Tech News for Wednesday

iTunes 7.0.2
story from Wired.com

After mentioning it in the morning reboot, I downloaded and installed iTunes 7.0.2. The update promises “stability and performance improvements” as well as support for the new 2nd generation iPod Shuffle, due to be release tomorrow. I’ve never actually had any stability issues with iTunes, but I can say that the update does indeed address the performance issues that appeared with iTunes 7.0. Since upgrading to 7.0, iTunes had been almost unusable for me on a MacBook Core Duo. But the new update returns iTunes to its former snappy self. Before this upgrade, importing new music was one of those tasks that I would start and then head off for a cup of coffee while iTunes effectively locked up my computer until it was complete. The 7.0.2 update vastly improves importing times. Just to test it out I threw>>>more

U.S. NEAR THE BOTTOM IN PRIVACY STUDY
from msnbc.com|tech & science

U.S. privacy protections rank among the worst in the democratic world, a London-based privacy organization said Wednesday.

Privacy International ranked 36 nations around the globe, including all European Union nations and other major democracies, and determined that in categories such as enforcement of privacy laws, the U.S. is on par with countries like China, Russia and Malaysia.

Overall, the U.S. was determined to be an "extensive surveillance society,” the second-lowest rating in the study.

The survey identified Malaysia, China and Russia as the world’s lowest-ranked countries in terms of privacy. It ranked Germany and Canada as those that best protect the privacy of their citizens.

"The rankings establish for the first time that most of the>>>more

'Month of Kernel Bugs'
Launches with Apple Wi-Fi Exploit
story from eweek.com

Metasploit founder HD Moore has released an exploit for an unpatched vulnerability in the Apple Airport driver that ships with some PowerBook and iMac computers.

The exploit kicks off a new project called Month of Kernel Bugs and follows a heated debate over the existence of 802.11 (Wi-Fi) flaws affecting Apple Computer's Mac OS X systems.

In an e-mail exchange with eWEEK, Moore said the exploit is not related to the Wi-Fi driver flaws discovered and discussed in Aug. 2006 by researchers David Maynor and Jon "Johnny Cache" Ellch at the Black Hat Briefings.>>>more

Student Unleashes Uproar
With Bogus Airline Boarding Passes
story from washingtonpost.com

Christopher Soghoian said he was simply trying to highlight a flaw in the nation's airline security procedures when he put a tool on his Web site letting anyone create fake boarding passes, but federal authorities didn't see it that way.

FBI agents visited the 24-year-old doctoral candidate's home in Bloomington, Ind., Friday and returned on Saturday to cart off his computers and other equipment. While Soghoian has not been charged with a crime, the incident has stirred a national tempest and renewed concerns about passenger screening procedures.>>>more