Outlook Express flaw probed

The risk of an attack related to a flaw in Microsoft Outlook Express climbed this week, after underground hacking sites began circulating sample code for exploiting it.

The exploit is designed to take complete control of PCs with certain versions of the Outlook Express e-mail program installed on them when users visit newsgroups controlled by hackers, CNET reports.

But security experts said the risk of a widespread attack is low because people must visit the malicious newsgroups for an attack to work and the exploit code has some glitches, said Michael Sutton, a lab director at security company iDefense.

"It requires a reasonable amount of user intervention, which lowers the overall risk," says Sutton.

The upcoming version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, will have built-in Really Simple Syndication (RSS) for Internet data feeds, Xinhau reports.

The technology, invented by Netscape, allows Internet users to track freshly updated information without having to surf through a long list of Web pages.

Microsoft is also planning to offer a set of underlying extensions to RSS code that will make it easier for Web sites to publish lists such as photo albums, music play lists and other sorts of top 10 lists as RSS feeds.

Sun Microsystems on Monday intends to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its Java programming language by sharing proprietary source code for several key Java applications used by corporate customers, reports MarketWatch.

Sun officials believe that by making the source codes open to developers, they will spur more involvement and use of Java-based applications.

Joe Keller, Sun`s VP, said the growth of Java in the marketplace is one of the reasons Sun is opening up the source code for the applications.

There are about 700 million PCs and 708 million handsets worldwide that use Java and the next generation of home DVD players will be Java-enabled, said Keller.