Intel buying McAfee – the rest of the story

My blog on InfoWorld Tech Watch about the acquisition should be up shortly. [UPDATE: See Is Intel buying an also-ran?]

There’s more to the story. A good friend of mine, Rob Rosenberger, has been writing about McAfee’s shenanigans with the Chinese government for almost a decade now. Check out Rob’s summary post about the whole sordid affair, which he calls The China Syndrome.

Rob wrote to me just a few minutes ago, with even more revelations. I don’t have any way to verify what he says. But I do know that in more than a decade of writing with and about Rob, he’s never steered me wrong.

Rob has confirmed to me that Jimmy Kuo was the “antivirus industry’s diplomat to China.  He works for Microsoft now, but back then he was the senior antivirus researcher at McAfee.”  Rob revealed that Jimmy called him twice “in a fit of deep remorse” looking for Rob to “absolve” him.

“Kuo soon got over his remorse,” Rob told me.  “We know this because he didn’t stick a gun in his mouth.”

Rob is no ordinary antivirus expert. By his own admission, he has been “floating in and out of” the U.S. intelligence community since 1982.  I asked Rob what he thinks is the long term fallout from The China Syndrome.  He said “The Defense Department failed to remember a very valuable lesson.  Our troops rely 100% on antivirus software written by companies that secretly armed America’s enemies.  Yet a few months ago, the Air Force Chief of Staff shook hands with McAfee and told everyone ‘these guys will protect our troops in the cyber realm and we’ll rely on McAfee to provide us the cyber intelligence we need,’ even though their intelligence officials hid their own shenanigans from Defense officials.”

There is a bright spot in all this, says Rob.  “Howard Schmidt is at the White House again; he understands the national security threat posed by McAfee and Symantec and, yes, Microsoft where Kuo now works.”  I know Rob had Howard’s ear when he was the top security manager at Microsoft.

It’s only fair to believe that he still has Howard’s ear at the White House.

Time to install the Adobe Flash patch – and the Reader patches, too, when they’re out

It looks like the Flash player update is relatively stable. Go ahead and install it. (But you have my permission to curse under your breath that Adobe still hasn’t done anything to fix the Flash cookie problem.)

From Adobe Security Bulletin APSB10-16:

Adobe recommends users of Adobe Flash Player 10.1.53.64 and earlier versions update to Adobe Flash Player 10.1.82.76. Adobe recommends users of Adobe AIR 2.0.2.12610 and earlier versions update to Adobe AIR 2.0.3.

Got yer scorecard?

The new Reader and Acrobat should be out in a few hours. Apply those as soon as you can – the hole they plug is pretty big. Details in Adobe’s Security Bulletin ASPB10-17.

Windows tweaking and optimization

Ed Bott posted a fascinating, dead-on accurate commentary by Igor Leyko, that tells the truth about optimizing Windows.

If you think you can make Windows run faster by using a registry cleaner, or defragging, or changing a registry setting, or … or … or … – save yourself some headache.

Check it out. Igor knows whereof he speaks.

The perils of patching in the cloud

Cloud computing is supposed to be the way to go, right? When there’s a new version of a program, there’s no need to patch a hundred million PCs, you only have to patch one copy of the app, up there in the cloud, right?

Wrong.

Adobe’s in a patching mood, too

As if we didn’t have our hands full with a record number of Microsoft Security Bulletins, Adobe’s gotten its patching into high gear.

The Adobe Flash patch is something to be concerned about – it covers six separately identified security holes in Flash. I’ll be watching it closely over the next few days, and advise you when it’s safe to patch.

P .NE. NP proof?

If you don’t understand the heading, don’t bother.

One of the great unsolved propositions in Computer Science, known as “P equals NP,” may have been solved. Vinay Deolalikar at HP labs claims on his site:

P is not equal to NP. 6th August, 2010 (66 pages 10pt, 102 pages 12pt). Manuscript sent on 6th August to several leading researchers in various areas. Confirmations began arriving 8th August early morning. Final version of the paper to be posted here shortly. Stay tuned.

It might be a hoax, and the proof may have holes, but it seems by all accounts to be a genuine attempt at a proof, from someone who certainly knows his stuff.

The first draft of the paper is on Scribd.

For a layman’s description of P = NP, see the Wikipedia article.

Firefox 4 Beta 2 lookin’ good

I like it!

See my Tech Watch report.

Mouseless

MIT has created a phenomenal replacement for the mouse.

Get a load of this.

(The original link was broken. Sorry, and thanks to all who pointed it out! I’ve been a bit preoccupied – a new Little Leonhard just arrived, 8 lbs and full of energy.)