Companies have been urged to start budgeting for a new domain name scheme to protect their brands and prepare themselves for bidding wars that could cost tens of millions of dollars. Towards the end of the year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will start accepting applications for generic top level domain names (gTLDs). Unlike the current scheme, under which a string of characters appears before the dot in an internet address, gTLDs appear after the dot — for example, .qantas, .holiday or .woolworths. It would be a tight race to the finish line as the application window was only open for 45 days, warned AusRegistry chief executive Adrian Kinderis
Malware that exploits holes in popular applications is being delivered by big ad delivery platforms including those run by Yahoo, Fox, and Google, according to Prague-based antivirus firm Avast. Viruses and other malware were found to be lurking in ads last year on high-profile sites like The New York Times and conservative news aggregator Drudge Report.com, and this year on Drudge, TechCrunch and WhitePages.com. The practice has been dubbed malvertising
In their constant quest to find new and interesting ways to abuse the Internet, attackers recently have begun using an old technique to obfuscate URLs and IP addresses to bypass URL filters and direct users to malicious sites. The technique takes advantage of the fact that modern browsers will allow users to specify IP addresses in formats other than base 10. So a typical IP address that looks something like this — 192.10.10.1 — can also be written in base 8, hexadecimal or a handful of other formats, and the browser will recognise it and take the user to the specified site
Australia’s biggest technology companies, communications academics and many lobby groups have delivered a withering critique of the government’s plans to censor the internet. The government today published most of the 174 submissions it received relating to improving the transparency and accountability measures of its internet filtering policy. Legislation to force ISPs to implement the policy is expected to be introduced within weeks. The filters will block a blacklist of refused classification
web sites for all Australians on a mandatory basis
The European Court of Justice ruled in favour of Google on Tuesday in a case concerning the use of trademarks in online advertising. French luxury goods maker LVMH took Google to court for using its brand names as keywords to trigger ads. The Court concluded that Google has not infringed trade mark law by allowing advertisers to purchase keywords corresponding to their competitors’ trade marks
. However, advertisers themselves cannot, by using such keywords, arrange for Google to display ads which do not allow Internet users easily to establish from which undertaking the goods or services covered by the ad in question originate,
the court added. The case sets important precedents for e-commerce, by appearing to uphold the right of Internet service providers to protection from liability for the content they carry on their networks
Scientists from Britain and the US say they have discovered a chemical pathway that could be developed to cause tuberculosis to self destruct. The scale of the problems posed by tuberculosis is enormous. One in three people worldwide are carriers of the bacteria. A total of 13 million people suffer from the disease and almost 2 million will die from it every year. But the timescale for developing new drugs is long, usually 10 years or more
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with a malware-laden PC, but my long streak of luck ran out this weekend when a family friend–who describes himself as computer illiterate–called. “Every time I try to do anything on the computer,” he told me, “I get a message saying it’s infected, and I have to pay $69 to clean it, but I tried to do that and I couldn’t.” He couldn’t even navigate to the Mozilla site to download Firefox; Internet Explorer was completely hijacked — via Smarterware
XP AntiSpyware 2010 also known as XP AntiSpyware, XP Antivirus Pro and XP Antivirus Pro 2010 are names of one program, which is a rogue antispyware application. It is promoted and installed with the help of trojans. When the trojan is started, it will download and install XP AntiSpyware 2010 (XP Antivirus Pro 2010) onto your computer — via My Anti Spyware
The war of words between China and the internet giant Google has escalated, with the company announcing it is no longer censoring its Chinese language search engine. There had been speculation that Google might pull out of China altogether, but instead the internet company has opted to try and sidestep Chinese authorities by redirecting online traffic off the mainland
A medical invention currently in development may one day be able to create new organs, right there in the hospital. The 3-D bio-printer takes cells from a patient’s failing organ and prints out
a new organ — almost like a 3-D ink-jet printer. Guy Raz explains how the device works with the man who developed the prototype, Gabor Forgacs
Just a month after the proposals were first outlined in full, the Swiss National Council has now officially passed a law that will ultimately lead to the complete ban of any violent video games in the country
In a bid to cut down on fraud and inappropriate content, the organisation responsible for administering Russia’s .ru top-level domain names is tightening its procedures. Starting 1 April, anyone who registers a .ru domain will need to provide a copy of their passport or, for businesses, legal registration papers. Right now, domains can be set up with no verification — a practice that has allowed scammers to quickly set up .ru domains under bogus names
New capabilities are strengthening the ZeuS botnet, which criminals use to steal financial credentials and execute unauthorized transactions in online banking, automated clearing house (ACH) networks and payroll systems. The latest version of this cybercrime toolkit, which starts at about $3,000, offers a $10,000 module that can let attackers completely take control of a compromised PC
When we previewed Internet Explorer’s new rendering engine this week we noted that the same features that made IE9’s hardware-acceleration possible probably aren’t compatible with Windows XP. Microsoft initially dodged giving a straight answer to the question of XP support but has since admitted that the new browser won’t be XP-compatible when it launches. This has created a small tempest of protest from those users still using XP, but this is less of an arbitrary decision than some appear to think. It’s literally impossible to port Windows Vista/Win 7-style hardware acceleration backwards into XP. Microsoft would have to either develop a workaround from scratch or create a CPU-driven software mode
. Using such a mode could easily max out a CPU and negatively impact system speed and battery life
Countries should be judged on their willingness to open up public data to their citizens, the inventor of the world wide web has told the BBC. He said openness of data and the neutrality of the network
should be considered as important as free speech. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is an advisor to a UK project — data.gov.uk — that offers reams of previously hidden public sector data for anyone to use. Open data could now be considered a basic right of citizens, he added
Australia’s largest online bargain shopping site, DealsDirect.com.au, was blacklisted by Google and major internet browsers today after it was found to be hosting malware. People visiting the site using Firefox, Google Chrome and newer versions of Internet Explorer were warned that visiting this site may harm your computer
because it appears to host malware
Every drop of water is stuffed with the greenest of fuels, hydrogen, but getting it out is a challenge. A new material raises the prospect of doing so using noise pollution — from major roads, for example. A team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison made crystals of zinc oxide that, when immersed in water, absorb vibrations and develop areas of strong negative and positive charge. These charges rip apart nearby water molecules, releasing hydrogen and oxygen gas
Spam levels have not been dented by a series of strikes against controllers of networks of hijacked computers. Early 2010 has seen four such networks, or botnets, tackled via arrests, net access cutoffs and by infiltrating command systems. The successes have not inconvenienced hi-tech criminals who found other routes to send spam, say experts. And, they add, despite falling response rates, spam remains too lucrative for criminals to abandon
Facebook’s 400 million users have been targeted by a spam run that could infect their computers with malicious software designed to steals passwords and other data, according to security researchers at McAfee. Over the last two days, millions of messages have been sent, which McAfee detected through customers running the company’s security software, said Dave Marcus, McAfee’s director of security research and communication
Greg Combet, minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science, has secured a new Cray supercomputer for the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD). DSD is responsible for foreign signals intelligence and is the Commonwealth’s authority on information, communications and computer security
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