After dealing with many issues about user passwords and clients saying; I did not do this, or that, how is your mail server doing this? Well let's first say the obvious, a mail server simply is not smart enough to do anything on it's own. It will not selectively pick a user to mess with.

After spending three hours messing about with a user saying all I ever use is the web interface to make sure I never get a virus, and I am absolutely certain that no one has my password. I have never given it to anyone!! It was quite clear that the person was doing little to help the situation. He was more concerned with proving that the mail server was messing with him, and he finally had the proof.

After hours of digging through the logs of every single transaction the mail server had made over several day's it was quite clear he was incorrect and someone had got his logon and password. They had clearly attained it in a cyber cafe where he been on holiday.

I asked the fellow have you ever heard of a key logger? I knew we were in trouble when his reply was what is that? It is clear that you are sending emails from the US and France minutes appart. So someone has that logon and password. Rather than spending even more time explaining how they work. I would suggest a rule for anyone traveling. Change your password each time you use an unknown network! Paranoid perhaps, but then your link to your identity has to be protected. It is more logical than thinking your own mail server is messing with you.

The best approach when planning a vacation trip. Change that password regularly. It is totally impossible to know the security of a publically open network like a Cyber Cafe or even a Hotel or Motel. You know better than leaving cash in your Motel or Hotel room right! It should be logical to not leave your passwords laying around. A keylogger can have this information in a matter of second and using your ID to make you a major spammer on the web. Or worse yet intercepting confidental company information. There are people everywhere, that work to make the best of your information.

A rare piece of malicious software targeting Apple's Mac OS X operating system - instead of the more common victim, Microsoft Windows - has been spotted online and appears to be spreading. Like many computer viruses, the bug lures people to click on it by posing as something else, in this case a file containing a picture of the next-generation Apple operating system.

The malicious software causes computer programs to crash and transmits itself through an instant message program for the Mac called iChat. To get infected, users must download the file, called "latestpics.tgz," and install it on their computer. Infected computers will then automatically attempt to send the program to all contacts on the infected user's "buddy list."

Mac users typically have not had to worry about the computer worms and viruses that regularly hit the Windows-using world. It's a regular debate among techies whether this is because the Mac operating system is inherently more secure or whether computer hackers simply do not bother attacking an operating system that is not widespread. Apple Computer Inc. has less than 5 percent of the U.S. computer market.

Apple released a statement yesterday warning users to download files from only companies they have confidence in. "Apple always advises Macintosh users to only accept files from vendors and Web sites that they know and trust," read the statement. Apple's Web site yesterday afternoon did not appear to give Mac users any notice of the bug, and a spokesman was uncertain whether the company would update its operating system in response to this specific threat.

Hackers have released software that could be used to take over Windows PCs that lack the latest Microsoft security patches. But while this code is dangerous, security experts said today that it had yet to be used by attackers in any widespread way.

The attack code exploits two separate bugs in Windows Media Player, which were addressed in Microsoft's MS06-005 and MS06-006 advisories released Tuesday.

The MS06-005 bug concerns a flaw in the way the Media Player processes bitmap files, while MS06-006 has to do with the Media Player plug in for non-Microsoft browsers.

Of these two bugs, Microsoft rated only MS06-05 as critical, but both could be exploited to seize control of an unpatched machine, according to the French Security Incident Response Team Web site, which has published examples of the malicious code.

In fact, the code that takes advantage of the MS06-006 flaw may be of greater concern to Windows users, said Craig Schmugar, virus research manager with McAfee Inc.'s Avert Labs. "From a vulnerability side, MS06-005 is a concern, but from what we've seen so far, the MS06-006 exploits are further along."

So far, none of the code is being used much by attackers, he said. "Clearly there's been activity on the exploit-code writing side, but we haven't seen that translate into impacting customers."

Another security researcher agreed with Schmugar's assessment. "Yesterday we got a lot of reports of [the code] being used, but they turned out to be false positives," said Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer of the SANS Internet Storm Center. "I haven't seen anything really used in the wild."

Security intelligence outfit iDefense Labs is offering a $10,000 reward to any hacker who finds a worm hole in Microsoft's products, but the software maker isn't exactly thrilled by the gambit.

One day after iDefense, of Reston, Va., announced the bounty as part of a newly implemented quarterly hacking challenge, Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., believes paying for flaws is not the best way to secure software products.

Of course Microsoft believes that responsible disclosure, which involves making sure that an update is available from software vendors the same day the vulnerability is first broadly known, is the best way to protect the end user.

The hacking challenge is part of VeriSign-owned iDefense's controversial VCP (Vulnerability Contributor Program), which offers financial incentives to anonymous researchers who agree to give up exclusive rights to advance notification of unpublished vulnerabilities or exploit code.

iDefense Labs, defended the new program, insisting that it promotes the concept of responsible disclosure and keeps information on critical zero-day flaws away from malicious attackers.

It is strange that Microsoft offers $250,000 as a bounty to help capture a virus writer, but frowns on paying for the information that would stop the propagation of the virus.

Should all vendors should be paying for vulnerabilities? In a free enterprise, everything has a cost and a value. We have recognized that value and we're willing to pay for it. Then vendors should be doing the same thing?

Peter Mell, a computer scientist who manages the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) NVD (National Vulnerability Database), said dangling incentives for hackers to target a single vendor could set a dangerous precedent.

Microsoft has finalized the members of its next-generation desktop line-up. As expected, standalone Tablet and Media Center Editions are no more.
After months of maintaining that it had not yet finalized its Windows Vista line up, Microsoft seems finally to have decided upon a half dozen core Vista versions. Plus two additional releases customized for the European Union that won't bundle in Windows Media Player, as ordered by European antitrust regulators.

The Windows Vista SKUs, officially, are: Windows Starter 2007, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Home Basic N, and Windows Vista Business N.

However, as some Web commentators have noted, there is no Windows Vista Small Business Edition on the current list. Such a SKU was supposedly part of Microsoft's Vista plans, as of quite recently. There also is no mention of any 64-bit-specific Windows Vista editions on the Microsoft Web site.

Microsoft currently offers six different versions of Windows XP. The line up includes XP Home, Professional, Media Center, Tablet PC, and Professional x64, and the Windows XP N editions.

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One Chinese blogger stays on the move, uses multiple blogs, and says the demand for non-corrupt political officials is the real foe of censorship.

Li Xinde has no First Amendment to protect him as an investigative reporter in China. But he does have a knack for finding stories of corruption and abuse that make their way even to state-run media outlets. "I can still spread news across the whole country in just 10 minutes, while the propaganda officials are still wondering what to do," Li told Reuters.

He described how he has to work to avoid arrest, by shuttling around to different Internet bars in rural China: "It's what Chairman Mao called sparrow tactics. You stay small and independent, you move around a lot, and you choose when to strike and when to run."

On the topic of businesses like Yahoo and Google choosing to yield to censorship requirements in order to operate in China, Li said he understands the business reasons, but, "morally it's wrong to sell people's freedom."

His freedom has become more difficult to maintain over the past two years, the article noted. Though he isn't famous, he has built enough of a reputation that he is something of a marked man.

Still, he has reason to fear. Evidence prosecutors obtained from Yahoo in China has contributed to the jailings of two journalists, and others who have published stories on the Internet also languish in prison, the report said.

As more Chinese citizens move online, their interest in the habits of politicians could be the ultimate undoing of censorship and media suppression:

Li said Chinese people's demands for clean, accountable officials, and their salacious curiosity about bad ones, were the censors' ultimate enemy.

"Our party always said revolution depended on the gun and the pen -- the military and propaganda," said Li, echoing a slogan of Mao's. "The gun is still firmly in the party's hands, but the pen has loosened."

Ever since beating down Netscape & Co however IE has been quite stagnant in terms of innovation, and has been one of the biggest security holes in an increasingly wild internet full of malicious code. A lack of competition imbued Microsoft with a sense of security in their dominant market position and so nobody saw any sense in spending money improving something with no realistic competition.

Internet Explorer 7 interface

That has been changing of late with the introduction of fresh-faced upstarts in the form of Mozilla Firefox and Opera among others. The introduction of new features such as tabbed browsing, the integration of the likes of RSS; and, arguably most importantly overall, the plugging of security holes has seen these browsers steal a fair enough chunk of IE's market share to make the industry sit up and take notice.

In response to this Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced that along with Windows Vista the world is to see a new version of Internet Explorer. This new and improved IE appeared then and seems now, as we have the second beta in our hands, to mainly be concerned with playing catch-up on the young pretenders.

New features

Introducing native support for tabbed browsing and RSS feeds are just two of the modernising steps Microsoft is taking with Internet Explorer (IE7). Ironing out bugs and plugging security holes, such as the always-open ActiveX controls which have caused so much headache in previous versions of the browser, are two of the other main concerns.

When you first fire up the beta it may take you somewhat aback to see the navigation bar ripped to shreds and the classic File, Edit, View toolbar missing from sight. Microsoft has taken the top of the browser window and treated it to a complete makeover. The navigation bar has the Back and Forewords buttons on the left hand side, and the Refresh, Stop and search bar to the right.

In default mode you have another bar beneath this. The first new icon is the star which, when clicked, opens a sidebar containing the favourites menu, RSS feeds and history. Integrated RSS is the feature everyone is hopping around with IE7. The prediction is that RSS will become substantially more mainstream as millions of Joe Windows Users discover its delights through IE7.

Moving right from the star one comes to the add/subscribe plus sign, which allows you to add individual pages or groups of tabs to your favourites, as well as allowing you to import/export favourites. Moving right again with multiple tabs open there is the Quick Tabs button, which allows you to quickly switch between images of all your open tabs. This can be handiest when you have a lot of tabs open in the one window and need to be able to distinguish them by more than simply name.

MySQL Chief Executive Marten Mickos confirmed the acquisition attempt in an interview at the Open Source Business Conference here but wouldn't provide details such as when the approach was made or how much money Oracle offered.

He did, however, say why he turned down Oracle's offer: the desire to keep his company's independence. "We will be part of a larger company, but it will be called MySQL! Oracle didn't immediately comment on the acquisition offer.

Though it is increasingly diversified, Oracle's primary business is selling its own proprietary database software. MySQL, in contrast, is a leader among several companies trying to commercialize rival open-source products.

Oracle already has bought two small open-source database companies--Sleepycat on Tuesday and InnoDB in 2005. But its open-source ambitions clearly are larger; for example, BusinessWeek reported that Oracle is expected to acquire open-source application server maker JBoss.

If the big boys such as Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems and Microsoft have their way, enterprises soon will have little use for the wares that most of the security vendors here are hawking.

It's rare that those three vendors would all agree on anything, but in speeches and interviews this week, executives from all of them have said that it's time to build security into hardware and software from the ground up and stop trying to fix problems after the fact.

Of course, each vendor has a different idea about how to accomplish that goal, but the underlying idea is the same: Make security an integral part of the network, and not an add-on.

To Cisco, this means enterprises buying into the company's Self-Defending Network strategy. In his keynote speech at the conference, Cisco CEO John Chambers showed off the company's new Security Management Suite, which is designed to automate protection features and management among routers, switches and client devices.

The Cisco Security Manager piece of the suite will enable administrators to create flexible policies that can be shared among devices and then modified on the fly to defend against new threats.

"Automating that process is a fairly scary thing for a lot of people. Integration is classically the hardest and most expensive thing going. Will we get to automation? Yes, but this is more of an interim step to help solve the problem."

Sun executives have their own ideas about where security should lie. They believe security should be provided not by firewalls, IDS boxes or anti-virus scanners, but by the network infrastructure and the software running on it.

The company has started shipping its Trusted Extensions for Solaris, a toolkit that hardens the operating system. The idea is to make security a transparent part of the OS, not a group of add-on features.

Redmond is not standing still either. Many of the features, such as integrated anti-spyware software and upgraded online identity management tools, are things that dozens of security vendors are trying to sell as stand-alone products.

Many observers believe that once those technologies are integrated into Windows, they will quickly become commodities, much like browsers are today. But Gates knows there is still much more work to be done on security, by Microsoft, Sun, Cisco and hundreds of other companies.

Microsoft Corp. has reported a problem with one of its security patches released yesterday that requires some users to take additional steps to ensure it installs properly.

The problem affected patch number MS06-007, which fixes a TCP/IP vulnerability in several versions of Windows that could allow a denial-of-service attack. Microsoft called the patch important but not critical, and said users should install it as soon as possible. It was one of several patches released yesterday (see "Microsoft issues seven security patches").

Soon after its release, Microsoft discovered a problem for users who tried to install MS06-007 through the following channels: Automatic Updates, Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and Systems Management Server 2003 when used with the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates (ITMU), the company said.

Customers using Automatic Updates don't have to take any action because the patch will install properly with their next scheduled update, Microsoft said.

However, Microsoft Update and Windows Update customers who visited those sites before 8:30 p.m. Pacific Time yesterday need to revisit them and accept the security updates being offered, the company said.

Likewise, WSUS and Systems Management Server 2003 administrators who synchronized their servers to obtain the updates before 8:30 p.m. Pacific Time yesterday should manually synchronize their servers and approve the new updates, Microsoft said.

click for full size FirstPage 2006 is a full featured web development editor with support for HTML, XHTML, PHP, ASP, Cold Fusion, Javascript, CSS, SSI and Perl. It offers traditional source editing with real-time browser preview, as well as a design mode for WYSIWYG editing. First Page 2006 provides a comfortable, tabbed interface with a resource bar to access files, tags , manage projects and view the document tree. Other features include integrated FTP upload, spell check, web gallery creator, tag stripping and conversion, Tidy HTML and much more. A great editor for beginners and advanced users a like! License: Freeware Price: Free Windows: 98/ME/NT/2000/XP File size: 9208 kb Author: Evrsoft Version: 3.00 Added: Feb 04, 2006 Our Rating (Excellent) Popularity Overall Rank 4365 User Opinions Read 2 user opinions Add your rating!

A would-be hacker was being investigated by police Monday after threatening to attack the internal computer network of the Turin Olympics organizing committee.

The man — a technical consultant for the TOROC committee — illicitly gained access to off-limits sections of the network, police officer Fabiola Silvestri said.

"This consultant — who is now a former consultant — said in a very strong way that he could do certain things to the network," TOROC spokesman Giuseppe Gattino said. "Nothing has happened and all the passwords have been disabled."

Officials declined to reveal the consultant's identity, and Gattino said he didn't know the reasons for his threatening behavior. No charges were immediately filed against the man.

In a separate case, police found that a Turin antiques dealer had acquired five Internet domains that had similar names to Olympic Web sites. If accessed, the domains redirected users to the dealer's Web site, which also carried Olympic logos and other copyrighted material, Silvestri said.

Once he had been told that what he was doing was illegal, the dealer deleted the material and redirected users from his domains to Olympic Web sites.

Microsoft Corp. has won backing from major cellular networks for a new generation of phones designed to transform mobile e-mail from executive accessory to standard issue for the corporate rank-and-file.

The partnerships, with operators including Vodafone and Cingular, to be announced Monday at a mobile industry gathering in Spain, could spell more trouble for the embattled Blackberry and other niche e-mail technologies, analysts say.

Unlike the Blackberry and its peers, phones running Microsoft's latest Windows Mobile operating system can receive e-mails "pushed" directly from servers that handle a company's messaging — without the need for a separate mobile server or additional license payments.

As costs fall, Microsoft is betting companies will extend mobile e-mail beyond top management to millions more of their employees.

Vodafone Group PLC is to sell the phones under its own brand, in a joint marketing deal, targeting companies that already run Microsoft's Exchange software on their servers. Exchange is the collaborative glue behind Microsoft's popular Outlook application, which manages appointments and electronic address books in addition to e-mail.

Together with Cingular Wireless, Orange and T-Mobile, Vodafone will also deliver phone software upgrades to subscribers who are already running the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system on their smart phones.

Microsoft laid the groundwork for its e-mail offensive with an October update to Exchange — which led the server software market last year with 48 percent of global sales, according to technology research firm Gartner.

 Microsoft Corp.'s plans to rebrand its free e-mail, instant messenger and Web search products under the name "Live" could be interpreted as a sign that MSN — the unit that previously housed those products — is a sinking ship.

But John Nicol, the executive recently put in charge of MSN, insists that isn't the case. In an interview Thursday, he said the changes will allow MSN, Microsoft's Internet portal, to focus more on providing content such as entertainment and even home videos.

Nicol, a longtime Microsoft executive who took over as general manager of MSN about three months ago, said the revamped MSN will include more opportunities for users to contribute their own content, such as posting their own videos or rating hotels on the unit's travel site.

A major focus will be on providing more video content online, aiming to go beyond just rebroadcasting television. As an example, he cited an MSN Web site, launched last summer, that complemented a reality show search for a new lead singer for INXS.

(In a separate arrangement, The Associated Press is launching an ad-supported online video news network using technology and advertising support from Microsoft.)

Microsoft Corp. announced final licensing and pricing information for its soon-to-be-released Windows OneCare™ Live, the all-in-one, automatic and self-updating PC care service aimed at helping consumers more easily protect and maintain their PCs to keep them running well. Now available free to new beta testers in the United States, at http://ideas.live.com, Microsoft^® Windows OneCare Live will be available in June from retailers and via the Web for an annual subscription of $49.95 MSRP for up to three personal computers. To thank its valuable beta customers and offer an easy transition to the paid service, Microsoft also announced today a promotional deal offering the first year of Windows OneCare Live service for $19.95 to beta customers who become subscribers between April 1 and April 30, 2006.

“Consumers have made it clear they need more assistance than what’s offered today, and we are excited to deliver the value of improved protection and maintenance in one comprehensive solution,” said Ryan Hamlin, general manager of the Technology Care and Safety Group at Microsoft. “Windows OneCare Live eases the frustration of protecting your PC and gives consumers greater peace of mind so they can spend less time worrying and more time doing the things they enjoy.”

Windows OneCare Live helps make it simpler and easier for consumers to enhance the overall health of their personal computers by offering automated protection, maintenance, performance tuning and support in an all-in-one package. Hundreds of thousands of people have tested Windows OneCare Live since the beta was launched in November 2005, and Microsoft has continually added features — such as backup for external hard drives — based on their feedback. People have particularly liked the simplicity of the all-in-one nature of the service and, according to recent surveys conducted by Microsoft with Windows OneCare Live beta testers, the vast majority of testers said they would recommend it to a friend or relative.

Full Article

Google has announced a major update that will affect the ranking of web pages in Google's index. In contrast to the usual algorithm updates, this update will be much bigger because it changes the way Google works behind the scenes. Google has given the update the name "Bigdaddy".

What is Google's Bigdaddy update?

Google uses a network of data centers with different IP addresses to answer search queries. These decentralized servers share the workload of indexing web sites.

The upcoming Bigdaddy update is not an algorithm update but a change in Google's data center infrastructure. It contains new code for sorting and examining web pages. According to Google's search engineer Matt Cutts, the update will be live in February or March.

Less spam, more content and a new Google spider?

Google is updating the data center infrastructure to handle potential spam problems such as 302 redirections or canonical URLs more efficiently. In addition, the new infrastructure will allow Google to develop more advanced algorithms and larger databases.

Another reason for the new data center infrastructure is that Google wants to be able to index different content types. Google is now testing a new search engine spider that is based on the Mozilla browser.

The new spider should be able to index more than traditional search engine spiders, possibly links within images, JavaScripts or Flash files.

How can you test how Bigdaddy will affect your rankings?

Some Google data centers that use the new Bigdaddy system are already online. For example, if you go to 66.249.93.104 you can test Google's new data center.

Google even wants your feedback. Click the "Dissatisfied? Help us improve" link at the bottom right of the result page. Enter your feedback and use the keyword bigdaddy so that Google knows that your feedback is about the new data center.

It's hard to tell how the Bigdaddy update will affect your web page rankings. If you have a spam free web site with good content and many incoming links, the update should have a positive effect on your Google rankings.

Two of the world's biggest e-mail account providers, Yahoo Inc. and America Online, plan to introduce a service that would charge senders a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox without first passing through junk mail filters, representatives of both companies said Sunday.

The fees, which would range from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity-theft scams. In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed their messages won't be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients they're legitimate.

Both companies have long filtered e-mail by searching for keywords commonly contained in spam and fraudulent e-mail. AOL also strips images and Web links from many messages to prevent the display of pornographic pictures and malicious Web addresses. Both practices sometimes falsely identify legitimate messages as junk mail, making life difficult for businesses that rely on e-mail.

"We were hearing not only from members but also e-mail partners that they wanted a different way of delivering e-mail that would stand out in the inbox and would guarantee them delivery," said spokesman Nicholas Graham, adding that AOL, a division of New York-based Time Warner Inc., will start offering the service in the next two months. Company spokeswoman Karen Mahon said Sunday Sunnyvale-based Yahoo will begin offering a similar service in the coming months.

This is too funny, let's get this straight... You want to charge people to not do anything to their mail which has proven unreliable due to your filters which do more harm than good???? If you had built a proper mail system, as we have been stating for months and put this control in the hands of your users none of this would matter. What is so complex about putting the white-listing in the hands of your users where it belongs.

If you developed this software in house the team should be fired. If you paid an outsourcing company to do it, you should get refund. People talk bad about MS when they make a mistake of any kind. Now AOL and Yahoo can dictate whatever foolish policy they want and people say nothing. Where are the M$ Zealots when there is something like this happening right out in the open?

"Full Article Here"

Still free of charge! Build complex regular expressions by selecting components from a palette Test expressions against real or sample input data Display all matches in a tree structure, showing captured groups, and all captures within a group Build replacement strings and test the match and replace functionality Highlight matched text in the input data Test automatically for syntax errors Generate Visual Basic or C# code Save and restore data in a project file Maintain and expand a library of frequently used regular expressions   Here are some of the additional features available in Expresso 2.x Expresso Analyzer interprets and diagrams a regular expression to aid in understanding and debugging Analyzer produces an English description of the expression that can be automatically incorporated into comments in the generated code Improvements to the user interface New "Partial Match" and "Exclude Match" enable testing selected portions of a regular expression to aid in debugging Code generation now supports Managed C++ More extensive options for customizing the generated code Multithreaded operation allows interruption of time-consuming matches Performance tester for timing optimization Improvements and added features in the Expression Builder More extensive Help features Built-in regular expression tutorial Improvements to the Expression Library Bug Fixes

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AnonymizerR Inc., the leader in online identity protection technology and software solutions, today announced that the company is developing a new anti-censorship solution that will enable Chinese citizens to safely access the entire Internet filter-free, and also free from oppression and fear of persecution or retribution. This new program expands upon Anonymizer's history of human rights efforts which provide a censor-free Internet experience for those in oppressed nations. Anonymizer's new anti-censorship solution for Chinese citizens will be available before quarter's end. The solution will provide a regularly changing URL that users can access to open the doors to unfettered access of the World Wide Web. In addition, users' identities will be protected from online tracking and monitoring by the Chinese government. 

The communist government has taken a hard line against freedom of the press and access to information on the Internet. Google and others have been forced into a box by the Chinese government's strict requirements, but Anonymizer stands firm on the issue of protecting civil liberties. The company has been protecting basic liberties for more than a decade. It enabled safe Internet communications for families split on either side of the Kosovo conflict; it was used previously by the Voice of America to ensure that news Web sites were not blocked by the Communist government in China. Anonymizer also works in conjunction with the Voice of America today to bring safe Internet access to Iranian citizens. 
       
   Its Web site is home to the world's most popular Internet privacy service, Anonymous Surfing, which defends users from the most prevalent Internet privacy and security threats. Anonymizer identity protection solutions have been used to protect billions of Web pages since the company's inception in 1995. Anonymizer is privately held and headquartered in San Diego, California. (anonymizer.com)

As the world waited for one computer virus to strike on Friday, another wriggled its way into the Russian stock exchange and knocked it offline.

Computer experts had warned that 3 February could bring gloom for many as a computer virus called Nyxem was scheduled to start deleting files on machines it had infected.

Nyxem is programmed to randomly delete Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents as well as pdf files, zip files and several other file types. The virus was released several weeks ago and has spread by forwarding itself to email addresses found on the computers it infects.

But widespread damage failed to materialise and by early evening UK time on Friday several anti-virus companies said they had received no reports of incidents involving Nyxem. Patches against the virus had been released on 16 January.

But a collective sigh of relief was tempered by news that the Russian stock exchange has been subjected to an attack instigated by an unnamed, and apparently unrelated, computer pest.

Specific hack

Dmitry Shatsky, vice president of the Russian Trading System (RTS) said in a statement that a virus had infected a single computer used to test trading software that was connected to the internet. The entire network had to be temporarily shut down on Thursday as experts sought to isolate the infected machine and scanned others PCs for signs of infection.

Russian anti-virus company Kaspersky said sources had revealed that the infected machine was controlled remotely to launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack against other systems on the trading network.

This involves bombarding a system with huge amounts of irrelevant information in an attempt to bring it down.

"While all the world was in a frenzy over the damp squib that was Nyxem, this attack infiltrated the RTS and could have potentially given hackers access to their systems," adds Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for computer-security firm Sophos. "A virus which can disrupt a stock exchange can have obvious financial consequences, as well as harm the important credibility of an institution in the public's eye."

Adding Blogging to Your Apps with My.Blogs and Visual Basic 2005

My.Blogs is a collection of sample code that shows how to easily provide programmatic access to blogs in your applications. Chris Mayo shows how easy it is to read and publish blog entries within Visual Basic 2005 using My.Blogs. Full source code is provided under "Related Resources".

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AT&T is slashing its monthly fee for high-speed Internet access to an all-time low: $12.99.

The telecom company had been charging $14.95 a month for its lowest-priced digital subscriber line plan. The new deal, which goes into effect Friday, is aimed at customers who sign up online. It requires a one-year contract.

"This ($12.99 offer) will have a negative impact on cable TV companies, who don't seem to be reacting yet," said Jeffrey Kagan, an Atlanta-based telecom analyst.

AT&T has focused on the low end of the broadband market with its cheap DSL plans. The new $12.99 plan -- like the $14.95 plan before it -- offers a slower service than pricier plans. But it's still seen as an improvement over dial-up services, and AT&T is aggressively trying to convert dial-up users to DSL.

The strategy appears to be working. The company, formerly named SBC Communications, added 1.8 million high-speed Internet customers in 2005. That's the most among phone and cable TV companies.

The company added 425,000 DSL customers in the fourth quarter alone. Three-quarters of them opted for the $14.95-a-month plan.

Verizon Communications which once criticized AT&T for slashing DSL prices too quickly, has been following AT&T's lead. That company added 613,000 broadband customers in the fourth quarter. Fifty percent of them signed up for its lowest-cost offer, also $14.95.

WesternUnion quietly announced; Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.

In a final irony, Western Union, which flashed good and bad news to Americans in distinctive yellow envelopes for a century and a half, quietly announced its decision to end the service on its website.

The announcement, effective on January 27, consigned the telegram, which told generations of Americans of births, deaths, or the loss of a loved one on a foreign battlefield, reflects the new era of communications on the Internet, by email, and with mobile phones and fax machines.

Western Union's parent company was formed in 1851, and the firm adopted its now famous name five years later. By 1861 it was providing coast-to-coast telegraph communications during the American Civil War.

The Mozilla Foundation has shipped the first patch for its flagship Firefox 1.5 browser to plug a series of security vulnerabilities and memory leaks.

The open-source group has started pushing out Firefox 1.5.0.1 as an automatic update and recommended that all users apply the upgrade to protect against a known denial-of-service bug and several undisclosed security issues.

"We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version," Mozilla said in a note posted online. In addition to security patches and fixes for memory leak issues, Firefox 1.5.0.1 also promises improved stability and improved support for Mac OS X.

The Foundation did not release details on most of the security flaws being fixed. The published list of patched Firefox vulnerabilities has not been updated to reflect the new browser release.

The exploit was confirmed on Firefox 1.5 on Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2) and is caused by an error in the way the open-source browser handles large history information. A successful attacker can fill the browser's "history.dat" file with large history information by tricking a user into visiting a malicious Web site with an overly large title.

Win32/Mywife.E@mm is a mass-mailing network worm that targets certain versions of Microsoft Windows. The worm spreads through e-mail attachments and writeable network shares. It is expected to corrupt the content of specific files on the third day of every month. This threat has been assigned CME identifier CME-24. It will be detected as Win32/Mywife.E@mm!CME-24.

Platform: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows ME, Windows 98

CME-24  Microsoft Security Advisory (904420)

Having to deal with a million different problems with regard one AOL problem or another, we as many are simply overwhelmed once again with AOL policies. I ask a very simple question what kind of company creates a policy so stringent that even their own users are now being forced to seek a proper mail system? Most proper mail servers offer a means which allow a specific user to whitelist any one they wish to accept delivery from. I have to ask this very basic question. Again, what makes you at AOL think you can impliment something which your own users cannot control?

We have personally got to the point where our own users are making posts that state we are sorry but AOL addresses are no longer acceptable. I found this a bit strong at first but then gave it some consideration. I think the statement is brilliant, administrators world wide dealing with AOL policies have done little to curb spam nor will it. I think that if they are so stupid as to not offer their clients a proper web interface for white-listing a a specific sender then they get everything they deserve. In fact I think the approach of banning AOL addresses might not be such a bad approach at least untill they get the message. Not putting this in the hands of their own users is costing everyone millions in lost time and stupid email requests that are extemely time consuming.

To think that all this time spent by sending support requests to AOL and dealing with their policy could have all been avoided by building a proper interface. Perhaps they could have done this before imposing the policy. It seems logical that if they want to ban servers that are correctly configured. Then I think banning AOL as a acceptable address might just be the right approach. I think that if everyone took this position over night they would have a interface that offered white and black listings to their clients based on their needs.

Radeon® X1800 Series — Ultra-threaded 3D Architecture for Maximum Visual Velocity

This is it. The new Radeon® X1800 Series hands you the visual and performance possibilities you only dreamed of from a PC graphics processor. It has been designed with a radically new ultra-threaded 3D architecture and Shader Model 3.0, unleashing the most mind-blowing gaming effects. What’s more, the X1800 introduces ATI’s revolutionary Avivo™, our new reference for video and display perfection.

Radeon X1800 series’ 90-nanometer process technology and ultra-threaded architecture combine power and efficiency as well as support for Shader Model 3.0 to deliver new High Dynamic Range visual effects, enhanced realism with Adaptive Anti Aliasing and lightning fast performance in OpenGL and DirectX® 9 games.

Users of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s microprocessors may want to think twice before looking for technical support on the company's Web site. Customer support discussion forums on the forums.amd.com site have been compromised and are being used in an attempt to infect visitors with malicious software, an AMD spokesman confirmed Monday.

The problem was first reported Monday in a blog posting by Mikko Hypponen, manager of antivirus research at F-Secure Corp. in Helsinki. As of Monday morning, AMD technicians were still working to resolve the problem, according to AMD spokesman Drew Prairie.

Because AMD had just learned of the problem, Prairie could give few details on how the site was compromised or when AMD expected to have the issue resolved.

According to F-Secure's Hypponen, attackers are exploiting a widely reported flaw in the way the Windows operating system renders images that use the WMF (Windows Metafile) graphics format. This flaw was patched on Jan. 5, so users who are running versions of Windows that have the latest patches installed are not at risk.

Because of the nature of the WMF vulnerability, however, hackers could install any type of software they wanted on unpatched systems.

How the attackers were able to compromise the AMD forums is unclear. Hypponen said that the AMD server could have been hacked, but that the problem could also be due to an intrusion at an AMD partner Web site or at an ISP.

These kind of WMF exploits have already been seen on a number of Web sites, but AMD is the most high-profile victim. Because users tend to trust content being served by known Web sites like AMD, the hack is particularly troublesome.

Telecommunications service provider AT&T Inc. on Thursday posted a profit of $1.66 billion in its first quarterly report since it was formed by SBC Communications' purchase of AT&T Corp. last November.

The results were boosted by an increase in customers for AT&T's broadband Internet service and strong customer growth at Cingular Wireless, the AT&T venture with BellSouth Corp. that posted earnings earlier this week.

Like peers BellSouth and Verizon Communications, AT&T Inc. depends on services such as wireless and broadband Internet service for growth as traditional local phone lines decline.

The company said that on a reported basis, including its 60 percent stake in Cingular, it earned 46 cents per diluted share. In the year-ago quarter, SBC alone earned $688 million, or 21 cents a share.