LogError writes: “Since there are too many reports out there we decided to make a special report dedicated to the worm. The report consists of alerts, news items, solutions and anti-virus vendors comments on the issue. It is updated as we get new information.”

“A fledgling effort to replicate Microsoft’s .Net architecture on Linux, called Mono, could quickly
become mired in intellectual property difficulties. Tony Goodhew, a program manager in Microsoft’s
developer products group, has warned that licensing problems might result if open source code is
mixed with Microsoft’s .Net software.” More at ZDNET.co.uk.

BBC: “The Chinese authorities have shut down almost 2,000
internet cafes and ordered another 6,000 to suspend
their operations because of concerns over the influence
of the internet on teenagers.”

Wired: “A large percentage of technologically adept humans are opting to have their bodies frozen after they die, according to research in a new book.”

BBC: “The original meaning of the word “hack” was born at
MIT, and originally meant an elegant, witty or inspired
way of doing almost anything.

Many early hacks took the form of elaborate practical
jokes. In 1994, MIT students put a convincing replica of
a campus police car on top of the Institute’s Great
Dome.

Now the meaning has changed to become something of
a portmanteau term associated with the breaking into or
harming of any kind of computer or telecommunications
system.

Purists claim that those who break into computer
systems should be properly called “crackers” and those
targeting phones should be known as “phreaks”.

“I hereby tender my resignation to the Usenix ALS committee. With the arrest of Dimitry Sklyarov it has become apparent that it is not
safe for non US software engineers to visit the United States. While he was
undoubtedly chosen for political reasons as a Russian is a good example for
the US public the risk extends arbitarily further.”

Resignation from ALS, Skylarov affair...
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:31:02 +0100 (BST)
From: Alan Cox 
To: alschair@usenix.org
Cc: editor@lwn.net,  editors@newsforge.com,  gnu@eff.org


I hereby tender my resignation to the Usenix ALS committee.

With the arrest of Dimitry Sklyarov it has become apparent that it is not
safe for non US software engineers to visit the United States. While he was
undoubtedly chosen for political reasons as a Russian is a good example for
the US public the risk extends arbitarily further.

Usenix by its choice of a US location is encouraging other programmers, many
from eastern european states hated by the US government to take the same
risks. That is something I cannot morally be part of. Who will be the next
conference speaker slammed into a US jail for years for committing no crime?
Are usenix prepared to take the chance it will be their speakers ?

Until the DMCA mess is resolved I would urge all non US citizens to boycott
conferences in the USA and all US conference bodies to hold their
conferences elsehere.

I appreciate that this problem is not of Usenix making, but it must be addressed

Alan Cox

Advogato: “A loose coalition of cypherpunks, cyberrights groups, Free Software activists, hacker organizations, and civil rights advocates have united under the umbrella of the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) to protest the arrest of Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov on July 16th by the FBI in Las Vegas.”

2600: “Following a presentation at Defcon, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested by the FBI for violating the DMCA. He is currently being held incommunicado awaiting transfer from Las Vegas, Nevada to San Jose, California where he will stand trial and faces up to 5 years in prison. All for writing software that enables people to exercise fair use.”

LinuxSecurity: “This week, advisories were released for xinetd, xloadimage, util-linux, elm, tcpdump, docview, imp, openssl,
tripwire, squid, and tcltk. The vendors include Conectiva, Immunix, FreeBSD, Mandrake, Red Hat, and Trustix.”

– by Tina Gasperson –
IBM is announcing an Open Source project called SBLIM (Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability). This is a new thing for Big Blue — although the company participates in more than 40 Open Source software projects including Mozilla, PHP, and Apache, this is the first open, collaborative effort that it has ever initiated, says Sheila Harnett, the technical lead for IBM’s Linux Technology Center.
SBLIM, pronounced “sublime,” is an outgrowth and adjunct to WBEM, or Web-Based Enterprise Management, which is “a set of management and Internet standard technologies developed to unify the management of enterprise computing environments.”

“WBEM is a common way to access information that needs to be managed” in an enterprise setting, explains Harnett. “It’s a Web-based model to access standardized systems information.”

SBLIM contributors are working on “providers,” applications which will make a way, via the Linux operating system, for the information from various platforms that may reside in an enterprise, to be gathered, standardized, and placed in a data repository that can then be accessed by WBEM. SBLIM “providers” operate in conjunction with WBEM. “It doesn’t stand by itself,” says Harnett of the code that will come out of the project.

So far, contributors to the just-announced project have completed two “providers,” says Harnett, one for RPMs installed on a given system, and one to interpret filesystem/volume information. The project is self-hosted by IBM, using a modified SourceForge collaboration system, and is licensed under the Open Source Initiative-approved Common Public License. SBLIM’s project leader is Viktor Mihajlovski. IBM is hoping to build an active community around SBLIM, a project it calls “extensive.”

C developers interested in getting involved should visit the project site and subscribe to the developer list to find out how to get started.