A spam-sending Trojan dubbed SpamThru
is responsible for a vast amount of the recent botnet activity which has significantly increased spam levels to almost three out of every four emails. The developers of SpamThru employed numerous tactics to thwart detection and enhance outreach, such as releasing new strains of the Trojan at regular intervals in order to confuse traditional anti-virus signatures detection
Piracy statistics are labelled self-serving hyperbole
in a draft government report. A confidential briefing for the Attorney-General’s Department, prepared by the Australian Institute of Criminology, lashes the music and software sectors
Peter Jenner, former manager of bands like Pink Floyd, T Rex and The Clash, states in an interview with the Register that music label executives have lost faith in DRM and dollar-per-track online music selling isn’t working too well as a model. He predicts that in two to three years time, many countries will have moved to a blanket licensing regime — via Slashdot
An internet advertising firm called Zango has agreed to pay $US3 million (AU$4 million) to the US government to settle allegations that its pop-up ad software was secretly installed on millions of personal computers
Malware writers have used a Wikipedia article and special storage features to attempt to plant malicious code on unsuspecting users’ systems, the online encyclopedia’s organisers have confirmed — via digg
The founder of the world wide web has voiced concern over increasing abuse of the internet, with truth the first victim as technology develops at ever more dizzying speeds. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the web while working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in the late 1980s, said the global online network was at growing risk of being misused by undemocratic forces
Microsoft has backed off their Vista license, now allowing transfers and even legal sales between third parties — via digg
Google aims to close the gap between the classic way people get e-mail — sitting at a computer — and the slow-as-molasses reality of receiving e-mail on mobiles. They’re introducing a custom version of Gmail that can run on any phone with Java software, or close to 300 different mobile phone devices
Everyone must have noticed a surge in spam recently, particularly for stock pump ‘n’ dump scams. Anti-spam companies have seen a 30% increase in the last two months and, more worryingly, more of this spam is getting through to mailboxes due to the spammers’ change in tactics. Rather than use unsecured mail relays spammers are using bot nets, making spam harder to identify and eliminate. Bounced spam is also on the up, and some experts reckon it’s past time to start worrying
A second security flaw that could cause the new Firefox 2 browser to crash has been publicly disclosed. The vulnerability lies in the way the open-source browser handles JavaScript code
Forgent Networks has settled its lawsuit concerning the so-called JPEG patents for US$8 million, a fraction of what the company initially sought
Providing some information is better than giving none at all, search giants are saying, but human rights groups warned that filtering of web content is increasing in developing countries
Even as it does damage control on the random shutdown problem, Apple is trying to address other MacBook flaws, ranging from discolouration and cracks in some of its computer cases to strange sounds that come from inside them
The use of carbon nanotubes in ultrafast computers and other electronic devices has been stymied because batches of the material contain nanotubes with varying electronic properties. One nanotube is semiconducting, while the next is conducting. Now Northwestern University researchers have developed a reliable and potentially practical way to sort through this mess, segregating nanotubes into precisely the types needed for high-performance electronics. The advance could speed progress toward nanotube computers and has many nearer-term applications, including high-definition displays, devices for nanotoxicity testing, and solar cells
MySpace has licensed new technology to stop users from posting unauthorised copyrighted music. The move comes amid pressure from major studios and record labels against popular online sites like MySpace and YouTube, which they accuse of infringing the copyrights of their artists’ music and videos. MySpace, one of the most popular sites on the internet, has licensed technology from privately-held Gracenote allowing it to review music recordings uploaded by community members to their profiles
A Perth-based company has been fined $5.5 million for sending millions of unsolicited emails, with a judge labelling the spam annoying, costly to combat, and a threat to the internet
A Texas judge has refused to allow the RIAA untrammelled access to the defendant’s hard drive in Sony v Arellanes. The court ruled that only a mutually agreeable, neutral computer forensics expert may examine the hard drive, at the RIAA’s expense, and that the parties must agree on mutually acceptable provisions for confidentiality — via Slashdot
EO-1 is a new breed of satellite that can think for itself. EO-1 can re-organise its own priorities to study volcanic eruptions, flash-floods, forest fires, disintegrating sea-ice–in short, anything unexpected
23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention and a $3000 fine for the work he put in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents
The music, movie and software cartels claim piracy
is a number one problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole and so successful are their continuing dis- and misinformation propaganda campaigns that they’ve been able to dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers. But far from being at the top of the pile, movie and music piracy rank 16th and 20th, respectively, on a global index of illicit markets. Software piracy ranks 7th. And even those positions are subject to considerable doubt
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