"Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a method to restore a computer operating system to its former state if it is attacked. The concept involves taking a snapshot of the operating system at strategic points in time (such as system calls or interrupts), when it is functioning normally and, then, if the operating system is attacked, to erase everything that was done since the last 'good' snapshot was taken - effectively going back in time to before the operating system attack. The mechanism also allows the operating system to identify the source of the attack and isolate it, so that the operating system will no longer be vulnerable to attacks from that application. The idea of detecting attacks and resetting a system to a safe state is a well-known technique for restoring a system's normal functions after a failure, but this is the first time researchers have developed a system that also incorporates the security fault isolation component. This critical component prevents the operating system from succumbing to the same attack repeatedly."

It seems like the content industry has managed to score another hit in its 'fight' against piracy, and this time, it's a big fish. Announced a few weeks ago already, Google has started censoring its auto-complete and instant features for an arbitrary set of search terms - such as 'bittorrent', 'torrent', 'rapidshare', and any terms derived from those (e.g. 'ubuntu torrent' is censored as well).

A month ago Microsoft released a NetBSD port for their eMIPS ("Extensible MIPS") platform. Now the port found its way into the NetBSD source tree. "The 'extensible MIPS' is a dynamically extensible processor for general-purpose, multi-user systems. The reconfigurable logic (Extensions) dynamically load/unload application-specific circuits. Extensions add specialized instructions to the processor, security monitors, debuggers, new on-chip peripherals. Extended Instructions dramatically speedup application programs, just by patching their binaries." Besides the eMIPS port, Microsoft also contributed a machine independent framework for hardware accelerator scheduling, a scheduling policy for it, and a secure executable format.

"Intel's chief technology officer says the chip maker is developing a technology that will be a security game changer. Justin Rattner told Computerworld on Tuesday that scientists at Intel are working on security technology that will stop all zero-day attacks."

A few months ago, a bounty for porting Gallium3D to Haiku was submitted. As the target sum of $2000 has been reached, what's needed now is a developer interested in doing the actual coding work. (Gallium3D is a cross-platform video driver API, on which an increasing number of open-source Linux drivers are based.)

Today, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, the two Bell labs scientists which began creating the Unix operating system in 1969, have been named as winners of the 2011 Japan Prize for information and communications.