Businesses are being warned that three Cisco Systems router operating-system vulnerabilities have been discovered. The flaws found could enable a malicious individual to commit denial-of-service, or DoS, attacks against Web sites, according to a warning issued by the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. US-CERT’s warning about the Cisco IOS issue says a remote attacker would be able to execute code on affected devices. Users are being told to upgrade to a fixed version of IOS, which stands for Internetwork Operating System.

Twenty-six computer tapes containing Internal Revenue Service taxpayer data have gone missing from City Hall in Kansas City, Mo. The tapes were originally shipped to the City Hall building in August as part of an information-sharing agreement between the IRS and the municipality of Kansas City. Officials lost track of the tapes in December. On Friday, the local newspaper revealed that the city was working with the Department of the Treasury, of which the IRS is a division, in an attempt to locate the missing tapes’ whereabouts. No updates have been provided.

IBM’s ever-vigilant research arm employs the collective power of many of the brightest brains in the business to come up with solutions to hard computer science problems. As part of the company’s continuing effort to deliver social computing software, IBM will launch Many Eyes, a service that allows people to explore different visual representations of large amounts of data and share it with others to help them collectively make better sense of the information.

MySpace.com has filed a lawsuit against Scott Richter, the so-called Spam King who allegedly sent out millions of unsolicited "bulletins" to MySpace members, the site announced Monday. The social-networking site cited violations of multiple state and U.S. antispam laws, including California statutes and the federal Can-Spam Act, in its case against Richter, who was the proprietor of a site called OptInRealBig.com. According to MySpace, Richter gained access to MySpace user accounts via phishing schemes, or took control of accounts that had already been phished, and then used the service’s bulletin feature, which sends messages to all of a user’s "friends," to churn out unsolicited messages that advertised products ranging from Polo shirts to cellphone ringtones.

Storage infrastructure maker CA on Jan. 23 introduced a new version of its BrightStor Storage Resource Manager, which extends its centralized management, automated monitoring and reporting functions to business information stored in IBM Lotus Domino and DB2 UDB. BrightStor SRM r11.6 already supports Microsoft Exchange Server. The new release protects both e-mail and application data in these environments, preventing downtime and streamlining management of the storage infrastructure, a company spokesperson said.

The latest upgrade to McAfee’s VirusScan Enterprise security software is causing hiccups for some versions of IBM’s Lotus Notes, the companies warned. The problem affects users who have upgraded to VirusScan Enterprise 8.5i and are using the R6 or R7 version of Lotus Notes, McAfee said. While working in Lotus Notes email for a period of time, typically an hour or two, the program will display the following error message when users try to open or delete email: "You are not authorized to perform that operation." Users can close the dialog box but then can’t do anything else in Notes.

Fresh Egg NT joins partnership with F-Secure to distribute their security products throughout the UK. The market for network security products is large and because Fresh Egg NT has specialist sales, marketing and support skills in network security, F-Secure has agreed to a deal for Fresh Egg to distribute their products throughout the UK. Network attacks are very common and cost organizations vast sums of money, because of the increasing number of sophisticated and targeted attacks taking place it is important that measures are taken as a precaution and prevention. F-Secure’s Messaging Security Gateway Appliance delivers complete and effective security for email. Their software is able to prevent spam from entering the network, while inbound and outbound emails are kept free from viruses and other malicious content.

Benefiting from a boom in offshore outsourcing, India’s software and services exports are expected to grow by 33 percent to more than US$31 billion in the Indian fiscal year that ends March 31, according to data released Tuesday by the National Association of Software and Service Companies. India’s top outsourcing companies–Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies and Wipro–have all reported strong revenue and profit growth for the quarter that ended Dec. 31, mainly on increased volumes of business.

Prominic.NET, provider of managed hosting services for the entire IBM Lotus software family and complimentary offerings from other vendors, is showcasing a number of enhancements to its NATIV solution portfolio. Prominic.NET’s NATIV solutions have roots in the company’s history of providing excellent customer service. As Justin Hill, Prominic’s CTO explained: "Many hosting companies require their customers to adapt to rigid structure to manage their accounts–some even denying access to most administrative settings. Our approach is quite the opposite: we embrace the diversity of our customers’ needs by providing a comprehensive toolset and nearly unrestricted–though still very secure–access for administrators to do their jobs." The latest enhancements include Version 4.5 of the Prominic Admin Portal, which now requires and automates firewall-based authentication. The many administrative tools available to Prominic customers have been enhanced to include point-and-click FTP, RDP and SSH, none of which require client computer software installs.

For Tuesday 23 January only, you can get your own dose of Lotusphere in Second Life. All you need to do is go to IBM’s Lotusphere in Second life link and sign up. You can join the Opening session, explore the Business Partner cafe, join a BOF session, and talk with Lotus experts. A bit like the real thing, but quieter and with a lot less walking.

Mick Moignard

Senior Technical Editor