By Joseph Weisenthal
Last Friday, Reuters filed a story with the title: "Hole in Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) software allows free movie downloads". The allegation, backed up by famed security expert Bruce Schneier, was that the company had taken a shortcut to boost the speed of online movie streams from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), resulting in a security flaw that allowed viewers to get free movies. Of course, several other places picked up the story and ran with it.
Anyway, the story isn't closed. Adobe denies it took a shortcut or that it bears any responsibility. In a blog post, Adobe's Kevin Towes lays out a fairly technical argument for why the Reuters story contained misinformation and why its technology (in this case, its Flash Server) is secure. However, it does acknowledge that certain pieces of malicious software can allow a user to steal movies if something is misconfigured. And here lies the rub: In many of these cases, where multiple web services interact, there's no company actually at fault. It's just a matter of getting everyone to work together.
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