Meningitis Recovery and Abba Music

The Sun newspaper reported a story about a 3 year old British girl, by the name of Layla Towsey who had miraculously recovered from meningitis B. The little girl had initially been diagnosed with a heat rash on her leg, but shortly after her mother insisted on seeing a pediatrician, the Layla suffered a heart attack.

Laya was rushed to a hospital and put on life support. Her mother stayed at her besides in a 5 day long vigil and had prepared herself for losing her daughter, even to the point of kissing her good-bye.

But Layla surprised her mother and her doctors by slowly regaining consciousness and came out of her coma singing the Abba hit song, “Mama Mia!”

Her stunned mother reportedly said, “We had been preparing for bad news as the life support machine was keeping her alive. But on the Sunday I could hear her singing Mamma Mia quietly. I couldn't believe it. I knew then she would be OK...It's one of her favourite songs - she loves it. She got as close to death as you can get. She's a miracle."

There have been no reports of statements from doctors regarding the salutary effects of Abba's music.

Microsoft's New Search Engine: What's The Advantage?

The Wall Street Journal and the All Things Digital blog both broke stories this week indicating that the long anticipated new search engine from Microsoft will likely be unveiled this week. Internally known as "kumo", the new search engine is a revamp of the current Microsoft Live Search engine.

The re-branded search engine is widely rumored to be name Bing and Advertising Age reports that that Microsoft is putting $80-100 million into an advertising campaign to displace Google in people's minds as the synonymous term for internet search. For comparison's sake, it's estimated that Google's advertising budget last year was $25 million. But will people bing it instead of googling it?

As reported by Alex Patriquin and compete.com, MSN/Live Search's year-on-year market share fell to 6.2% of the total search market, this despite being the default search engine for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. So clearly either technical innovation or better branding is needed.

The All Things Digital blog story links to three reported screen shots from pre-release versions of the new search engine, working under the kumo name. The screen shots show a clean sparse results pages organized by the type of content that the search result represents. For example, one screen shot shows a search for pop star Taylor Swift. The left side navigation pane shows the search results organized by categories images, songs, lyrics, biography, music, albums, videos. This sounds similar to the search engine claims that Microsoft was making last year when it bought the semantic search engine Powerset.

It's unclear that automated organization of search results based on an understanding of the clusters of types of results can be leveraged into a sustainable competitive advantage for Microsoft and enable it to eat away at Google's 73% market share. Can these features be duplicated by Google? Are these features significant enough to convince users to change which search engine they use?

One aspect of the new Microsoft search offering that has yet to be tested or proven is just how much of the web has its search infrastructure indexed. Warm and fuzzy names, default search engine status, sparse layouts, and new organizing techniques for search results aren't worth anything if the information is not in the Microsoft databases to be found in the first place.

Automated SQL Injection Attacks Top Attack Lists

The Info Security website recently released a republication of Breach Security's report, The Web Hacking Incidents Database (WHID) 2008 Annual Report, raising questions about secure application development for internet-facing applications.

The WHID report highlights the trends in automated SQL injection attacks as the highlight of 2008.

“SQL Injection attacks that planted malware on target web sites were the #1 attack/outcome vectors for criminals in 2008.”

The Breach Security report mirrors similar reports from the IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force® 2008 Trend & Risk Report published earlier this year:

“...we have seen mass SQL injection attacks, a portion of which is attributed to the Asprox botnet. This combination of a botnet plus a SQL injection attack capability enabled another method of mass delivery of malware in which a large number of affected sites effectively becomes a delivery point. Additionally, these automated attacks also highlighted the high number of Web sites vulnerable to SQL injection and that secure development practices will go a long way in effectively mitigating these attacks.”

Sites like the Microsoft Developer Network include articles on how to fix security holes in application platforms like .NET to protect applications from SQL injection attacks, but the problems continue to be prevalent across a wide variety of applications.

The Breach Security report also indicates a shift away from ideological and defacement attacks and an increase more commercially oriented attacks, leading to a shift in target web sites. Breach Security reports a large increase in security attacks focused on financial institutions. Government and law enforcement sites continue to be subject to the largest numbers of reported attacks.

German Authorities Remove Red Bull Cola from Store Shelves

When Red Bull announced that it was releasing a "Red Bull Cola" product to complement its Red Bull Energy Drink, the company emphasized the use of natural flavorings, without phosphoric acid, preservatives, or artificial coloring. As the Red Bull page for the cola product states:

"The cola from Red Bull is a unique blend of ingredients, all from 100 % natural sources.

In addition, it is the only cola which contains both the original Kola nut and the Coca leaf. Therefore, it is a very special recipe. Or what else would you have expected from Red Bull?

The result is a natural, not-too-sweet cola taste, which comes from using the right plant extracts."

The soda maker proudly shows us pictures of Red Bull Cola's ingredients to emphasize that it has nothing to hide.

The first ingredient on the list is "coca leaf." which has lead food product safety officials to raise concerns about the safety of the product.

TIME magazine recently reported that

"The [Health Institute in the state of North Rhine Westphalia] examined Red Bull Cola in an elaborate chemical process and found traces of cocaine," Bernhard Kuehnle, head of the food safety department at Germany's federal ministry for consumer protection, told the German press on Sunday."

Further press reports indicate that retailers in six German states have been told to remove Red Bull Cola from their shelves. So far, no other authorities have exercised similar powers to remove Red Bull Cola from the markets in their jurisdiction.

The fear apparently stems from the assumption that inclusion of Coca leaves in the product means that there is "cocaine" in the product, which would not only be a health concern, but a narcotics concern.

But international narcotics law requires that the the cocaine alkaloids in coca leaves must be removed before they can be shipped outside of the Andean region of Bolivia where they are grown. These "de-cocained" leaves are used as flavoring agents in a wide variety of foods throughout the world.

Whether the minute traces of cocaine were falsely detected as a result of hyper-sensitive testing, the traces of the cocaine alkaloids are left over from the cocaine removal process, or were deliberately put into the cola drink by Red Bull hasn't been determined. Red Bull representatives were quick to issue statements that their use of coca leaves are strictly as a flavoring agent.

While food safety authorities in some German states were rushing to exercise their product banning powers, there were calmer reactions from the German federal authorities and other authorities worldwide. The general consensus was that even if the samples colas had trace amounts in the levels reported, they posed no health risk to the public. News reports indicate that the conducted tests found 0.13 micrograms of cocaine per can and that an average person would have to consume approximately 12,000 liters of the cola to feel any adverse effects from the cocaine alkaloids.

The publicity surrounding the detection of these trace amounts of cocaine alkaloids in Red Bull Cola has reinforced the image of Red Bull's marketing themes of high energy drinks, which are all natural and pack an "extra kick".

The issue however has caused a dilemma among German authorities. Narcotics authorities in Germany are now faced with determining whether the product's trace amounts of cocaine alkaloids violates German narcotics laws and are now faced with the difficult decision whether to enforce the narcotics laws despite the virtually unanimous consensus among health officials is that there is no health risk associated with it.