Brilliant Thinking

In the January 2006 survey Netcraft received responses from 75,251,256 sites, an increase of 897K sites from December 2005. With the gain, the Internet resumes its pattern of steady growth, which was interrupted last month with a decrease of 219K hostnames, which was the first decline in Netcraft’s survey nearly three years. The loss was the result of the expiration of 1 million “.name” domains at Zipa.

The full January 2006 Survey with more information, graphs and also some information about a change for domains at GoDaddy.

Google is to start selling video online, offering a way for people to search for and buy TV shows and more through its site. Google is the latest company to explore the idea of selling video on the net, following Apple who led the way with its iTunes online store.

Google, however, does have a unique twist on its video service. Any company can put their content up for sale at any price. (Five cents is the minimum charge for a download.) Google takes a few pennies from the sale, and the content makers take most of the cash.

Google has created its own DRM (digital rights management) system for the service but will support rival systems as well, Page said. Not that the world needed another DRM mechanism.

The web giant’s co-founder Larry Page announced the service at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. US network CBS is making shows like CSI and Star Trek available to buy online.

Read more about Google’s other announcements at CES on The Register and BBC Technology.

The vulnerability has the potential to enable a hacker to execute code on a user’s machine if that user is persuaded to view a specifically crafted WMF, either by visiting a website or clicking on a link contained in a malicious email. The hole uses images to execute malicious code, meaning code can be potentially executed just by viewing an image. ICS warned even images stored on a user’s PC may cause the exploit to be triggered.

Security specialists at the Internet Storm Center (ISC) are pointing customers running Windows XP Services Pack 1, SP2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 SP 1 to two fixes for a previously unknown vulnerability in the Windows MetaFile (WMF). Users waiting for Microsoft to respond must wait until the company’s regularly scheduled January 10 software update - called black Tuesday - for a WMF fix - nearly two weeks after the vulnerability was first confirmed.

PCs running old operating systems, such as Windows 98, will not receive an update as they now exceed Microsoft’s support cycle.

Businesses’ online sales soared by over 80% year-on-year in 2004, according to official data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The value of internet sales rose to £71.1bn in 2004, 81% higher than the previous year’s total of £39.3bn.

Overall, 6.7% of firms sold their goods and services over the internet last year, compared to 5.4% in 2003. A further 35.3% of companies made purchases themselves via the web, totalling £62.4bn. This is up from 29.4% in 2003. Some 33.8% had a web site last year, compared to 30.7% in 2003. Meanwhile, some 42.3% of businesses incorporated broadband as their primary internet connection, a huge jump from the quarter of firms which used the technology in 2003.

Hang on - let’s go back a bit before we drown in numbers … 6.7% of firms sold their goods and services over the Internet last year. So if £71.1bn can be made by the 6.7%, the rest of the 93.3% of businesses who aren’t selling online are missing out on a potential £1trillion pot. Woohoo! Now that’s just a linear extrapolation - the reality would plateau out - just because more sites are selling online doesn’t mean that more people will show up to buy stuff (the old “if you build it they will come” argument). However, it does mean there is still a very large opportunity to be had by SMEs from trading online, and with professional help from the likes of their local Chamber of Commerce, the barriers to trading on the Web can easily be dismantled and many SMEs can benefit from an additional revenue stream.

Food for thought …

If you’re trading online already, or are thinking about it, we’d like to hear from you with a post on this topic

Back in August we wrote about the perceived security of Linux systems in our article “There are no pickpockets in the dessert“. Today we hear about a new Linux worm called Lupper that targets a PHP flaw.

So, is this the tip of the iceberg or just an isolated case? We’d say that it’s only a matter of time until the floodgates open … Are you ready?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/07/linux_worm/

More on the PHP vulnerability here > http://secunia.com/advisories/15852/

Sans In detail version of the vulnerability > http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=823