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
Scientists are a step closer to creating a Star Trek-style cloaking device after demonstrating a material that makes objects beneath it appear to vanish. The material was used to hide a bump on a surface by interfering with the way light bounced off it, making it seem as though neither the cloak nor the bump was there. The cloak was designed to make objects invisible to infrared light, but the work paves the way for more advanced materials capable of cloaking objects in visible wavelengths. Some scientists believe cloaking materials could be used to hide unsightly buildings or high-security facilities, and even make vehicles seem to disappear from view
Researchers, political satirists and partisan mudslingers, take note: C-Span has uploaded virtually every minute of its video archives to the Internet. The archives, at C-SpanVideo.org, cover 23 years of history and five presidential administrations and are sure to provide new fodder for pundits and politicians alike. The network will formally announce the completion of the C-Span Video Library
Spain is becoming the last bastion of common sense when it comes to peer-to-peer and file sharing, at least until the big media companies get their own way and change the law in the country altogether. Torrentfreak, the ever-vigilant blog focusing on BitTorrent and file-sharing issues, points to a recent lawsuit in Spain that ended quite favourably for both P2P users and link sites and dedicated search engines, and that found both use-cases to be perfectly legal in the country
More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilisation system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments. Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots
Engineers designing the world’s fastest car believe they now have a solution to keep the vehicle flat on the ground. Bloodhound SSC is being built to smash the world land speed record by topping 1,000mph (1,610km/h). Initial iterations of the car’s aerodynamic shape produced dangerous amounts of lift at the vehicle’s rear. But the latest modelling work indicates the team has finally found a stable configuration, allowing the project to push ahead with other design areas
RSS – Posts