A new spam campaign is targeting a financial transfer system that handles trillions of dollars in transactions annually and has proved to be a fertile target of late for online fraudsters. The spam messages pretend to come from the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA), a US nonprofit association that oversees the Automated Clearing House system (ACH). ACH is a widely used but aging system used by financial institutions for exchanging details of direct deposits, checks and cash transfers made by businesses and individuals. In 2002, ACH was used for nearly 9 billion [b] transactions worth more than US$24.4 trillion
Internet security experts say that misconfigured DSL and cable modems are worsening a well-known problem with the Internet’s DNS (domain name system), making it easier for hackers to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against their victims. According to research set to be released in the next few days, part of the problem is blamed on the growing number of consumer devices on the Internet that are configured to accept DNS queries from anywhere, what networking experts call an open recursive
or open resolver
system
Hewlett-Packard will acquire 3Com for $2.7 billion and take on Cisco Systems in the networking market, a battle that has been building since 2005. HP’s Dave Donatelli said the 3Com acquisition will provide HP customers with support from the edge of the network to the heart of the data centre
. One focus for HP and Cisco will be China
If you really, really need to make sure those precious photos of yours last virtually forever — or at least longer than the average two- to five-year lifespan of consumer-grade DVDs, then start-up Cranberry has the answer for you: a DVD that literally lasts a millennium. Cranberry’s DiamonDisc product holds a standard 4.7GB of data, which roughly amounts to 2,000 photos, or 1,200 songs, or three hours of video, but the media is unharmed by heat as high as 176 degrees Fahrenheit, ultraviolet rays or normal material deterioration, according to the company. DiamonDiscs contain no dye layers, adhesive layers or reflective materials that could deteriorate
SP Telemedia, owner of TPG and Soul internet service providers, has announced its intention to acquire Pipe Networks for $373 million. The acquisition will give SP Telemedia an extensive dark fibre network across major Australian business centres, such as Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, and will also give it Pipe Networks’ newly lit-up Sydney to Guam international cable
Scientists are set to unveil a lightweight system they say makes an operating system significantly more resistant to rootkits without degrading its performance. The hypervisor-based system is dubbed HookSafe, and it works by relocating kernel hooks in a guest OS to a dedicated page-aligned memory space that’s tightly locked down. The team installed HookSafe on a machine running Ubuntu 8.04, and found the system successfully prevented nine real-world rootkits targeting that platform from installing or hiding themselves. The program was able to achieve that protection with only a 6 percent reduction in performance benchmarks — via Slashdot
It’s been more than two months since the popular semi-private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid went offline due to hardware problems, but the site’s full return is now imminent. Demonoid’s tracker is already up and running again and according to an update from the site’s staff, the site will follow soon
European Union regulators told the Oracle Corporation that its $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems might break antitrust rules even though the United States authorities have approved the deal. The European Commission, the European Union’s antitrust agency, issued a so-called statement of objections on Monday, Sun said in a regulatory filing. The commission said Oracle’s acquisition of Sun’s MySQL database software caused competition concerns
BBC plans to copy protect Freeview high definition (HD) data have been dealt a blow by regulator Ofcom. It has written to the BBC asking for more information about what the benefits would be for consumers. Initially it looked as if Ofcom would approve the plans but, during its two week consultation, it has received many responses opposing the plan
A botnet that was once responsible for an estimated third of the world’s spam has been knocked out of commission thanks to researchers from security firm FireEye. After carefully analysing the machinations of the massive botnet, alternately known as Mega-D and Ozdok, the FireEye employees last week launched a coordinated blitz on dozens of its command and control channels. The channels were used to send new spamming instructions to the legions of zombie machines that make up the network
Record industry trying to fight ability of music fans to make private digital copies of physical CDs. The German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe recently upheld provision 53 of that country’s copyright law against a legal challenge by the record industry whom have against the provision for allowing digital copying of CDs for private use
Intel will release a $120 solid-state disk (SSD) drive positioned as a server boot drive
with only 40GB of capacity, but the drive could also be used in low-end laptops PCs and netbooks. Intel is also planning a new line of enterprise-class SSDs with 50GB, 100GB and 200GB capacities, which would more closely mimic the capacities of high-end hard disk drives used in servers today, an Intel representative said. Intel’s current line of enterprise-class drives, the X25-E series, have capacities of 32GB and 64GB
An anti-toxin that protects against ricin poisoning is to move into production for the first time. It is the result of eight years of work by researchers at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory based at Porton Down in Wiltshire. The antidote can protect against death up to 24 hours after exposure
Rupert Murdoch has said he will try to block Google from using news content from his companies. The billionaire told Sky News Australia he will explore ways to remove stories from Google’s search indexes, including Google News. Mr Murdoch’s News Corp had previously said it would start charging online customers across all its web sites. He believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results
Plans to store information about every phone call, email and internet visit in the United Kingdom have in effect been abandoned by the Government. The Home Office confirmed the Big Brother
scheme had been delayed until after the election amid protests that it would be intrusive and open to abuse. Although ministers publicly insisted yesterday that they remained committed to the scheme, they have decided not to include the contentious measure in next week’s Queen’s Speech, the Government’s final legislative programme before the election
Australia’s largest electronic waste recycler warns of insufficient capacity to handle an expected avalanche of obsolete equipment as industry-run computer and TV recycling programs start to come onstream. Sims Recycling Solutions senior vice-president Kumar Radhakrishnan welcomed last week’s decision by state and federal environment ministers to adopt a product stewardship approach, but warned significant new investment
would be needed to ensure appropriate handling of collected material. Mr Radhakrishnan said the national capacity for e-waste recycling stood at about 30,000 tonnes per annum, with 20,000 tonnes of that supplied by Sims’ hi-tech plant at Villawood, in Sydney’s west. NSW alone generates some 20,000 tonnes of electronic waste each year
The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries. Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 BC
Censorship of the internet is open to challenge at the World Trade Organisation as it can restrict trade in services delivered online, a forthcoming study says. A censorship case at the WTO could raise sovereignty issues, given the clear right of member states to restrict trade on moral grounds — for example, by blocking access to child pornography websites. But a WTO ruling could set limits on blanket censorship and compel states instead to use more selective filtering, according to the study, to be published this week by think-tank the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography. Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses — the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it’s your reputation that’s stolen. Paedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they’ll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal web sites. Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on your computer — and might not realise it until police knock at your door
Mobile phones are likely to be automatically barred from accessing premium ring tones, games and information services after the consumer watchdog threw its support behind the move. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has backed a proposal in which users would need to make a specific request to enable their phones to receive high-priced premium text and multimedia messages
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