Items tagged with Oracle
No information is safe in the Internet age. Citycomp, an Germany-based IT services company, reported that they had been hacked and blackmailed. Some of their clients include Oracle, Airbus, Toshiba, Volkswagen, Leica, and Porsche. Citycomp is an IT services company that provides items such as servers, storage, and other computer equipment to other major companies. It appears that the hackers targeted the German branches of these international companies. The list of victims includes both corporations with an international reach and strictly German companies. The hackers, who go by the alias "Boris-Bullet Dodger", have distributed some of the stolen files on a website. Some of the affected firms...
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Facebook is not the only company whose user data policies have captured the attention of a government agency. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is investigating claims that Google harvests private data from Android users. This investigation could potentially affect over 10 million Australian Android users. The ACCC is particularly concerned that digital platforms like Google and Facebook have tremendous influence on the advertising market. Oracle Australia, a branch of Oracle Corporation, recently met with members of the ACCC and claimed that Google harvests an average of a gigabyte of data a month from individual Android users. This data includes location information...
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Oracle is not going down without a fight. The company is currently funding a nonprofit group to help blacken Google’s name following their legal battle over Java. Ken Glueck, Senior Vice President of Oracle, has admitted that Oracle is “absolutely a contributor” to this smear campaign. Oracle is currently aiding in the “Google Transparency Project” on the Campaign for Accountability website. The “Campaign for Accountability” was created this past Spring in Washington in order to promote initiatives such as LGBTQIA rights and clean water. Daniel Stevens, Deputy Director of the “Campaign for Accountability” has refused to name any of their other donors. Microsoft has stated that they are not a...
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MICROS, one of the largest point-of-sale payment systems in the world, has been hacked by a Russian organized cybercrime group with a history of hacking into banks and retailers. The full extent of the security breach is still being evaluated, but given the size and scope of MICROS, this could turn out to be another lucrative payday for the Russian cyber thieves.Oracle purchased MICROS in 2014. At the time, Oracle said its point-of-sale systems were being used at more than 330,000 cash registers around the world, including more than 200,000 in the food and beverage industry, over 100,000 deployed at retail sites, and more than 30,000 in place at hotels. In short, if you've been out to eat, shop,...
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In what can be considered another legal setback for Oracle, a jury has ordered the firm to pay Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) $3 billion in damages for its decision to stop developing database software for HP's Itanium-based servers in 2011. Oracle plans to appeal the verdict, but for now it's on the hook for a significant sum over a contract dispute. What this all boils down to is whether or not Oracle had a legal obligation to continue supporting Itanium after Intel indicated that its end of life was near as it began focusing more on its x86 microprocessors. Oracle feels strongly that it had no such commitment, while HP successfully argued the opposite, adding that its servers would be obsolete...
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Google has beaten Oracle in what became a protracted legal battle over the use of the latter's Java APIs in the former's Android mobile operating system. Oracle had sought $9.3 billion in damages, but any hopes of winning a big payday from Google were mostly dashed on Thursday when a U.S. jury unanimously sided with Google in the dispute. Oracle took issue with Google injecting certain parts of its Java platform into Android, the world's leading mobile OS (by market share), without a license agreement. The dispute led to a lawsuit being filed in 2010 that stated "in at least several instances, Android computer program code was also directly copied from copyrighted Oracle America code." Two years...
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Oracle is hoping to score a major damages award from Google in court. Specifically, Oracle wants Google to fork over $9.3 billion, the amount Oracle claims Google now owes it for injecting certain parts of its Java platform into Android, the world's leading mobile operating system (by market share), without a license agreement.The dispute between Oracle and Google is one that's been going on for over a half a decade. Oracle initially sued Google in 2010, stating at the time that "in at least several instances, Android computer program code also was directly copied from copyrighted Oracle America code." It took two years for that case to go to trial, and when it finally did in 2012, a jury ruled...
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It now looks as though we can chalk up yet another win for computer users around the globe, as Oracle has announced that it is “moving to a plugin-free web” from this point forward. And thankfully, that means that demise of the hated Java browser plugin. Like Adobe Flash, the Java plugin has long been a dangerous security risk for Windows and Mac computers, with hackers taking advantage of poor coding to deliver malicious payloads. Oracle has finally seen the writing on the wall, stating in a blog post that it will “deprecate the Java browser plugin in JDK 9.” Oracle goes on to explain that the plugin “will be removed from the Oracle JDK and JRE in a future Java SE release.”(Image Source: Rob...
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If you don't pay close attention, you may end up switching your default search engine without realizing it. That's the whole idea, really. During Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, company boss Marissa Mayer talked about how search was in Yahoo's DNA and always will be. More importantly, she announced a three-year partnership with Oracle aimed at getting more users to try Yahoo's search engine. As part of the partnership, Yahoo will be the default search provider for Oracle's Java software. What this means is when you install or update Java, the software will ask permission to change your browser's default search engine and homepage to Yahoo. The option to change both will be selected...
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You would think that companies would have learned their lesson after the Superfish debacle, but I guess it should be no surprise that money talks. Windows users that install Java on their machines have attempted to dodge the installation of the Ask.com toolbar for years. Oracle bundles the adware with its Java package and counts on unsuspecting or simply inattentive users to allow the installation of the Ask.com toolbar. Mac users that chose to install Java were immune to such trickery; that it is until now. Unfortunately, Oracle has doubled down on its Ask.com “deliveries” by adding the adware to the Java 8 Update 40 installer for Macs. ZDNet’s Ed Bott reports that as with Windows installations...
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IT admins would do well to prepare themselves for a rather large collection of security updates that Oracle is planning to release this Thursday. The updates are supposed to fix precisely 113 security vulnerabilities that a apply to hundreds of versions of the company's products, including Database, Fusion Middleware, Solaris, MySQL Server, and many more. "A Critical Patch Update is a collection of patches for multiple security vulnerabilities. This Critical Patch Update contains 113 new security vulnerability fixes across hundreds of Oracle products," Oracle explain in a blog post. "Some of the vulnerabilities addressed in this Critical Patch Update affect multiple products. Due to the threat...
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Oracle sued Google over its use of Java to build the Android operating system a few years ago, but Google won the case. However, an appeals court has overturned that ruling, finding that “the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection”. This ruling is a big deal because it could severely limit what software makers can safely do without getting sued and could hamper innovation. Google is of course displeased with the ruling, but others in the industry are none too happy either. Image credit: orangesparrow/Flickr Bryan Cantrill, CTO of Joyent, told Wired that the notion that you can copyright APIs is a perverted...
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Though the hardware market has been contending with declining sales -- at least in terms of traditional PCs -- software is another story altogether. According to latest data released by market research firm Gartner, the worldwide software market grew 4.8 percent to $407.3 billion 2013, compared with $388.5 billion in 2012.d Microsoft is by far the biggest benefactor of a thriving software market in which it gobbles up nearly two-thirds, or 65.7 percent, of total dollars spent. That's up from 62 percent a year prior, putting the company in an even more comfortable lead for the top spot. Oracle now sits underneath Microsoft and collects 29.6 percent of the revenue spent on software, up from 28.7...
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The launch a month ago of the Healthcare.gov website, the online portal for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (AFA), aka Obamacare, went as badly as it possibly could have gone. Millions attempted to use the site, and it simply didn’t work. To fix the problems, the Obama administration is reaching out to the heaviest of hitters in the industry, including employees from Google, Red Hat, and Oracle. This, in addition to the work that Verizon will be doing to help clean up the disaster. Specifically, Google site reliability engineer Michael Dickerson and Presidential Innovation Fellow Greg Gershman will be on the case. Dickerson will work with QSSI, the company that built the information-collecting...
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ARM this week announced that it's inked a multi-year contract with Oracle to further optimize the existing Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) for ARM 32-bit platforms and also to add Java SE support for ARMv8 64-bit platforms. The deal will benefit enterprise and embedded markets, including server and network infrastructures, as well as emerging machine-to-machine (M2M) sectors like industrial control, factory automation, and single-board computers. "The long-standing relationship between ARM and Oracle has enabled our mutual technologies to be deployed across a broad spectrum of products and applications," commented Henrik Stahl, vice president, Java Product Management, Oracle. "By working...
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Microsoft and Oracle are teaming up in an official capacity to enable customers to run Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure, the two companies announced this week. As a result of the partnership, customers will be able to deploy Oracle software such as Java, Oracle Database, and Oracle WebLogic Server on the aforementioned Windows products and receive full support from Oracle. "Microsoft is deeply committed to giving businesses what they need, and clearly that is the ability to run enterprise workloads in private clouds, public clouds and, increasingly, across both," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. "Now our customers will be able to take advantage...
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Two of the world's largest enterprise companies may be about to shake hands in a deal that'll have massive implications across the entire cloud (er, industry). A new report suggests that Microsoft and Oracle are ready to "link their fortunes in the cloud," announcing at its upcoming BUILD conference a new partnership with Oracle. BUILD is expected to be the launching pad for Windows 8.1, but that's mostly on the consumer front. On the enterprise front, Oracle is expected to announce a cooperation with Microsoft whereby Microsoft's software ties in tightly with Oracle's powerful enterprise hardware. It's a strange collaboration, for sure. A few years ago, these two were seen as rivals. But given...
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Do you use Java? If so, be aware that Oracle just released its "June 2013 Critical Update for Java SE," a collection of code that provides 40 new security fixes. All but three of them are security holes that can be exploited from a remote location without any kind of authentication. Four of the vulnerabilities affect client and server deployments, while 34 only affect client deployments, Oracle said, adding that Java users should waste no time applying the update. "Oracle recommends that this Critical Patch Update be applied as soon as possible because it includes fixes for a number of severe vulnerabilities," Oracle said in a statement. "Note that the vulnerabilities fixed in this Critical Patch...
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For the majority of Americans, when a fabulously wealthy person buys a private island, the eye-rolling is so severe that is causes widespread migraines. Thus, one’s knee jerk reaction to hearing via the Wall Street Journal that Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison just dropped $300 million to acquire 98% ownership of Hawaii’s Lanai island is more of the same. However, there’s more to the story. Image credit: WSJ According to the report, Ellison has more in mind for the 141 square mile island than luxurious vacationing. True, he’s planning an “ultraluxury” hotel, but he’s also planning to bring back commercial agriculture, build a sustainability laboratory,...
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Oracle is launching a new set of SPARC processors it hopes will staunch its market share losses, even as revenue continues to slip. The new T5 chips are built on a 2nm process and refine the T4 core that Oracle debuted two years ago. Like the T4, the T5 emphasized improving single-thread performance and clock speeds, though the new core does double the number of cores per processor to 16, up from eight. The SPARC T series from Sun/Oracle has always interested me, because it's an explicitly multi-threaded design that emphasized parallelism. After Intel announced the end of single-threaded scaling in 2005, Sun's early T1 processors flipped entirely in the opposite direction, emphasizing multi-threaded...
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You've got to love hacker conferences. Software vulnerabilities are never going away, that much is obvious, but it's with competitions at hacker conferences where we can really see just how vulnerable the software we use every single day is. Putting this into perspective, prior to the Pwn2Own conference in Canada, Google patched-up ten bugs in Chrome - six of which were considered severe. Despite that, Chrome was hit with a zero-day during the conference that granted code execution in the browser's sandbox renderer process. Chrome is hardly the only guilty party, however. Equally-severe exploits were presented for IE 10 under Windows 8, IE 9 under Windows 7, Firefox under Windows 7...
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IBM on Tuesday announced that the way it's going to compete with Hewlett-Packard and Oracle in the server space is by offering lower priced and easy-to-configure solutions for small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs). Towards that end, IBM rolled out eight new servers powered by its latest Power 7+ processor, starting with an entry-level model that costs less than $6,000, along with new PureSystems for big data and cloud-storage chores. "Big data and cloud systems that were once only affordable to large enterprises are now available to the masses," said Rod Adkins, Senior Vice President, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "With these new systems, IBM is forging an aggressive expansion of its Power...
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