Skype 3.0 Beta is Up

Skype 3.0 is also today's IT Blogwatch topic, and on the Ferris Research blog.

PC World Offers Dangerous Spam Advice

Meet Steve Bass. Steve blogs at pcworld.com. Watch Steve blog. Blog, Steve, blog. Steve just blogged a bunch of spam filtering resources. Unfortunately, his list is heavy on the challenge/response FUSSP meme. Ooops!

For the record, Choicemail's "unknown-sender registration" and the "bounce" features of MailSnoop and MailWasher are really terrible ideas. (Don't forget that the "sender" of spam is almost always forged.)

I do wish consumer-focused journalists like Steve wouldn't promote these features -- he'll get his readers blacklisted, causing their email not to go through.

Update: Steve has responded. (If you're looking for the debate between me and Jeff Hendrickson, click here to read the latest discussion and follow the link at the end.)

For more background, see:

• Spamcop's backscatter page
• Why Challenge/Response Is Bad
• Here We Go Again
• Another Anti-Spam Tool To Avoid

IP over DAB Digital Radio

Speaking of DAB digital radio, Symantec's Ollie Whitehouse alerts us to the standard for tunneling IP over DAB, ETSI ES 201 735 [PDF]. This sounds extremely cool for broadcast or multicast data to inexpensive devices.

Looks like the HTC Monet uses this, not DVB-H (handheld DVB) to show TV. Virgin Mobile UK is branding it as the Lobster. El Reg has an interesting review.

Ollie is worried about the security aspects though:

Looking at this from a 30,000 ft viewpoint, a number of different and obvious attack surfaces appear to exist:
• The DAB protocol stack
• The IP stack
• Media codecs

Then, your mind starts to work:
• I wonder if they firewall the DAB connection on the device?
• Can I spoof content? If so, how hard is it to attack the media codec with this spoofed content?
• Is it possible to leverage that old IP stack DoS and take out every DAB-IP enabled mobile/cell phone in a 10-mile radius?

You end up with a situation where you could conceivably "broadcast" exploits to a geographic area if you were able to successfully attack any of the attack surfaces outlined above. It makes you think, doesn't it?

Update: also noted at...

• Geekzone
• The Smart PDA
• Reiter's Mobile TV Report

Woo and Yay for the BBC and the TV "Tax"

Snigger: UNEASYsilence discovers that the UK has a TV licensing regime. Way to go with the up-to-the-minute news, Dan.

Considering the quality of the programming on BBC TV and radio is consistently amongst best available, if not the best (IMHO), I’m really happy to contribute to the BBC this way. The moment “Aunty Beeb” stops giving value for money, that money’s going to be taken away from them. They know it, and the system works.

Also — “because of the unique way the BBC is funded” — the BBC has helped bring us technical leaps such as:

• PAL colour (when the US had the awful NTSC standard)
• 576 line TV (when the US had 480)
• Digital stereo TV sound (when the US was doing analog)
• RDS data over FM radio (which the US grudgingly picked up in half-hearted way recently)
• An open DAB digital radio standard (when the US was doing closed, incompatible digital radio)
• DVB-T digital television at no extra charge, using robust COFDM (while the US mess about with the quite dreadful 8-VSB)
• 16:9 widescreen TV broadcasts (when the US was still bickering about HD)

The regulatory regime means that the majority of the population have access to 20-30 TV channels, free of charge, from a relatively small antenna, which doesn’t need to be rotated when you change channels. Meanwhile in the US, TV antennae are butt-ugly and often need to be pointed at several different transmitters, hence the popularity of expensive cable TV.

Detector vans are rare anyway — they’re only used to gather evidence for prosecution. If your household doesn’t have a license, you’ll be “invited” to buy one. If you don’t get one, it’s up to TV Licensing to prove that you’re breaking the law.

Microsoft Promises Sender ID Remains Open, But There's No News Here

Microsoft today announced that it has added the Sender ID Framework Email Authentication spec. to the list of Microsoft technologies covered under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise (OSP). This essentially means that Microsoft promises not to take action to protect its patents and other intellectual property (IP) related to these technologies.

The idea is to remove objections to implementing against published "standards" that are based on the fear of Microsoft will sue the developer. This was the main stumbling block preventing Sender ID from becoming an Internet standard in 2004 -- the Purported Responsible Address (PRA) algorithm was patented.

Big whoop. As far as I can tell, nothing has changed. There's no news here. Move along.

This promise seems to be exactly the same promise as was made by Microsoft in 2004. It's a promise that didn't prevent the MARID working group from failing to reach consensus -- mainly due to deadlock over the IP issue.