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Mozilla has introduced a service that checks Firefox browser plugins to make sure they don’t have known security vulnerabilities or incompatibilities.

The service debuted on Tuesday with this page, which checks 15 plugins to make sure they’re the most recent versions. Over time, Mozilla developers plan to scan additional addons, and they also plan to embed a feature into version 3.6 of the open-source browser that will automatically indicate which plugins used on a current page are out of date.

The offering builds on a feature Mozilla rolled out last month that warned Firefox users when they had an out-of-date version of Adobe’s Flash media player installed. In its first week, Mozilla statistics showed more than half of those who installed the latest Firefox release were running an insecure version of the frequently attacked plugin.

Not that the service has necessarily gotten off to as good a start as one might hope. Our tests failed to detect the use of Adobe Reader, another application widely abused by criminals. And other plugins, such as Google Picasa and the iTunes Application Detector were also left out in the cold.

But as Mozilla makes clear here, the page is only the beginning. Eventually, the organization plans to “create a self-service panel for vendors to update their plugin info as new releases come out.”

It’s initiatives such as these that demonstrate Mozilla’s dedication to the security of its users, and for that it deserves props. When legions of end users keep internet-facing software updated, we all win.

“We strongly recommend that add-on developers require SSL for updates to prevent the attack described above,” Window Snyder, chief security officer for Mozilla, stated in a post to the group’s developer blog.

The Mozilla Foundation released on Wednesday a patch for both version 1.5 and version 2.0 of the browser, fixing a critical memory corruption flaw.

Arhur Monderos is working in a company as antivirus software specialist and he runs his cool blog where he helps you to choose best antivirus software for you computer.

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The CEO of Russia’s No. 1 anti-virus package has said that the internet’s biggest security vulnerability is anonymity, calling for mandatory internet passports that would work much like driver licenses do in the offline world.

The comments by Eugene Kaspersky, who is also the founder of Kaspersky Lab, came during an interview this week with Vivian Yeo of ZDNet Asia. In it, he proposed the formation of an internet police body that would require users everywhere to be uniquely identified.

“Everyone should and must have an identification, or internet passport,” he was quoted as saying. “The internet was designed not for public use, but for American scientists and the US military. Then it was introduced to the public and it was wrongto introduce it in the same way.”

Kaspersky, whose comments are raising the eyebrows of some civil liberties advocates, went on to say such a system shouldn’t be voluntary.

“I’d like to change the design of the internet by introducing regulation - internet passports, internet police and international agreement - about following internet standards,” he continued. “And if some countries don’t agree with or don’t pay attention to the agreement, just cut them off.”

He rejected the notion that internet protocol numbers were sufficient for tracking a user, arguing they are too easy to come by.

“You’re not sure who exactly has the connection,” he explained. “Even if the IP address is traced to an internet cafe, they will not know who the customer or person is behind the attacks. Think about cars - you have plates on cars, but you also have driver licenses.”

Kaspersky was traveling on Friday and not available to be interviewed for this article. A company spokeswoman declined to comment.

Kaspersky admitted such a system would be hard to put in place because of the cost and difficulty of reaching international agreements. But remarkably, his interview transcript spends no time contemplating the inevitable downsides that would come in a world where internet anonymity is a thing of the past.

“You could make the same argument about the offline world,” said Matt Zimmerman, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “You know, every purchase you make should be tracked, we should ban the use of cash, we should put cameras up everywhere because in that massive data collection something might be collected to help someone. But we think privacy is an important enough countervailing value that we should prevent that.”

In Kaspersky’s world, services such as Psiphon and The Onion Router (Tor) - which are legitimately used by Chinese dissidents and Google users alike to shield personally identifiable information - would no longer be legal. Or at least they’d have to be redesigned from the ground up to give police the ability to surveil them. That’s not the kind of world many law-abiding citizens would feel comfortable inhabiting.

And aside from the disturbing big-brother scenario, there are the problematic logistics of requiring every internet user anywhere in the world to connect using an internationally approved device that authenticates his unique identity. There’s no telling how many innovations might be squashed under a system like that.

No doubt, the cybercriminals that Kaspersky has valiantly fought for more than a decade are only getting better at finding ways to exploit weaknesses in internet technologies increasingly at the heart of the way we shop, socialize and work. But to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, those who sacrifice net liberty for incremental increases in security no doubt will get neither.

Arhur Monderos is working in a company as antivirus software specialist and he runs his cool blog where he helps you to choose best antivirus software for you computer.

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An airline passenger rights advocate is accusing Delta Air Lines of hacking into her computer and e-mail accounts to sabotage her organization’s attempts to mandate basic services during flight delays.

Kate Hanni, a resident of California, is the founder of the Coalition for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights, an organization lobbying for federal laws that require airlines to provide bathroom access, clean air, and access to medical treatment when passengers are held up for hours on the tarmac. The legislation would also give passengers an option to exit the plane if they have been delayed on the tarmac for over three hours. Four versions of a “Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights of 2009″ are currently pending before Congress.

In a lawsuit filed in Houston, Texas on Tuesday, Hanni accuses the world’s largest airline carrier and an aviation consulting firm of conspiring to breach her computer and email in order to derail her lobbying efforts. She seeks a minimum of $11m in damages.

According to court documents, Hanni claims earlier this year she began exchanging emails with Frederick Foreman, an analyst with Virginia-based Metron Aviation who was researching US government airline surface delay data. During their correspondence, both swapped data and information about surface delays without explicit permission from Metron, of which Delta is a client.

Hanni said her PC and American Online email account were both accessed illegally this summer, with AOL confirming the email breach. Some of her data was copied to an unknown location, and other files were corrupted and rendered useless.

The plot thickens in Foreman’s affidavit. He claims that on September 25, 2009, Metron executives confronted him with “what appeared to be hacked and stolen email communications” between Hanni and himself, as well as two media contacts. The emails were sent from his private accounts on MSN and AOL and not sent through Metron’s internal email system, he claims.

Foreman states in his sworn affidavit that the executive informed him the emails were sent to the Metron from Delta and that the airline was “mad and upset” Hanni had been provided with the flight delay information. Foreman claims he tried to explain that the data was publicly available online from US government statistics, but was still fired and escorted off the premises.

When reached for comment, Delta flatly stated, “the allegation that we would hack an individual’s e-mail is absurd.”

Hanni claims Delta has a motive for seeking and destroying her data because if passenger rights bills are passed, airlines stand to lose over $40m in revenues in addition to millions more in accommodations for customers exiting planes during long delays. Currently, airlines are not restricted by law on how long planes can hold passengers on the tarmac.

Arhur Monderos is working in a company as antivirus software specialist and he runs his informative blog where he helps you to choose best antivirus software for you computer.