other security aspects were covered in a more positive way: your applications and data are being entrusted to "specialists", who will take care of everything."

Good concise post about the security implications of SaaS, or web apps in general really. Is it going to stop the wave of web apps? No, but we should be looking for better solutions to get the pros of SaaS without the cons.

"NEC has launched an automated face recognition system capable of identifying you when you are still inside your car... NeoFace has already been installed at the Hong Kong - Shenzhen border... the system is designed to boost the speed and efficiency of Hong Kong Immigration Department operations by allowing residents with microchipped national ID cards to remain in their vehicles while automated cameras verify their identities."

Pretty awesome stuff. It's amazing the difference in efficiency between countries that get technology and those that don't (e.g. Australia).

"Somehow, someway, my Yahoo! Mail account had been hacked. Someone changed the name of the account as well as my mailing address which is why I could not reset my password. Even worse, my dear old hacker went through some old emails I had and found information on an account I had on Ebay. The hacker then proceeded to login to my Ebay account and starting bidding and buying like it was Christmas time... Oh by the way, never heard or received back any type of communication from Yahoo!."

And this is why I'm weary of 'in-the-cloud' services - you have no control over your data anymore.

"Oops, researchers just unveiled a pretty serious security vulnerability in the iPhone.Researchers at Independent Security Evaluators have used the vulnerability to take malicious control of the iPhone from rogue websites loaded with the exploit. Once in, researchers have full administrative access over the phone allowing them to listen in on room audio or snatch the SMS log, address book, call history, email passwords and more -- we're talking full access to your phone."

Wow, did Apple rush the iPhone a bit too much?

"An anonymous Info Sec researcher claims to have developed a fully automated and ready to use Mac OS X worm. How long can Mac users rely on Apple to protect them from security threats? It comes as no surprise to me that Mac OS X, like any other large-scale coding project, contains bug. Serious bugs. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy land. But what bothers me about each and every Mac bug that’s uncovered is how trusting the majority of Mac users are in the fact that Apple will be able to protect them against all future threats through the existing software update mechanism that is in place. "

Just like I've been saying. But it's not the mac nerds that are in trouble (they can protect themselves if needs be), but the rest who are tricked into this false sense of security.

"Attackers could exploit a bug in this feature to trick a victim into making phone calls to expensive "900" numbers or even keep track of phone calls made by the victim over the Web, said Billy Hoffman, lead researcher with SPI Labs. The iPhone could even be stopped from dialing out, or set to dial out endlessly, he said. "Because this vulnerability can be launched from Web sites, everybody who has an iPhone has the potential to get exploited," Hoffman said."

Apple couldn't have overlooked such a simple thing, could they? Check out the comment - not sure if it works, but iif it does it's a big problem. Even WM warns you before it dials numbers from other apps.

"In the case decided earlier this month by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, federal agents used spyware with a keystroke logger -- call it fedware -- to record the typing of a suspected Ecstasy manufacturer who used encryption to thwart the police...A CNET News.com survey of 13 leading antispyware vendors found that not one company acknowledged cooperating unofficially with government agencies."

Creepy. I don't know whether the goverment or the fact that hackers may be able to mimic government sanctioned spyware is worse.