Free Republic

Virus experts at Sophos have reported that a new worm demonstrates the ancient British art of gurning, the tradition of pulling a funny or scary face, as it infects computers. The Wurmark-F worm spreads via email, pretending to be from addresses such as easy_lay666@lovenet.com, sexy_guy88@aol.com and sexy_lil_thing@no-ip.com. Emails can have a variety of characteristics including: Subject: Hhahahah lol!!!! Message body: i found this on my computer from ages ago download it and see if you can remember it lol i was lauging like mad when i saw it! :D email me back haha... Subject: Rate My Pic....... Message body: Hi...

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Someone placed surveillance software on sheriff's office computers, apparently enabling unauthorized access to sensitive information about prisoner movements, confidential homeland security updates and private personnel files. Sheriff John Whetsel said Monday Spector Pro, monitoring software designed to track every detail of computer activity, was found last week on three computers in his office. Whetsel said he discovered the software on his own computer when he ran a spyware detector out of curiosity. A scan of all sheriff's computers also found the application on the computers of Maj. John Waldenville and Capt. David Baisden. Waldenville leads the...

The FBI's failure to roll out an expanded computer system that would help agents investigate criminals and terrorists is the latest in a series of costly technology blunders by government over more than a decade. Experts blame poor planning, rapid industry advances and the massive scope of some complex projects whose price tags can run into billions of dollars at U.S. agencies with tens of thousands of employees. "There are very few success stories," said Paul Brubaker, former deputy chief information officer at the Pentagon. "Failures are very common, and they've been common for a long time." The FBI said...

Burlington woman has became the first in Vermont to be charged with a bizarre computer crime. The alleged high-tech caper involved identity theft, harassment, and an attempt to make a co-worker look like a lunatic,according to police. "Yeah, I think, you know, people thought I was off my rocker for a while," said Jeanne Landau, the alleged victim. She says she was shocked and scared last fall when friends accused her of sending threatening e-mails to a co-worker.

Jeffrey Lee Parson, the Hopkins teenager who unleashed an Internet worm that infected an estimated 48,000 computers and caused more than $1 million in damage, should be sentenced to 37 months in prison, according to a formal recommendation made by federal prosecutors Tuesday. Parson's sentencing is scheduled for Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Parson, 19, who was arrested during his senior year at Hopkins High School, pleaded guilty in August to releasing the widely publicized Internet virus. "Parson's worm was not an aberrant moment in a young person's life, but instead was just the latest in a string...

i just got this computer. xp. i'm the only one using it, so i'm the administrator. problem--i want to copy an essay to my cd, but xp won't let me, saying that i don't have access to the d folder, ask my administrator. i am the administrator! there must be a simple fix. thanks

ARMONK, N.Y., November 16, 2004— IBM, along with representatives of the world's leading science, education and philanthropic organizations, today launched World Community Grid, a global humanitarian effort that applies the unused computing power of individual and business computers to help address the world's most difficult health and societal problems. World Community Grid will harness the vast and unused computational power of the world's computers and direct it at research designed to help unlock genetic codes that underlie diseases like AIDS and HIV, Alzheimer's and cancer, improve forecasting of natural disasters and support studies that can protect the world's food and...

An emailed New Year photo of naked people contains a nasty shock - a worm that will turn off security protection and harvest email addresses Antivirus companies have unearthed a computer worm that hides behind an image of naked people. According to antivirus company Sophos, the naughty New Year photo message contains a mass-mailing worm, dubbed Wurmark-D, that is programmed to disable security software on host computers and send itself to email addresses stored there. "Once activated, this worm will harvest your computer hunting for other email addresses to send itself to and try and turn off antivirus software," said...

I've done something and don't know how to reset it. I'm sure the answer is very simple but it's eluding me. One day last week I noticed that when I begin a new email message it types in light yellow (so pale it cant be read) type. Each time I have to go up to the Big A(font color) and select automatic. Then it'll type in black What did I do and how can I set it go back and default it to type in black automatically? Thanks

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Computer has sued a popular Macintosh rumour Web site for allegedly distributing trade secrets, the latest in a string of lawsuits the company has filed to stop Internet leaks of details of upcoming products. The latest suit also lends credibility to recent rumours about a Macintosh computer without a display and an office productivity software suite that surfaced in the run-up to Apple's annual trade show held here next week, where CEO Steve Jobs typically unveils new products. Apple, in the complaint filed on Tuesday, sued Web site Think Secret and other unnamed individuals, claiming...

JANUARY 05, 2005 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Spyware legislation that would allow fines of up to $3 million for makers of software that steals personal information from a user's computer or hijacks its browser will get a second look after the U.S. Congress failed to pass the legislation in 2004. Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.) reintroduced an antispyware bill yesterday that passed the House of Representatives last year but failed in the Senate. The Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act, or SPY ACT, defines most functions performed by so-called spyware as unfair business practices subject to U.S. Federal Trade Commission...

I have decided to upgrade my 4 y/o comp, and am looking for a >$250 motherboard and a >$150 AGP graphics card (budget is $450, and I'll need new memory). It has to be an mini-ATX MB. C'mon Freeper Techies... give me the info I crave.

The last 12 months have seen a dramatic growth in almost every security threat that plague Windows PCs.The count of known viruses broke the 100,000 barrier and the number of new viruses grew by more than 50%. Similarly phishing attempts, in which conmen try to trick people into handing over confidential data, are recording growth rates of more than 30% and attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Also on the increase are the number of networks of remotely controlled computers, called bot nets, used by malicious hackers and conmen to carry out many different cyber crimes. Teenage kicks One of the...

In the 1960s science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, a vessel is shrunk by military researchers and dispatched to destroy a blood clot threatening the life of a key scientist. It sounded unbelievable then. But now, proving that science fact is quickly resembling science fiction, the world's smallest computer - which was developed last year by Israeli scientists - has been successfully programmed to fight cancer.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Malicious programs that can delete address books. Junk messages that flood a cell phone's inbox. Stealthy code that uses Bluetooth wireless technology to sneak onto handsets. Scared yet? Security experts say plagues like these will target mobile phones, but others contend cell phone viruses are the tech equivalent of smallpox: To the best of anyone's knowledge, they exist only in labs. "We've had no reports of people actually seeing these viruses in their daily use," said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with London's Sophos PLC. "The only reports we've seen documented are antivirus researchers sending...

SAN JOSE – Susan Love's problems began with a smile. The New York City fund-raiser clicked on a happy-face attachment in a friend's e-mail last year. The virus crashed her computer within an hour. Love, 57, salvaged her data. But within a few months her computer's performance slowed to a crawl. In December 2003, she upgraded to a Sony Vaio with an extra-large monitor and Microsoft Windows XP operating system. Within a few days, "spyware" – programs that sneak onto computers uninvited – began sponging up valuable memory. Then her e-mail stopped arriving. Instead of crafting holiday e-mails, she spent...

SAN FRANCISCO (CNN/Money) - A Rice University computer scientist and two of his students discovered a potentially serious security flaw in the desktop search tool recently distributed by Google, a newspaper report said Monday. The glitch, which could permit an attacker to secretly search the contents of a personal computer via the Internet, is what computer scientists call a composition flaw, the New York Times said. "When you put them together, out jumps a security flaw," Dan Wallach, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice in Houston, told the newspaper. Wallach and graduate students Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson...

LOGAN, Ohio (AP) -- Election officials watched Monday as a technician repeated a repair he had made to a vote tallying computer, then announced they had found no evidence of any sort of tampering, despite a congressman's request for an FBI probe

YAMHILL, Ore.--There is a story behind every electronic gadget sold on the QVC shopping channel. This one leads to a ramshackle farmhouse in rural Oregon, which is the home and circuit design lab of Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer. Ellsworth has squeezed the entire circuitry of a two-decade-old Commodore 64 home computer onto a single chip, which she has tucked neatly into a joystick that connects by a cable to a TV set. Called the Commodore 64--the same as the computer system--her device can run 30 video games, mostly sports, racing and puzzles...

TV REVIEW | 'SOMEONE'S WATCHING' As a Computer-Literate Big Brother Lurks By NED MARTEL Published: December 18, 2004 ame may be elusive, but who knew that namelessness is no longer possible? Not only has the government sought new powers to know more about everyone inside United States borders, but eerily precise marketers have also merged medical, legal and mercantile records of each American's patterns and deeds, in hopes of matching person with product. In "Someone's Watching," tonight on the Discovery Times Channel, privacy experts forecast a most ominous moment in the foreseeable future. Very soon, the government could have full...