Apple announced that an internal investigation has discovered irregularities related to the issuance of certain stock option grants made between 1997 and 2001. One of the grants in question was to CEO Steve Jobs, but it was subsequently cancelled and resulted in no financial gain to the CEO. A special committee of Apple's outside directors has hired independent counsel to perform an investigation and the company has informed the SEC. 

Apple executives will refrain from commenting further on this matter until the independent investigation is concluded.  "Apple is a quality company, and we are proactively and transparently disclosing what we have discovered to the SEC," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "We are focused on resolving these issues as quickly as possible."

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Cellphone Talking Worse than Driving Drunk

Researchers at the University of Utah have published a study that claims drivers on cell phones are prone to more crashes than drunk drivers. Two psychology professors, David Strayer and Frank Drews, along with toxicology professor Dennis Crouch, conducted the study. 40 test subjects drove a simulated highway while undistracted, drunk and talking on a cellphone. The cell phone using drivers crashed three times, while the drunk drivers surprisingly did OK.

Researchers found that the drunk drivers were more aggressive and followed closer than the cell phone using drivers. They also discovered that cell phone users had significantly slower brake times at 849 ms versus 777 ms of the baseline group. Researchers suggest that cell phones make drivers more sluggish in perception and reaction.

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EMC Buys RSA for .1 Billion

Storage manufacturer EMC announced that it would acquire RSA Security, maker of the popular SecurID devices, in a deal valued at .1 billion. EMC will pay per share for RSA, a hefty premium that has concerned investors and sent EMC shares plunging.

Security has become a critical factor in data storage, with companies like Microsoft releasing technologies to help companies lock down their data. EMC says it was missing a security solution from its product offerings. The acquisition is expected to close late in the third quarter, with RSA becoming EMC's Information Security Division.

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Office 2007 Release Delayed

Microsoft said it will delay the release of its Office 2007 business productivity software to improve product performance in the latest setback for the world's largest software maker.

Microsoft said it will now aim for a launch of Office 2007 to business customers by the end of 2006 rather than an earlier target of October. Microsoft also said it would delay the general availability of the Office upgrade to early 2007 from its previous January target.

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Two New IE Flaws Discovered

Security researchers have discovered two new flaws in Internet Explorer. While proof of concept code is available for both, there are no known exploits of either flaw.

The first involves a cross-site scripting issue where an attacker could view information in an open browser window from another that is visiting a malicious site. However, researchers called the issue less serious than the other flaw, saying it requires user interaction, and sensitive data in other browser windows.

A second more serious flaw involves how HTA applications are handled. A user could be tricked into opening a malicious file, which in turn could execute code. The file would need to be accessed through SMB or WebDAV in order for the issue to be exploited.

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Exploit Code Released for Mac OS X

Security firms warned users of Apple's Mac OS X about the existence of an exploit that could result in the execution of arbitrary code. The news has made upgrading to version 10.4.7 even more important, as the update fixes the issue. The vulnerability lies in an operating system file called "launchd."

The proof-of-concept code was created by Digital Munition security researcher Kevin Finisterre. He has written other exploits in the past, including another for a Bluetooth flaw within Mac OS X. Finisterre says he does his work out of a desire to show those who believe the operating system is completely safe that there are flaws that need to be addressed.

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Adobe Updates Flash Player

Adobe released Flash Player 9, an update to its popular Web media player that boasts a 10x performance boost.  The new player gets its new found speed by using ActionScript 3.0 -- an object-oriented language that's ECMAScript-compliant - and a new ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) which features a Just In Time (JIT) compiler. That compiler "translates ActionScript code to native machine code for maximum execution speed" Adobe said in a statement.

Flash Player 9 can be downloaded free of charge in editions for either Windows or Mac from Adobe's Web site.

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