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Researchers Reconstruct Parts Of The Genome Of A Common Mammalian Ancestor A group of researchers has re-created with remarkable accuracy part of the genome of the common ancestor of all placental mammals, a small shrew-like creature that prowled the forests of what is now Asia more than 80 million years ago. By comparing DNA sequences of 19 species of existing mammals, including humans, the researchers have reconstructed a large segment of DNA in the species from which all of today's placental mammals arose. They estimate that the reconstruction is 98 percent accurate. The project, which was led by David...

WEB GURU NEEDED By Michelle Malkin   ·   November 28, 2004 02:13 PM Reader Michael S. Sanders asks if he is "the only one who cannot download any of your graphics on your site." No, Michael, you are not the only one. It's a pretty common problem, unfortunately. Is there anyone out there who can help? If so, my e-mail address is malkin@comcast.net.

Phishers tapping botnets to automate attacks By John Leyden Published Friday 26th November 2004 13:55 GMT Computer criminals are making phishing more potent by automating attacks. Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) analysts reckon fraudsters are using automated tools and botnets to ramp up attacks. It estimates attacks grew by an average of 36 per cent a month between July and October.Scam emails that form the basis of phishing attacks often pose as 'security check' requests from well-known businesses. These messages attempt to trick users into handing over their account details and passwords to bogus sites. The details collected this way are...

Microsoft's Google-killer arrives with a 'whuh?' By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco Published Friday 12th November 2004 12:01 GMT Google's executives might be sleeping a little easier this weekend after Microsoft unveiled its much-hyped new search engine. It's fast, slick, and comes with a raft of interesting new features: confounding some expectations as surely as it confirms others. In short, Microsoft has produced a search engine that's better in almost every way than Google, except for one: its search results are terrible. But let's start with the good stuff.Incredibly, MSN Beta Search trumps Google for speed: it's an order of...

Phishing for dummies: hook, line and sinker By Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus  Published Tuesday 2nd November 2004 14:55 GMT Recent "phishing" episodes, and two new browser vulnerabilities, show how the bad guys are tricking people into exposing their passwords and bank accounts. Couldn't happen to tech-savvy users, right? Unless you consider how entire nations have been fooled.The art of faking out opponents in a clever, elegant, beautiful way is one that I find fascinating, and I cherish examples of that art. When looking through history for stories illustrating the deliberate use of distractions to obfuscate an intended purpose, I often return...

In less than two years, CoolWebSearch has become the bane of the computing industry. Its programmers have managed to reset Web browsers so that searches get rerouted to the CoolWeb search engine. And any time anti-spyware engineers find a way to stop the hijacking, a new variant pops up, sneakier than its predecessor. There are now dozens. "It's a cat-and-mouse game almost," said Tim Bryan, an InterMute Inc. software developer in charge of fighting CoolWebSearch. There are less pernicious forms of spyware, of course. And there is what's more properly termed adware because many such programs don't actually harvest data...

Gmail accounts 'wide open to exploit' - report By John Leyden Published Friday 29th October 2004 16:50 GMT Google's high profile webmail service, Gmail, is vulnerable to a security exploit that might allow hackers full access to a user's email account simply by knowing the user name, according to reports.The security flaw allows full access to users' accounts, with no need of a password, Israeli news site Nana says . Using a hex-encoded XSS link, the victim's cookie file can be stolen by a hacker, who can later use it to identify himself to Gmail as the original owner of...

80 per cent of home PCs infected - survey By Thomas C Greene Published Tuesday 26th October 2004 19:59 GMT The Internet is well on its way to becoming one vast bot net, a survey by AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance suggests.Researchers interviewed, and examined the computers of, 329 volunteers. They found that nearly all Windows PCs are infected with some form of malware, and that a majority of users are unaware of the simplest security basics, such as the difference between anti-virus software and a firewall, for instance. Most users had antivirus software installed, presumably because it's...

  Search US-CERT > Advanced Search National Cyber Alert System Technical Cyber Security Alert TA04-293A Multiple Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer Original release date: October 19, 2004 Last revised: -- Source: US-CERT  Systems Affected Microsoft Windows systems running Internet Explorer versions 5.01 and later; previous, unsupported versions of Internet Explorer may also be affected Programs that use the WebBrowser ActiveX control (WebOC) or MSHTML rendering engine  Overview Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) contains multiple vulnerabilities, the most severe of which could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running IE.  I. Description Microsoft...

Home | FAQ | Contact | Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe from Alerts Search US-CERT > Advanced Search National Cyber Alert System Cyber Security Alert SA04-286A Multiple Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Excel Original release date: October 12, 2004 Last revised: -- Source: US-CERT  Systems Affected Microsoft Windows Microsoft Internet Explorer Microsoft Excel, including Macintosh versions  Overview By taking advantage of one or more vulnerabilities in Microsoft products, an attacker may be able to take control of your computer.  Solution Apply updates Microsoft has released security updates for a number of products, including Windows, Internet Explorer, and Excel....

An almost audible sigh of relief arose from Washington last week as Blue Gene/L, a computer built by International Business Machines, claimed the title of the world's fastest supercomputer. Science and technology policymakers have spent the past two years fretting that the US was losing its lead in high-performance computing, with potentially serious implications for national competitiveness. "We believe that to out-compete, we must out-compute," said Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, one of many lobby groups pressing federal agencies to spend more on supercomputer research. The lobbying campaign was sparked by the success of the Earth...

Google is spending some of the cash it raised from its IPO on headhunting staff to build a web browser. Staff have already been poached from Microsoft and Sun.Joshua Bloch, a senior Java developer at Sun, and four people from Microsoft's IE team have all joined the firm in the last few weeks, according to the New York Post. One of the four, Adam Bosworth, was also a lead developer in the development of Access. Joe Beda, a developer working on the user interface for Microsoft's Longhorn, has also joined Google. His blog refers to the NY Post story,...

Pre-patch your XP Setup CD once; never have to install SP2 again. Fred Langa walks you through a 16-step process. Our recent discussions about Windows XP's SP2 show that the huge patch is working fine for most users; and that with caution (make a full backup or image beforehand; read and follow all of Microsoft's pre-SP2 installation tips), even potentially troublesome installations can be handled smoothly. But not swiftly: The update process can take a considerable chunk of your workday, even if you don't count the download time or install from the free SP2 CD. Twenty to 40 minutes seems...

Home | FAQ | Contact | Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe from Alerts Search US-CERT > Advanced Search National Cyber Alert System Cyber Security Alert SA04-261A Multiple vulnerabilities in Mozilla products Original release date: September 17, 2004 Last revised: -- Source: US-CERT Systems Affected Mozilla Suite (Mozilla web browser, Mozilla Mail)Firefox web browserThunderbird email client Overview By taking advantage of one or more vulnerabilities in Mozilla products, an attacker may be able to take control of your computer. Solution Upgrade to the latest version Mozilla has released updated versions of the affected products. You can download the latest versions: MozillaFirefoxThunderbird...

Symantec has labelled a program that enables Chinese surfers to view blocked websites as a Trojan Horse. Upshot? Users of Norton Anti-Virus cannot access Freegate, a popular program which circumvents government blocks, the FT reports. Freegate has 200,000 users, Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT), its developer, estimates. It lets users view sites banned by the Chinese government by taking advantage of a range of proxy servers assigned to changeable internet addresses. But a recent update to Symantec's AV definition files means the latest version of Freegate is treated as malware and removed from systems protected by Norton. Short of disabling Norton...

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A newly developed lubricant could improve the performance, capacity and longevity of hard drives used widely in computers, music players, video recorders and other devices, researchers say. Lubricant coats and protects the polished disc surface that spins thousands of times per minute as data are magnetically recorded, retrieved and erased on the drive by a head that flies back and forth dozens of times per second. But today's standard lubricant, called perfluoropolyethers, is reaching its limits as disc drives spin faster and hold more data. In some cases, centrifugal forces are causing the lubricant to ripple....

(note from Stoat: This article goes on for eleven pages and so I'm only going to post an excerpt. Please be sure to go to the original article and read more than what I've posted here because there's a tremendous amount of real-world information that I would consider essential reading if you're considering the XP-2 patch either for your PC or for your enterprise) Forget the ivory-tower pundits--here are first-hand reports from the trenches, relayed by your peers who've already installed the new Service Pack. By Fred Langa, InformationWeek Sept. 6, 2004 URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=46200911 You've heard a lot about Windows...

One in 10 corporate PC users will encounter difficulties in upgrading to Windows XP Service Pack 2, according to AssetMetrix. Smaller firms will be hit hardest by compatibility problems between their applications and the much anticipated update of Microsoft's flagship operating system, the Canadian asset management firm says. Microsoft has issued a list of applications that require modification in order to work properly with XP SP2. The list has been in a state of flux since XP SP2 was released. But based on the current list of approximately 60 applications with SP2 compatibility problems, AssetMetrix reckons that an average company...

Richard Cunningham is like many twenty somethings in the United States -- he enjoys hanging out at the bars with friends, motorcycling, hiking and buying the latest electronic gadgets. He regularly puts in 12-hour days from his home office and is respected by peers in his industry. But his industry is about as unconventional as it gets. And if the anti-spam community discovered who he really was, it would go out of its way to make life as difficult as possible for a guy who profits from flooding your e-mail inbox. "Richard Cunningham" more than likely isn't his real name;...

RealNetworks has stepped up its music "war" on Apple Computer--with results it clearly didn't expect. Hostilities started in late July, when RealNetworks cracked Apple's FairPlay code, meaning songs bought from the RealPlayer Music Store could be played on the iPod--a move that went down very badly over at Apple. RealNetworks then decided to ratchet up the pressure by slashing the cost of its downloads to below the 99-cent price barrier favored by Apple. The next step--a campaign and petition to get music fans to support the company's open stance--hasn't worked out quite as it might have hoped, after some people...