[rant]  The first facet of mass digital communication, electronic mail, was already beginning to make significant impact on the global consciousness before anyone had heard of the World Wide Web.  Companies like CompuServe, American Online, and MCI all provided e-mail to subscribers, but the range of the mail was to the local area network hosting the service

With the arrival of the Web, TCP/IP united these services behind a common protocol.  Suddenly, a fabric of intercommunication was woven between disparate on-line services; mail was free to roam.  With a simple [email protected] address, you were a global presence.

Whether it was timing or luck, Netscape Communications Corporation benefited from mass communication methods provided by mail and newsgroups.  The moment they posted their first browser to the net, a veritable flood of feedback from users resulted..   “Why doesn’t this work?”  “When will we see the next browser?” “How about if you add this feature?”  It was free advice and Netscape took it.

The value of this feedback increased enormously when electronic commerce became viable on the Internet.   Before people started sending their credit card numbers over the Net, they wanted reasonable assurances that no one else was going to see them.  The security of the browser is paramount.  Once again, the global village of concerned citizens proved invaluable.

It seemed to be a game -- university students around the world were hacking on the browser to find security bugs.   Once found, they’d contact Netscape who would hunker down and issue a quick fix.  When trade magazines would run front-page articles about at severity of the latest bug, Netscape spin doctors proclaimed,  “We’ve issued a fix.”  “Don’t worry, your data is safe.”  “Thanks to so-in-so University.  We sure dig free testing.”

There was an unspoken respect between consumer and producer.  Universities find the bugs, Netscape fixes them, and issues a press release thanking the university for its cooperation.  Netscape honestly wasn’t looking to change that balance when they created the Bugs Bounty program, offering a grand and a T-shirt to confirmed security bug finders.
 
Last week, a significant security flaw was found in each version of the Netscape browser dating back to 2.0.  The individual who found the bug knew about Bugs Bounty, but decided upon malicious capitalization instead.  He demanded more cash. When Netscape balked, he went to the press and demonstrated the bug, as he threatened in his e-mail.  Plain and simple blackmail.

The Web’s roots in universities’ systems around the world have created an optimistic hope that the “world” created will somehow be a better, more democratic, less cruel environment than the one we live in.  The greed demonstrated by the Danish bug is a painful reminder that even the digital global village suffers from the clash between the haves and the have-nots.

[sift this]  This week marks the 1 year anniversary of the Bitsifter Digest.  In that year, we’ve published 40 columns and put forth considerable effort to advertise the site without spending a cent.  Let’s see how we did.

For those not versed in the ways of web site administration, you should know that web servers keep log files of accesses to web pages.  For instance, when you accessed this page, a set of data was instantly recorded on the server that included your IP address, the page you request, the time and date you requested it, and, most important, the address of the site you just came from – often called the referrer log.

Some highlights and tidbits from this years’ referrer log:
 

• The most hits we saw in one day was when Yahoo listed us as a new site (~5000).
• Even with constant link additions to all of the major search engines, the majority (it wasn’t even close) of hits to the Digest are from Alta Vista and Yahoo.  Hotbot is big on claiming they have the largest database of web pages – big deal – we get, maybe, two hits a week for Hotbot queries.
• We continually get significant hits from an ISP called Primenet.com – I’ve no idea why.
• Our brief column on the hazards of using frames continues to get significant hits from the Frame Haters page, the site claims we are anti-frame.  Another frame hater page links to us claiming we’re pro-frames.  Go figure.
• When Howard Stern talked about rotten.com on his nationally syndicated radio show, he brought rotten’s servers to their knees.  A fairly inconspicuous link to Bitsifter from one of rotten’s accounts generates significant hits.
• Twice this year we’ve seen huge spikes in our hit count – from 200-500/day to 2500/day.  No clue why.
• We’ve tickled the fancy of at least two companies: Yahoo and Netscape.  Articles involving the two companies are among the most read, thanks to floods of hits from those respective companies.