IT World

What is Form Hijacking?

Form Hijacking is the exploitation of vulnerable web forms to send unauthorized email. It is used predominately to send spam emails and uses the server on which the form is hosted to deliver the spam emails. This effectively makes the domain and server that processes the form the spam source allowing the real spam originator to remain anonymous. This can have serious consequences for the hijacked domain including blacklisting of the domain.

What is a HTTP Header?

HTTP Headers are the request to a server for information and the resulting response. When you input an address into your browser it sends a request to the server hosting the domain and the server responds.
You can see the request and response using our basic HTTP Header Viewer. The HTTP Header Viewer can be used to view the Headers or Headers and Content of any valid http:// url. When HEAD is selected the request is for the server to only send header information.

What is SQL injection?

Hackers have a wide arsenal of attack mechanisms, from which they choose the one most suited to a particular vulnerability. SQL Injection is perhaps one of the most common application layer attack techniques used by hackers.

SQL injection is the hacking technique which attempts to pass SQL commands through a web application for execution by a backend database

The good, bad and ugly of contextual ads from Google, Yahoo

Embarrassing juxtapositions have plagued contextual ads on media sites and blogs. But they can fit well with commercially focused content. Here's a deeper look at the pros and cons of AdSense and ContentMatch.

It has happened before, and it will happen again. I was reading a story on the San Jose Mercury News' Web site about federal agents arresting people for running a sex-trafficking ring out of massage parlors. And when I saw the text ads below the story served through Google AdSense, they were for day spas and massage services in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The ads are deemed relevant by the computer algorithm that might search the story for key words and match them to the key words that these advertisers bought. But the algorithm can't quite match human judgment that might consider this to be the wrong place for legitimate spas to promote their services.

Adsense: How to Make Money With Ads by Google

The chances are that you've seen "Ads by Google" on a variety of websites and perhaps wondered what they were all about. The fact is that you can probably get "Ads by Google" on your own site and if you do, you can look forward to getting paid by Google.

The system is called Google AdSense and it does two things really neatly.

First of all it allows virtually any website owner to make some money without having to do too much - all you do is paste some code that Google gives you into your web pages. This code creates the ads that you see and when someone clicks on one of these ads they go to the advertiser's site.
The advertiser is then charged for the click by Google and Google shares the money with you. You don't have to worry about billing a load of different companies or anything else: this is all done for you as part of the AdSense service.

Windows and Unix Slowly Losing Ground to Linux

The open source Linux operating system is making steady inroads into the world's application servers , where it's supplanting Unix and Windows as the environment of choice. That's received wisdom, but what's the reality?

A study by research group Peerstone at the end of 2004 showed that while two thirds of ERP users were running their software on Unix platforms, that operating system -- and Windows too -- is slowly losing ground to Linux variants.

At the time, 20% of ERP users expected to ditch Unix and most of those were going towards open source. That fact is recognized by ERP suppliers, like SAP and Oracle, which have mostly made Linux a key plank of their software strategies.

Microsoft To End Windows 9x Support in July

This time, there will be no more temporary reprieves. Microsoft has begun warning users of Windows 98, 98 Second Edition and Windows Millennium Edition that the end is near -- for all technical support, at least.

Although the company has been urging corporate customers for some time to replace those aging systems, it has stepped up its efforts recently and is now telling them they should migrate to Windows XP as soon as possible, according to BetaNews, an online news site for beta testers.

Microsoft currently plans to cut off all paid support, including security patches, for all three systems on July 11, 2006. The cutoff was already extended once from January 2004 in order to give customers more time to migrate off those systems.

Google Launches Calendar App

Google Inc., the top online search engine, is unveiling a calendar service that allows users to store appointments online, receive reminders about them and share those plans with others.

The offering, available starting Thursday at http://www.google.com/calendar, is designed to make it easy for users to add entries, said Carl Sjogreen, product manager for Google Calendar.

Gmail, Google's mail service, has been modified to automatically recognize when messages mention an event so recipients can seamlessly add it to their calendar. Users can also add entries in simple text, such as "Coffee with Mom on Sunday at 11 a.m. at Cafe La Boheme," eliminating the need to fill out forms.

Google Calendar is the latest offering from the Mountain View-based company, which analysts have said is gradually replacing its search-only business model with that of a portal, or all-purpose Web site. Over the past four years, Google has been catching up to rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN by adding e-mail, news, photo sharing, instant messaging, shopping and mapping services and a finance section.

Google Defends Cooperation with China

Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt on Wednesday defended the search engine's cooperation with Chinese censorship as he announced the creation of a Beijing research center and unveiled a Chinese-language brand name.

Google is trying to raise its profile in China after waiting until January to launch its Chinese-language site Google.cn. Activists have criticized the company for blocking searches for material about Taiwan, Tibet, democracy and other sensitive issues on the site.

"We believe that the decision that we made to follow the law in China was absolutely the right one," Schmidt said at a news conference.

He said Google had to accept restrictions in order to serve China, which has the world's second-largest population of Internet users after the United States, with more than 111 million people online.

Google Avoids Surrendering Search Requests

A federal judge on Friday ordered Google Inc. to give the Bush administration a peek inside its search engine, but rebuffed the government's demand for a list of people's search requests -- potentially sensitive information that the company had fought to protect.

In his 21-page ruling, U.S. District Judge James Ware told Google to provide the U.S. Justice Department with the addresses of 50,000 randomly selected Web sites indexed by its search engine by April 3.

The government plans to use the data for a study in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration is trying to revive a law meant to shield children from online pornography.