Ted Bridis at AP confirms, based on an internal investigation by court staff, that the early release to the Web of Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s rulings in the Microsoft case was just a mistake by someone on the staff.

Simson Garfinkel has an interesting reaction to Kevin Mitnick’s recent book.

Mitnick, “the most famous computer hacker of our time,” claims to have operated mainly by social engineering, that is, by conning people into giving him restricted information. Garfinkel describes how Mitnick-type attacks can be mitigated by wisely-designed technology.

Update (8:42 PM): The item below, which I am leaving here only to maintain a complete record, was INCORRECT. It was based on an inaccurate report from a reader, which was discovered when I asked the reader a few more questions. At this point, although the ruling was put on the Court’s website early, there is no evidence that the Court’s email was also released early.

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[INCORRECT ITEM:]

Earlier I wrote about Friday’s Microsoft ruling being available at a hidden URL on the Court’s site at 2:40 PM, about two hours before the official release time.

Reader [name deleted] reports receiving the Court’s emailed release of the ruling at about 3:15 PM, more than an hour before the scheduled release. (I received it about about 5:00 PM, but the message was listed as sent at 3:15 PM.)

Previous rulings in the case had been released after the stock market closed on a Friday, and this ruling was announced to follow that schedule. It’s not clear why it was released early. It seems unlikely that the judge changed her mind about when to release it. Perhaps the plan was to release it at 4:30, but once it was clear that the information had leaked from the website, somebody decided to release the email.

Any other theories?