Ziff Davis teeters

Long-time technology publisher Ziff Davis Media is telling advertisers that it will have to enter a "prepackaged bankcrupcy by the end of this week", the New York Times reports. The possible demise of Ziff Davis is not completely a surprise as the publisher has already shut six of its 15 magazines in the last six months. Among these has been Family PC, Interactive Week and eShopper. The biggest loser, Yahoo Internet Life, a magazine with a circulation of 1.1 million that lost $30 million in seven years, was also recently closed. What is left, however, is the flagship PC Magazine, three technology sector publications and five games magazines, including the new Xbox Nation. [More at The New York Times (registration required)]

The first known wireless honeypot has been set up and while researchers say they are using it to research wireless hacking prevalence, critics warn that they may be collecting data on hackers. According to Security Focus Online, US government contractor Science Applications International Corporation has launched the first wireless honeypot, "designed to tempt unwary Wi-Fi hackers and bandwidth borrowers and gather data on their techniques and tools of choice". The 802.11b network, known as WISE (Wireless Information Security Experiment), is based in Washington and is meant to be hacked from nearby the site. To lure in hackers, the site has a number of vulnerable computers and five Cisco access points with high-gain antennae to extend its reach. But behind the scenes is an 802.11b sniffer and customised intrusion detection systems to scrutinise all incoming traffic. And while the honeypot community is seemingly excited by this new opportunity, security researcher Peter Shipley, who coined the phrase "war driving" to describe laptop-toting hackers cruising the streets in search of open wireless networks, says that the project may find it impossible to distinguish between genuine hackers and users who just "fall" into the network. [More at Security Focus Online]

We all know Bill Gates is against open source software, and now he seems to have rallied a certain amount of support on this issue at government level in Peru. According to a combination of reports from Wired and TheRegister, the US ambassador to Peru has written a letter to the president of the Peruvian congress opposing a possible mandate from Peruvian legislators to move the government from Windows to open source. This follows shortly after a donation made by Bill Gates to the Peruvian president. According to a letter that Wired has got hold of, ambassador John Hamilton begs the congress not to replace proprietary software because it would hurt an industry that has the potential to create 15 000 jobs. [More at TheRegister]

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