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Microsoft is admonishing those who found the IFRAME vulnerability - the flaw exploited by the bofra virus - for the way they made it public. Microsoft has slammed the people responsible for publishing details of the vulnerability that has lead to the creation of the bofra virus. The software giant, which has yet to release a patch for the flaw, said that the vulnerability was not reported in a responsible fashion. In a prepared email statement from a Microsoft spokesperson, the company said: "Microsoft is concerned that this new report of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer was not disclosed responsibly,...

Microsoft on Tuesday published 10 software security advisories, warning Windows users and corporate administrators of 22 new flaws that affect the company's products. The advisories, and patches published with the bulletins, range from an "important" flaw affecting only Microsoft Windows NT Server to a collection of eight security holes, including three rated "critical," that leave Internet Explorer open to attack. Microsoft's highest severity rating for software flaws is its "critical" ranking, while "important" is considered slightly less severe. One flaw, in Microsoft Excel, even affects Apple Computer's Mac OS X. The abundance of flaws could leave corporate PCs vulnerable to...

French President Jacques Chirac is to meet his Chinese counterpart on the second day of a visit designed to boost the two countries' economic links. Mr Chirac will meet President Hu Jintao in Beijing hours after delivering a speech in the city of Chengdu. France is keen to improve its trade links with China, and a high-profile team of ministers and industrialists is with Mr Chirac on his state visit. On Friday Mr Chirac called for an end to an EU embargo on selling China arms. The United States is urging the European Union not to lift an embargo that...

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TEHRAN (MNA) -- During the latest season of excavations of the northern gate of Takht-e Suleiman, an ancient Zoroastrian fire temple located in northwestern Iran, the stamps of two seals were discovered which indicate that objects entered Takht-e Suleiman from other regions with special tags attached to them which seem to be advertisements. They signify that an early form of advertising was being practiced during the Sassanid era (224-642 C.E.), Yusef Moradi, the head of the excavation team, said on Friday. “The team began its excavations in early August and found the stamps of two seals at the upper levels...

Secrets of an ancient Persian armada sunk off the coast of Greece 2500 years ago are being dredged up by modern archaeologists. A team from Greece, Canada and the United States has just completed a second expedition to retrieve artefacts from 300 ships of the Persian King Darius that were wrecked in a storm off the Mt Athos Peninsula, northern Greece, in 492BC or 493BC. Aucklanders will be among the first to hear the results today when three of the expedition leaders present their findings in a free public lecture at Auckland University. In two trips so far, last October...

Microsoft released the long-anticipated Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) to manufacturing mid-day Friday, just two days after unknown delays temporarily stumped its wrap. Although Microsoft's signed off on SP2 -- a major update to Windows XP that devotes considerable effort toward tightening up the operating system against security threats -- it's not yet offering the upgrade to end users. SP2 will post for downloading next week, said Microsoft, but it's urging users to not flood the Windows Update servers by retrieving the approximately 80MB file on their own. Instead, the Redmond, Wash.-based developer is trying to convince users...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

WASHINGTON -- Consumers who allow their infected computers to send out millions of "spam" messages could be unplugged from the Internet under a proposal released today by six large e-mail providers. Internet users also could be limited on the amount of e-mail they send out each day to ensure they haven't become unwitting spammers, under voluntary guidelines proposed to curb unwanted junk e-mail. The proposal was developed by Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, Yahoo Inc., EarthLink Inc., Microsoft Corp., Comcast Corp. and BT Group Plc. Spam now accounts for up to 83 percent of all e-mail traffic, and large Internet...

"News: New virus reads keys you type" Posted: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 10:52:39 GMT Author: LinuXProX A new virus is on the prowl that can infect your Windows XP/2K system and record every key you hit on your keyboard. The keys are then sent back to the virus creator where he/she can steal your passwords and credit card information. The virus named, Korgo, started showing up in the last week of May but it now has at least six different variants. To protect yourself from this nasty virus, Microsoft is urging all users to download the KB835732 Security Update. The...

I have been getting an inordinant number of attacks on my system. They are on ports 666 and 3049. I have Norton intercepting these attacks, but I am not well-versed ebough on firewalls and the like to know what exactly is going on. The whois for most of them go back to my ISP (SBC). Interestingly, a few have come from Denmark, where the prince just got married to that commoner. Is anyone else getting this kind of thing -- like there is a virus running around?

Computer security specialist Symantec Thursday moved swiftly to patch for four very serious vulnerabilities in its popular Norton firewall product suite. An alert from Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec described the flaws as "high risk" and warned that a successful exploit could wipe out a user's computer. Attackers could also execute remote code with kernel-level privileges on the targeted system. The vulnerabilities, first discovered by researchers at eEye Digital Security, affect both enterprise and consumer Norton users. Affected products include the Symantec Client Firewall 5.01 and 5.1.1; the Symantec Client Security 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 (SCF 7.1); the Norton Internet Security and Professional...

Diet of worms can cure bowel disease 19:00 06 April 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. Regular doses of worms really do rid people of inflammatory bowel disease. The first trials of the treatment have been a success, and a drinkable concoction containing thousands of pig whipworm eggs could soon be launched in Europe.At the moment the concoction cannot be stored for long, so doctors or hospitals would have to prepare fresh batches of the eggs for their patients. But a new German company called BioCure, whose sister company BioMonde sells leeches and maggots for...

A SPOONFUL of worms may not go down as delightfully as sugar, but it is highly effective against inflammatory bowel disease, research has found. Following the success of trials, a drinkable potion containing thousands of pig whipworm eggs could be launched in Europe as early as next month. The tests, carried out in the United States, involved 100 people with ulcerative colitis and 100 with Crohn’s disease. Both are incurable and potentially serious disorders collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In many of the volunteers, symptoms such as abdominal pain, bleeding and diarrhoea disappeared after the worm treatment. Half...

The number of virus alerts has increased over six-fold in the last year, according to internet security firm, Trend Micro. The company said that the first quarter of 2004 saw the greatest number of virus alerts ever issued in a three-month period. Trend Micro during Q1 2004 issued 232 virus warning, compared to a mere 35 issued by the company in Q1 2003. "The first three months in 2004 were phenomenal," said Clive Wainstein, product marketing manager for Trend Micro

A handful of Bagle worm variants are attacking Windows users with an insidious new twist: They can infect computers without tricking them into opening a file attachment -- opening an e-mail is all it takes. The passel of new worms sport a virtual alphabet soup of labels: "Bagle.q," "Bagle.r," "Bagle.s" and "Bagle.t." Some security firms have dubbed the new variants "beagle." They are mutations of the original Bagle worm first discovered in January. Bagle exploits a flaw in Outlook, revealed in October of 2003, that allows a hacker to upload and execute a file on a user's PC without that...

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...

TOKYO, Nov. 27 - As more consumers begin surfing the Web and sending e-mail messages on cellphone and hand-held devices, along comes a new worry: worms and viruses spread via Internet-enabled handsets. The problem is still small, with only a few cases reported globally. But as operating systems in cellphones become standardized, hackers will probably begin focusing on vulnerabilities in those systems as they have with personal computers. And as cellphones and personal digital assistants connect to the Internet at ever faster speeds, more users will be able to download files with attachments - some of which may be infected....