Britain reverses Wikipedia ban

Britain's Internet censor has backtracked on its decision to ban a Wikipedia page for containing a "potentially illegal" image of a naked child, reports the guardian.co.uk.

Over the weekend, it emerged that the Internet Watch Foundation, which operates a blacklist to screen out images of child abuse, that is used by the majority of British Internet providers, had banned the image of a 32-year-old album cover by German rock group The Scorpions.

The decision resulted in a technical glitch that prevented thousands of British Web surfers from editing any pages on Wikipedia, as well as confusion over why the image was deemed "potentially illegal" - particularly since the album has been on sale in British shops for more than 30 years.

President-elect Barack Obama should elevate cyber security to the top tier of national security issues, as the US government increasingly comes under attack, according to a new commission, says the Financial Times.

The issue was "one of the most important national security challenges" facing the US and could "no longer be relegated to information technology offices", according to a report by the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency, directed by the Centre for International and Strategic Studies, a think-tank.

"This is a strategic issue on par with weapons of mass destruction or global jihad," said the report, which comes as the US government increasingly falls victim to cyber-attacks. In the past year, Chinese hackers have successfully broken into systems at the Pentagon and the White House. The World Bank recently ordered a comprehensive review after its systems were penetrated.

Sun Microsystems appears to have put its utility computing effort, Network.com, on ice until it gets an idea of how to resurrect it, according to CNET News.

The pioneering computing effort, which launched two years ago, offered pay-per-use computing infrastructure for high-performance computing applications, without forcing customers to buy expensive IT equipment. However, Network.com has only 13 customers and has stopped accepting new customers, according to a report on Register.com.

Dave Douglas, senior VP of cloud computing and developer platforms group, told reporters yesterday that the service is in transition, but was reluctant to offer specifics on the direction the company would go with the service.

Microsoft issued eight security patches in its December security bulletin, fixing a total of 28 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office that allow remote attackers to launch malicious attacks on victims' PCs, reports ChannelWeb.

The security fixes are part of Microsoft's regular monthly patch release, issued on the second Tuesday of every month, known as Patch Tuesday.

Six of the updates, repairing a total of 23 errors, were deemed critical, which means potential cyber attackers have the ability to execute malicious code remotely that could shut down or completely take control of a user's PC.