MSN offers free blogging

Microsoft has launched its MSN service allowing Web users to publish and track each other`s Web logs or blogs, reports Reuters.

The report quotes Microsoft as saying its free blogging service, called MSN Spaces, attracted 4.5 million users during its preliminary test phase. MSN Spaces is to be available in 15 languages in 30 markets.

MSN`s rival, Yahoo, has also launched a new Web log and social networking service called Yahoo 360, while Microsoft`s newest rival in online search and Web-based services, Google, is to experiment with video blogging to add to its Blogger service.

Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company behind the BlackBerry wireless e-mail service, may be bearing the fruits of a year of rapid subscriber growth, but faces challengers in the form of Microsoft and other software developers and mobile phone manufacturers as the market expands, reports BBC News.

Gartner says employees are becoming increasingly dependent on e-mail and secure wireless e-mail, giving it huge potential for further adoption. Although RIM has created the demand, many more players will enter the picture in a few years and offer alternatives to BlackBerry, predicts Gartner.

The Secunia security research company says a "moderately critical security flaw" has been identified in the Mozilla Foundation`s Firefox Web browser that could put users at risk of information disclosure attacks.

ExtremeTech reports Secunia has confirmed the vulnerability in Firefox 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, as well as the Mozilla suite.

Secunia says the vulnerability is caused due to an error in the JavaScript engine, which exposes arbitrary amounts of heap memory after the end of a JavaScript string. As a temporary workaround, Secunia suggests that JavaScript support be disabled.

The report says discovery of the flaw comes weeks after back-to-back browser upgrades from Mozilla to patch several potentially dangerous security holes.

The F-Secure security software maker says a Trojan horse has been created that causes smart phones to crash, reports News.Com.

F-Secure says the Trojan horse, which they`ve named Fontal.A, affects Nokia Series 60 handsets running the Symbian operating system. Unlike other Trojan horses that have targeted smart phones, Fontal.A does not propagate over Bluetooth wireless networking connections or multimedia message service. Instead, it is distributed through file-sharing or Internet relay chat.

Fontal.A tries to install a corrupted file into the infected device, causing it to fail at the next reboot. If the handset is rebooted, it gets stuck. The Trojan also damages the application manager, preventing new programs from being installed. F-Secure says the only fix is to reformat the phone, but that causes all data on the handset to be lost.