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Do-it-yourself phishing kits are being made available for download free of charge from the Internet, according to anti-virus firm Sophos. Anyone surfing the Web can now get their hands on these kits, launch their own phishing attack and potentially defraud computer users of the contents of their bank accounts. These DIY kits contain all the graphics, web code and text required to construct bogus websites designed to have the same look-and-feel as legitimate ecommerce sites. They also come with spamming software. Scam emails that form the basis of phishing attacks commonly pose as 'security check' emails from well-known businesses. These...

Sasser kid blamed for viral plague By John Leyden A staggering 70 per cent of viral activity in the first half of this year can be linked to just one German teenager, according to anti-virus firm Sophos. Sven Jaschan, 18, the self-confessed author of the NetSky and Sasser worms is blamed by Sophos for the vast majority of viral reports it recorded during the first six months of 2004. Just two of Jaschan's viruses - the infamous Sasser worm and NetSky-P - account for almost 50 per cent of all virus activity seen by Sophos up until the end of...

SEATTLE - As a vice president at security software leader Symantec Corp., Matthew Moynahan applauds Microsoft Corp.'s effort to make its Windows operating system safer from attack. But Moynahan is not so excited about the flood of help-desk calls almost certain to come when Microsoft releases a comprehensive security overhaul of Windows XP next month. His company's Norton antivirus software runs on about 100 million desktop computers. To make the new Microsoft system work smoothly with Norton, customers will need to download a Norton update. The company is already bracing for the change, working with its customer support staff and...

Technology: Servers by Colin Butcher Tuesday 13 July 2004 Hack-proof and crash resistant - have you discovered the OS world's best-kept secret? OpenVMS offers unmatched robustness for business-critical apps OpenVMS (originally known as VMS) is probably the best designed and most robust general purpose operating system in existence. It is also one of the least-known and appreciated, simply because it works quietly in the background without drama, unlike its noisier and more fussy siblings and offspring. You will typically find OpenVMS in any environment that is serious about high availability, disaster tolerance, security, performance and scalability, especially when running real-time...

Return of Colossus marks D-Day Tony Sale led the team to rebuild Colossus Mk2 Colossus Mk2, a wartime code-breaker hailed as one of the first electronic computers, has been rebuilt and reunited with Bletchley Park veterans. At Bletchley, the hub of British code operations, it crucially found the keys to break the Lorenz code used by Hitler to encrypt messages to his generals. Colossus Mk2 has been painstakingly put back together over a decade by computer conservationists for Bletchley museums. As part of D-Day celebrations, 30 war coders gathered to see it once more. Besides its code-breaking prowess, Colossus was...

I am finally upgrading my pentium 3. I would very much appreciate any freeper advice on where to go for a good deal. I already own a monitor and printer. I just need the computer. My major requirements are that the computer should be a Pentium 4 (not Athlon, etc.), that it have DVD capabilities. As for RAM and Hard drive size, I would love to know FReeper experience and advice. In other words.... HELP (thank you)

This information comes from the LangaList, a GREAT, FREE computer and technology newsletter published by Fred Langa, formerly the Editor of Byte Magazine. This AOL scanning / blocking issue has been covered in two segments so far; here is the first one: AOL Madness (Warn Your Friends) AOL is at it again. This time, it's reading *inside* its members' emails, and preemptively blocking any messages that contain links to sites that AOL doesn't want you to see. Note: I'm *not* talking about simple mail blocks, where a mail is discarded if it originates from a "forbidden" address. No: AOL is...

The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service     Chips to ease Microsoft's big security nightmare   10:00 22 February 04   Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.   Chip makers are planning a new generation of microprocessors that should plug the gaps that led Microsoft to issue a "critical security alert" last week.The alert was sparked by the discovery that a raft of Microsoft programs were vulnerable to a problem called "buffer overflow", which hackers can exploit to extract private information from a PC. And the risk of such attacks only worsened when, two...

A completely new kind of computer is rising on the technology horizon, and it has just reached a significant milestone.  A quantum computer, a device first suggested decades ago by Richard Feynman and others, has been constructed by Isaac Chuang and his coworkers at IBM?s Almaden Research Center in California.  The prototype quantum computer uses entangled nuclear spins for storage and has a capacity of seven ?qubits?, a term that will be discussed below.  Using a quantum-computing algorithm developed by AT&T's Peter Schor in 1995, this quantum computer has factored the number 15 into its prime- factors, 3 and...

The first copycat of the widespread Mydoom worm appeared Wednesday on the Internet, and some analysts are warning it may be even more dangerous than the original. Dubbed Mydoom.b by most security firms, the variant strongly resembles the Mydoom, now tagged as Mydoom.a, but adds some new disturbing traits. Some of the subject lines used by Mydoom.b depart from the original, including new headings of 'Delivery error' and 'Returned mail,' both which try to trick users into believing that the message is legit and can safely be opened. Another change in Mydoom.b is the addition of microsoft.com as a target...

Korea to build 100M bps Internet system Infrastructure will offer telecom, broadcasting and Internet access from a variety of devices By David Legard, IDG News Service November 18, 2003 South Korea plans to build a nationwide Internet access infrastructure capable of speeds between 50M bps (bits per second) and 100M bps by 2010, the online edition of the Chosun Ilbo daily newspaper reported Tuesday. The infrastructure will be known as the broadband convergence network (BcN) and will offer telecommunications, broadcasting and Internet access from a wide variety of devices, the paper said, quoting the Ministry of Information and Communication. Construction...

Analysts and industry experts comment on Novell's $210m acquisition of SuSE Linux Novell's agreement to acquire SuSE Linux for $210m is good news for the Linux community and shows that the firm is unconcerned about the fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding Linux following SCO Group's legal action against IBM. And IBM's investment of $50m in Novell as part of the deal has meant that the distribution and support gap which SCO left in the United Linux consortium has been plugged. "This really is very, very good news for Linux," Gary Barnett, principal analyst at Ovum, told vnunet.com. "It's a very...

PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia artist Jim Reed grew up figuring that everyone's grandfather had invented something. So he didn't feel like his grandfather John Mauchly was in any way out of the ordinary, even though Mauchly is widely credited with having invented the computer. Reed remembers watching the television broadcast of Neil Armstrong's 1969 walk on the moon. As Armstrong scuffled across the dusty lunar surface, his grandfather fielded congratulatory phone calls from people who knew the space mission wouldn't have been possible without computers. But Reed also remembers a grandfather who was "depressed, harassed by a series of legal struggles...

<p>The brand new "Big Mac" supercomputer at Virginia Tech could be the second most powerful supercomputer on the planet, according to preliminary numbers.</p> <p>Early benchmarks of Virginia Tech's brand new supercomputer -- which is strung together from 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5s -- may vault the machine into second place in the rankings of the worlds' fastest supercomputers, second only to Japan's monstrously big and expensive Earth Simulator.</p>

As the U.S. economy flounders and software development becomes commodified, global outsourcing has turned into a hot-button issue, with emotions running high on all sides. This week, we bring you two articles that review different facets of the outsourcing issue: Steve Fullmer on Why to Support Global Outsourcing and Alan Gore on What's Wrong with Global Outsourcing.

WASHINGTON - First came the Internet in the late1960s, electronically linking computers around the world. The `90s brought the World Wide Web, making it possible to exchange words, pictures, music, videos and information of every sort. Now comes the Grid, a third wave in the evolution of the cyberworld that promises to give users access to unprecedented computing power, services and data no matter where they are located. Ultimately, supporters say, the Grid will be like having a supercomputer at your fingertips. Astronomers in Massachusetts and California could share the same telescope in Hawaii without leaving their offices. A travel...

DEAR SIR/MADAM: I AM MR. DARL MCBRIDE CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SCO GROUP, FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, IN LINDON, UTAH, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I KNOW THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOUR BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS COMMUNICATIONS OR BUSINESS DEALINGS BEFORE NOW. MY ASSOCIATES HAVE RECENTLY MADE CLAIM TO COMPUTER SOFTWARES WORTH AN ESTIMATED $1 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS. I AM WRITING TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE BECAUSE WE URGENTLY REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE TO OBTAIN THESE FUNDS. IN THE EARLY 1970S THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION DEVELOPED AT GREAT EXPENSE THE...

AMD quietly trimmed the prices of its top-two single-processor system Opteron 100 series and its dual-processor Opteron 200 series yesterday possibly paving the way for a new, faster version of the chips. The Opteron 144's price was cut from $669 to $438, a cut of around 35 per cent. The Opteron 142 fell from $438 to $292, down 33 per cent. the Opteron 140 remains unchanged at $229. All prices are for processors sold in batches of 1000. The Opteron 244 was previously priced at $794; now it's $690, a drop of 13 per cent. The Opteron 242's price was...

SAN MATEO, Calif. — The recession's toll notwithstanding, the upcoming 15th annual Hot Chips conference drew a near-record number of paper submissions. But the scheduled lineup shows that Hot Chips, like the industry it examines, has distinctly changed its flavor. "The focus in design now is on applications and their solutions, not on general-purpose CPUs for everything," said Pradeep Dubey, manager of innovative platform architecture at Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and program co-chairman for the conference, which will convene Aug. 17-19 on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, Calif.Hot Chips traditionally has been a showcase for general-purpose CPU...

Graphics-chip underdog ATI Technologies is expected to introduce new chips next week that will dramatically increase the graphics performance of budget PCs.ATI has scheduled press events next week to discuss "next-generation integrated graphics." Analysts believe the company will unveil the RS300, a new family of integrated chipsets, PC components that combine a graphics processor with a chipset that controls basic PC functions such as memory use. An ATI representative did not respond to requests for comment, but the company typically does not discuss unannounced products. Integrated chipsets cost significantly less than standalone graphics processors and have made rapid advances in...