Google Apps scores in LA, with assist from Microsoft

Los Angeles City Council approved a US$7.25 million five-year deal Tuesday in which the city will adopt Gmail and other Google Apps. According to Los Angeles City Council minutes, just over $1.5 million for the project will come from the payout of a 2006 class action lawsuit between the City and Microsoft. Google is touting the deal as a major endorsement of its cloud-based approach to computing, but it turns out that some of the funding is indirectly coming from an unlikely source: Microsoft. Microsoft paid $70 million three years ago to settle the suit, brought on behalf of six California counties and cities who alleged that Microsoft used its monopoly position to overcharge for software.

Los Angeles City Council approved the deal unanimously on Tuesday, according to Google Spokesman Andrew Kovacs. Microsoft has paid out more than $1 billion in other class-action settlements based on similar claims. The migration from the city's Novell GroupWise e-mail servers will be handled by contractor Computer Sciences Corp. The five-year contract will cost Los Angeles about $1.5 million more than simply sticking with Novell. Other applications such as calendaring, document sharing and chat will be handled by Google Apps too. But because the city will get extra storage capacity from Google, while at the same time being able to run other software on the Novell servers, it's worth the cost, according to an Oct. 7 city finance committee memo written by City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana.

The Los Angeles deal may hint at how this product will work. Google has pushed Google Apps as an option for government agencies, promising to ship a product called Government Cloud, which will be certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), sometime next year. According to a Sept. 15 memo from the Los Angeles Information Technology Agency, Google will "provide a new separate data environment called 'GovCloud.' The GovCloud will store both applications and data in a completely segregated environment that will only be used by public agencies." This GovCloud would be encrypted and "physically and logically segregated" from Google's standard applications. Because data would be encrypted and then stored on many different servers, Google's administrators wouldn't typically be able to access the information, although there would be so-called "Super Administrators" who would be able to recompile the data and read it. The data would be stored only in the U.S. and only accessible to U.S citizens who have undergone security clearance.

The city would own the data and would be notified of "any request of data or security breach," the memo states. They convinced Los Angeles council members to tack on a "liquidated damages" clause to the contract that would award the city a payout in the event of a data breach. Critics are still worried about security and privacy, though. Kovacs of Google downplayed privacy and security concerns over the project. "One thing that was very clear in council today," he said. "They believe that Google Apps will make the city more secure than their current solution."

Microsoft shows off Bing tool for measuring ad effectiveness

Microsoft on Monday demonstrated a new tool for its Bing search engine that will allow advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ads with online users. Mehdi pointed out that statistics show that 39 percent of Web users do 65 percent of the online searches, so it would be beneficial for advertisers to see which of those "heavy users" are targeting certain ads, versus which ads are favored by "light users." The tool Microsoft created shows where the interest in a marketing or advertising campaign is specifically coming from, he said. Speaking at the IAB MIXX Conference and Expo 2009 in New York on Monday, Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Audience Business group, showed off what he called a "user-level targeting" tool that allows Microsoft to see which search-based ads that appear in the Bing search engine are getting the most traffic and from where. "What we're doing with Bing for vigorous measurement is we're matching the exact ad online with the exact user," he said.

This measuring ability for Bing was demonstrated as part of Mehdi's presentation, in which he discussed how Microsoft is applying lessons it's learned from studying advertising campaigns and creating technology to reflect that learning. You have to pick and focus." Microsoft revamped and rebranded its Live Search engine "Bing" in June, and making it more effective for search advertising is something the company continues to work on, Mehdi said. One of those lessons was what he characterized as "relentless measurement and optimization" to find out what ads are most effective so they can be better targeted to their proper audience. "One of the big things is trying to build a loyal fan base for the product," he said. "You can't just go out and put your message everywhere. It was unclear from Mehdi's presentation whether this technology is available for advertisers using Bing today or whether it's just something Microsoft is using internally. This kind of ability to measure what kinds of online advertising is working with users is becoming essential as more and more business is being done on the Web.

A representative from Microsoft's public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom, declined to answer follow-up questions about the technology or his presentation. In fact, Microsoft competitor Adobe Systems - an executive from which spoke before Mehdi on Monday - last week said it was purchasing Web analytics company Omniture to build measuring technology directly into Adobe's tools for creating online media.

Is the Cisco MARS mission going into abort on non-Cisco security devices?

Is Cisco freezing support for any new non-Cisco security devices in the Cisco Security Monitoring, Analysis and Response System (MARS) appliance? Since the SIEM market consists of equipment aimed at consolidating and correlating event information from multiple vendor equipment, several of Cisco's rivals, including NitroSecurity and Q1 Labs, contend Cisco MARS will lose its relevance if Cisco freezes support for non-Cisco appliances. "As of a certain timeframe, they'll support what they support, and that's it," claims Jerry Skrula, vice president of marketing at SIEM vendor NitroSecurity. Cisco isn't confirming it or denying it, but Cisco rivals claim they're hearing from Cisco customers that Cisco won't add support for additional non-Cisco security devices to MARS, a security information and event monitoring (SIEM) appliance used by about 4,000 Cisco customers.

The SIEM vendor claims to be hearing this from Cisco customers and others in industry. NitroSecurity states "industry sources have confirmed that Cisco has begun informing its customers of a freeze on MARS support for most non-Cisco event sources and is encouraging customers to find an alternative for log collection and event analysis for non-Cisco event sources," though NitroSecurity declined to reveal these sources specifically, merely noting they were Cisco customers and others in industry. Skrula admits he doesn't know the specific timeframe but NitroSecurity yesterday kicked off a so-called "MARS Migration Program" targeting Cisco SIEM customers. As part of its push to get MARS users, NitroSecurity is offering its own NitroView product, promising Cisco MARS customers "custom-tailored financial incentives" to switch. As for Cisco itself, spokesman David Oro, said "We are not going to address competitive rumors, but what I can tell you is that any decisions about MARS are future roadmap discussions that are internal and subject to change depending on market conditions and customer needs." He notes that Cisco continues to release "new versions of MARS that include support for new device features (like Botnet Traffic Filter and Global Correlation reporting in 6.04), new MARS application features (numerous improvements for operational features in the past couple of releases), and signature updates for Cisco and non-Cisco devices. At Q1 Labs, another Cisco SIEM rival, Brendan Hannigan, president and COO, and John Burnham, vice president of corporate marketing there, also say they believe Cisco won't be supporting new non-Cisco devices in MARS. And evidence this week of glee in that prospect is abounding, with rival ArcSight sponsoring a Google link that turns up "Worried about Cisco MARS?" when a search is done for "Cisco MARS" and another competitor, CorreLog, sponsoring "Cisco MARS Alternatives." But is it all just fear-mongering?

There is no internal or external end-of-service plan at this time, and MARS is available from Cisco and our partners." MARS 6.0.4 currently supports several non-Cisco security products, including McAfee IntruShield and Entercept, the NetScreen IDP, Symantec, NIDS, Enterasys Dragon, Qualys Guard and eEye Retina products for scanning and vulnerability assessment.

Microsoft confirms phishers stole 'several thousand' Hotmail passwords

Microsoft today confirmed that thousands of Windows Live Hotmail account usernames and passwords had leaked to the Internet, but said the credentials were "likely" stolen in a phishing attack. Earlier today, Neowin.net reported that more than 10,000 accounts had been compromised and speculated that Hotmail had either suffered a breach or an aggressive phishing campaign had collected the usernames and passwords by duping people into divulging the information. "We determined that this was not a breach of internal Microsoft data and initiated our standard process of working to help customers regain control of their accounts," a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an e-mail to questions posed earlier today by Computerworld . Microsoft did acknowledge that Hotmail accounts had been compromised. "Over the weekend Microsoft learned that several thousand Windows Live Hotmail customers' credentials were exposed on a third-party site due to a likely phishing scheme," the same spokeswoman added. "That's a big result for a phishing campaign," said Dave Jevans, the chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), an industry association dedicated to fighting online identity theft. "But it's not outside the realm of possibility. The company denied that its Web-based e-mail service had been hacked and the account log-in information stolen because of some lapse on its part. We've seen 50,000 to 75,000 [compromised] accounts when phishers target an ISP with millions of users." Hotmail has about 400 million registered users, according to Microsoft, although the company declined to spell out how many are active users of the service. "A .05% rate, which is what 100,000 users would represent, isn't unreasonable for 10 to 20 million users," Jevans said. "They wouldn't have to spam every [Hotmail] user to get that." According to Neowin.net, which first reported the Hotmail incident, more than 10,000 accounts had been compromised.

If the 10,000 accounts for A-B are extrapolated to the full alphabet, it's possible that over 100,000 accounts were compromised. "If that's the case, this would definitely be one of the biggest single phishing events," said Jevans. "But it could be the result of a long period of time, months and months of harvesting." Although the number of phishing attacks declined earlier this year, they have recent stormed back, said Jevans. "They're close to, or at, an all-time peak," he said. However, Neowin said it had seen only a partial list - accounts with usernames starting with "A" or "B" - and suspected that the total could be much larger. Both Microsoft and Jevans recommended that all Hotmail users change their passwords, just in case. "Change it, ASAP," urged Jevans.

Computer programmers set for smash-mouth brain battle

A smart people smack-down is set to start next week where thousands of university computer researchers will pit their brains and machines in a grueling battle of logic, strategy, and mental endurance. Layer 8 Extra: 15 genius algorithms that aren't boring During the competition, ten to twelve problems are attempted in a five hour period. The 34th annual IBM-sponsored Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Contest (ICPC) pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a nerve-wracking five-hour deadline. The problems are of varying difficulty and flavor.

The goal is that every team solve two problems, that every problem is solved, and that no team solve them all, according to ACM. Contests in the past have included problems that searched for a missing boat at sea, triangulated the location of a faulty transmitter, computed golf handicaps, stacked pipe of varying diameters in a fixed width bin, coded or decoded messages, printed braille, sought an exit to a maze, processed satellite images and solved a math problem. ACM says it wants two problems that could be solved in an hour by a first or second year student, two that could be solved in an hour by a third year student, and two that will likely determine the winners. Problems are presented with no more than a page of text, a helpful illustration, a sample input set with and accepted output set, ACM states. And judging is relentlessly strict, IBM says. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build smart software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. The students are given a problem statement, not a requirements document.

Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty. They are given an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges' test data and acceptance criteria. The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time is declared the winner. Some problems require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only.

Still others are simply too hard to solve - except for the world's brightest problem-solvers, according to IBM. The Battle of the Brains is the largest and most prestigious computing competition in the world, with more than tens of thousands of students from universities in approximately 90 countries on six continents participating. Previously, the 2009 ACM-ICPC World Finals took place in Stockholm, Sweden, where a team from St. Petersburg University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics in Russia emerged as the world champion for the second year in a row. Since IBM began sponsoring the contest in 1997, participation has grown from 1,100 to more than 7,100 teams. Regional bouts will begin in the United States on October 18 and continue through December, sweeping from continent to continent. Only 100 three-person teams will advance to the World Finals on February 5, 2010 hosted by Harbin Engineering University in Harbin, China. "The ACM-ICPC affords students the opportunity to showcase their talents and gain exposure among top recruiters," said Dr. Bill Poucher, ICPC Executive Director and Baylor University Professor. "The contest is also a forum for advancing technology in an effort to better accommodate the growing needs of the future."