Top 10: iPhone 3G, DNS flaw, Microsoft's cloud

Apple stole the IT news show yet again this week with the Friday launch of the iPhone 3G in 22 countries. But there was other news as well, including warnings that a DNS vulnerability really is serious and the ouster by VMware's board of cofounder and CEO Diane Greene.

1. iPhone 3G: The arrival day FAQ, iPhone activation woes hit early buyers, and First impressions: iPhone 3G: With cheers in Japan and some jeers in London because of software compatibility problems that caused problems activating the phones, Apple's iPhone 3G launched in 22 countries Friday, ending a week that had been ripe with reviews, analysis and words of warning and praise about the greatly anticipated new smartphone. As of press time for this weekly news roundup, activation problems continued during the U.S. launch because of a glitch related to the iTunes server. Some early buyers were miffed about those issues.

[ For the big picture on the iPhone 3G, see InfoWorld's special report, and for more on bringing the iPhone into the office, read How to make the new iPhone work at work | Slideshow: 10 enterprise apps for the iPhone ]

2. Talk of Internet bug spawns backlash from hackers: A Domain Name System vulnerability reported earlier this year is among the most serious uncovered to date in the DNS architecture and should be patched immediately, said Paul Mockapetris, the inventor of DNS. Some in the security community have questioned how problematic the cache-poisoning flaw really is, so Mockapetris added his voice to the growing chorus of those urging that patches be applied immediately. Products from some 80 vendors are affected by the flaw, and various of them have begun releasing patches. "The time to fix is now. The clock is ticking," Mockapetris said. The flaw was publicized this week by researcher Dan Kaminsky, who set off some in the community because he didn't provide technical details to verify the bug.

3. VMware ousts founder, hires ex-Microsoft bigwig: In a surprise move, virtualization pioneer VMware ousted cofounder and CEO Diane Greene, replacing her with Paul Maritz, a former Microsoft executive who retired from that company in 2000 after a career managing the development and marketing of various products. He went on to found cloud-storage vendor Pi. VMware, which is primarily owned by EMC, has faced increasing pressure from competitors, including Microsoft.