Tom Doyle :: TALK

As of the 1st of April 2007 all Irish limited companies must disclose of company particulars in E-Communications and on their websites.

The ODCE has issued Information Notice I/2007/2 detailing new disclosure requirements for companies on their websites and in all electronic communications.

The main points included in the Information Notice are as follows:

From 1 April 2007, all limited liability companies operating websites will be required to show certain information including the following in
particular:

- the name of the company and the company’s legal form;
- the place of registration of the company and the number with which it is registered and the address of the registered office;

Also, from that date all electronic communications by limited liability companies must contain the same information.

Explaining what effect these new regulations will have, the Director said, “Companies have always been required to disclose general information about themselves in their written communications in order to provide their creditors and consumers with a means of identifying where to look for redress should the need arise. The object of this legislation, which originated in the EU, is simply to extend those requirements to electronic forms of communication. In addition company websites are also well-used communication tools so it is quite appropriate that these requirements extend to them also.

Companies will need to ensure that by 1 April their websites disclose all the necessary information. In addition companies may need to look at the information contained in their emails and other electronic forms of communication to ensure it also complies with these new requirements. I accordingly urge companies and their staffs to take steps immediately to assess the extent to which they are already in compliance with the new requirements. Notice of this is also being circulated to all company directors through the ‘Corporate Compliance Matters’ newsletter being issued later this month jointly by this Office and the Companies Registration Office.”

Well just when we thought she was getting her life back together, she goes and does this:

It seems all hope for a comeback in the near future is lost

Yes it’s true. The latest flaw to be uncovered in the techies browser of choice allows attackers to impersonate a different website.

There’s example how the bug could be used at http://lcamtuf.dione.cc/ffhostname.html

According to this website, “This means that your authentication cookies can be messed with, and that malicious third party sites might be able to gain influence over how unrelated sites are displayed.”.

Michal Zalewski has revealed that the latest versions of both browsers, Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox, are vunerable to a malicious attack that would allow the reading of sensitive files on your computer.

He says: “In all modern browsers, input type=”file” form fields (used to upload user-specified files to a remote server) enjoy some added protection meant to prevent scripts from arbitrarily choosing local files to be sent, and automatically submitting the form without user knowledge. For example, .value parameter cannot be set or changed, and any changes to .type reset the contents of the field.

Unfortunately, there are some problems that allow user’s keyboard input in unrelated locations to be selectively, transparently redirected to these input fields, and hence affect file selection to attacker’s liking.  Even though some browsers try to prevent file field hiding, it can be be easily stowed off-screen at negative window coordinates. The script can then automatically submit the entire form, including victim’s sensitive files.

In MSIE7, unlike with previously reported focus-related attack vectors that no longer work in that version, this can be achieved by selectively removing input field focus from within a key event handler. In Firefox, this is possible by moving the focus between onKeyDown and onKeyPressed events.”

An example of the exploit can be seen here http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/focusbug/ieversion.html

I noticed that I’ve got a stage of only writing about football when something bad happens. I rarely write about a great performance by the Irish team.

Well today is no different, I can’t help but bring myself to moan about another dismal display by Ireland.

Staunton wants us to believe that it’s all part of the rebuilding process that we nearly failed to beat one of the poorest sides in Europe, if not the poorest (I hear they’re 195th in the world rankings). Well I for one don’t believe that and by the looks of things, the team still has no faith in him as a manager.

I think it’s time the FAI realised they’ve made a huge mistake. Someone on the radio asked this morning “Why do we blame the manager, he wasn’t on the pitch”, my answer to that is that he should make himself felt on the pitch through the passion and desire of his team. The team played as bad as they did against Cyprus. They simply didn’t look like they wanted to win.

Anyway, enough of the rant. I enjoyed my trip to Old Trafford last week to see Man United’s thrashing of Watford - that’s my happy news!

The great Firefox browser has been found to have a security flaw :(.

Apparently the popup blocker software allows a means for files to be read on affected systems.

For more information visit http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/5JP051FKKE.html

For a long time now, Google has hidden the number of links linking back to websites when utilising the “link:” function in Google search (e.g. link:www.tomdoyletalk.com). This was for obvious reasons, mainly to stem the growth of people abusing the backlink algorithm.

Today, Google announced that you can now access greater information on the links linking back to your website using the Google Webmaster Central link tool.

There’s more information on Google’s webmaster blog - but you should remember that this is still not 100% accurate. They still hold back all the links the your site that they have ono record. So hopefully this will change over time.

The reknowned Matt Cutts also has an article about it with more information.
 

I heard today that the a new release of Netscape is on the cards. The last offering from Netscape (Netscape was a very poor browser which added to little value to a users web browing experience.

Apparently Netscape 9 will be developed inhouse instead of being outsourced this time and it will be available for Windows, OSX and linux.