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A team at Oxford University has had success testing a vaccine that can neuter any strain of flu virus. Photograph: Science Photo Library The treatment ... targets a different part of the flu virus to traditional vaccines, meaning it does not need to be expensively reformulated every year to match the most prevalent virus that is circulating the world. Developed by a team led by Dr Sarah Gilbert at Oxford's Jenner Institute, the vaccine targets proteins inside the flu virus that are common across all strains, instead of those that sit on the virus's external coat, which are liable...

Enlarge Image Buried gem. Researchers have uncovered "fossil virus" inside the zebra finch genome. Credit: Peripitus/Wikimedia The hepatitis B virus and its ilk have been around for a long, long time. A newly uncovered "viral fossil" buried deep in the genome of the zebra finch indicates that the hepatitis B family of viruses—known as hepadnaviruses—originated at least 19 million years ago. Together with recent findings on other viruses, the work suggests that all viruses may be much older than thought. No one knows exactly where or when viruses originated. They don't leave fossils, so scientists have begun scouring the...

Justin Timberlake must have a thing for dangerous women. Last year, the Web's riskiest celebrity search was the pop star's current girlfriend starlet Jessica Biel. Cruise and Diaz rehearse stunts for their new movie, "Knight and Day."And this year, Timberlake's former flame Cameron Diaz took the top spot on Internet security firm McAfee's annual list of the most dangerous stars to search for on the Web. Look up one of these people and you almost invite computer viruses and worms to invade your computer. "It's sort of a little bit of rivalry from the traditional world going to the cyber...

HTC EVO rooted once again by using an exploit in Flash Player. Security concerns arise as users rejoice over being able to root their phones once again after the OTA update.

Has anyone in the last week gotten a computer virus from Antispyware Soft? It was a real bear to get rid of. I picked it up over the past weekend, and wondered if I could have possibly gotten it from FR or perhaps the alternate FR site when FR was inoperative sometime over the weekend. When I typed Start/run/msconfig and went to the start menu, there was an item ending in tssd.exe which is the virus. Also in start/run/regedit, there was AV Soft and AV Suite. After many times, restarting and unchecking tssd.exe, and running Microsoft Security Essentials, I believe...

I am sure that every person who has ever used a computer has had a moment or two when they wanted literally destroy the darn thing. Well imagine if you really did begin to pulverize your computer when all of a sudden things did not go quite the way you planned? Follow the link below to watch theVideo of the PC's Revenge.

About the content of Security Update 2010-003 Last Modified: April 14, 2010 Article: HT4131 Products Affected Product Security, Mac OS X Server 10.5, Mac OS X 10.5, Mac OS X 10.6, Mac OS X Server 10.6Security Update 2010-003 ATS CVE-ID: CVE-2010-1120 Available for: Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.3, Mac OS X Server v10.6.3 Impact: Viewing or downloading a document containing a maliciously crafted embedded font may lead to arbitrary code execution. Description: An unchecked index issue exists in Apple Type Services' handling of embedded fonts. Viewing or downloading a document containing a...

I find it interesting that one constituency, Lawyers, endeavors to Socialize another, Medical Doctors. Medical Doctors are currently getting out of the business. Fewer and fewer accept medicaid/medicare patients. Methink Lawyers should be "Socialized" as well: - Put them in a big pen. Call out at random. - Fees/compensation should be fixed as is planned for Doctors. - Attire: Government issued round straw hats and pajamas. Wigs? - Foods: simple, no wines. - Lodging: modest apartments. - Transportation: bicycles. This country has a stinking lawyer problem reflected in the biggest expense for a Medical Doctor: malpractice insurance. Legal harassment and...

The weird world of quantum mechanics describes the strange, often contradictory, behaviour of small inanimate objects such as atoms. Researchers have now started looking for ways to detect quantum properties in more complex and larger entities, possibly even living organisms. A German-Spanish research group, split between the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), is using the principles of an iconic quantum mechanics thought experiment - Schrödinger's superpositioned cat – to test for quantum properties in objects composed of as many as one billion atoms, possibly including the flu virus. New research...

Just as the healthcare drama in the capitol reaches a grand finale, congressional officials are warning employees to avoid the DRUDGE REPORT! The Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works issued an urgent email late Monday claiming the DRUDGE REPORT is 'responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate.' The committee ordered hill staff: 'Try to avoid' the DRUDGE REPORT 'for now'. On Monday DRUDGE served over 29 million pages with NOT ONE email complaint received about 'pop ups', or the site serving 'viruses'. The site was seen 149,967 times since March 1st from users at senate.gov and...

Research published in the journal Genetics suggests that mutagenic drugs designed to kill viruses may make them strongerAs the flu season continues in full-swing, most people can appreciate the need for drugs that stop viruses after they take hold in the body. Despite this serious need for new drugs, a team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin raise serious concerns about an emerging strategy for stopping viral infections. According to their research report appearing in the January 2010 issue of the journal GENETICS, medications that cause viruses to die off by forcing their nucleic acid to mutate...

In many worst case scenarios, a hard drive wipe is the final solution to ridding a system of an infection. But the absolute worst case scenario is if a virus attacks the BIOS, making detection and cleaning an incredible challenge. Viruses that target the BIOS arenÂ’t new, but often they are specific to a type of hardware. Researchers have now demonstrated a new type of attack that could install a rootkit on the BIOS of common systems, making it very lethal and effective. Anibal L. Sacco and Alfredo A. Ortego of Core Security Technologies released a presentation detailing the exploit...

There is this older Toshiba laptop running Windows XP. It loads but I can not log in. It says it is loading the settings but then it logs off, the desktop never loads. I tried safemode but AVG is hard to use in safe mode. There may be a virus but why would it do this? I think AVG may have quarantined a file the computer actually needs or something. Does anyone have a clue?

University of California, Davis, researchers studying the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, formerly referred to as "swine flu," have identified a group of immunologically important sites on the virus that are also present in seasonal flu viruses that have been circulating for years. These molecular sites appear to result in some level of immunity to the new virus in people who were exposed to the earlier influenza viruses. More than a dozen structural sites, or epitopes, in the virus may explain why many people over the age of 60, who were likely exposed to similar viruses earlier in life, carry antibodies...

Microsoft sends biggest patch on record Tue Oct 13, 2009 4:03pm EDT SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp issued its biggest software patch on record on Tuesday to fix a range of security issues in its programs, including the yet-to-be-released Windows 7 operating system. In a monthly update sent to users of its software, Microsoft released 13 security bulletins, or patches, to address 34 vulnerabilities it identified across its Windows, Internet Explorer, Silverlight, Office and other products. It said six of the patches were high priority and should be deployed immediately. The patches -- which update software to write over glitches...

THE World Health Organisation says swine flu has swept the globe at "unprecedented speed", and a study warns that the pandemic could tip the world into deflation and delay the economic recovery. The WHO said it will stop giving figures on the numbers infected by the A(H1N1) virus to allow countries to channel resources into close monitoring of unexpected developments and patterns in the spread of the disease. Argentina, meanwhile, issued a nationwide alert after pigs were confirmed to have the swine flu virus. "In past pandemics, influenza viruses have needed more than six months to spread as widely as...

Symantec says a new worm targeting Mac OS X spreads via email and network shares. But is it really a threat?According to Symantec, the Tored worm spreads through network shares and by emailing itself to addresses gathered from the infected computer's Address Book. It opens a back door to the computer, allowing it to be conscripted into distributed denial of service attacks as well as logging keystrokes (which could be used to steal passwords and other confidential information). There is no indication that Tored can execute without user intervention. For example, Symantec does not seem to suggest that there are...

Mac owners have been urged to be wary of a new threat that targets the Apple computer as well as Windows-based PCs. Researchers at security firm Sophos have discovered the OSX/RSPlug Trojan horse, which is being distributed on websites offering fake HDTV software. "Mac users are no different to Windows users when it comes to falling for social-engineering tricks like this - they are just as likely to install and run this program on their computer if they believe it will help them watch high-definition TV," said Graham Cluley of Sophos. Apple Mac malware: Caught on camera from Sophos Labs...

Scientists have overcome a major barrier to human use. Monday, March 02, 2009 By Emily Singer In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka and his colleagues at Kyoto University in Japan reported that they could reprogram mouse skin cells to an embryonic-like state by adding four genes, since dubbed the Yamanaka factors. These cells, called induced pluripotent cells, can be transformed into different types of cells and tissues, and hold promise for studying disease and developing cell replacement therapies. However, scientists inserted the genes using viruses, making the cells unsuitable for human use. Now, for the first time, British and Canadian scientists have...

A computer virus is alive and well on the International Space Station (ISS). Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG. The worm was first detected on Earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games. Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected. [snip] The laptops carried by astronauts reportedly do not have any anti-virus software on them to prevent infection.