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| | | May 9, 2004
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Sunday, May 9, 2004 |
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Worm for the hole. Punishment for the crime?
The week was marked by another cyber nuisance that spread havoc on both home and business users across the world. After Microsoft recently uncovered a critical security hole in Windows XP and Windows 2000, a worm was swiftly invented to exploit the security gap.
Last week, however, security researchers were surprised that the poorly written virus, called Sasser, was able to spread at all. Malicious authors were quick to respond and released three modified and more sophisticated versions that wreaked havoc on approximately 500,000 to a million computer systems. The worm spread much less than other similar cyber threats such as last summer's Blaster worm which peaked at more than 10 million infections. But some sounded off an alarm that concerns are substantiated. Researchers pointed out that Sasser could be combined with other recent and much successful threats like the NetSky or the Bagle family of worms, thus bypassing some security precautions and spreading within usually well-protected corporate networks.
In the meantime, German police announced Saturday that an 18-year-old man was apprehended in connection with the Sasser worm. The teenager who lives near the town of Rotenburg an der Wuemme was pointed by the authorities as the potential creator of the virus, but no details were made available as to any evidence found during a raid on his parents' house.
More from: AP (via CNN) | CNET News.com 1 2 3 4 | Computerworld | eWeek 1 2 | InfoWorld | InternetNews.com | NewsFactor | Reuters | TechWeb 1 2 3
Innovative Longhorn features revealed
As security teams were tackling the latest virus outbreak, Microsoft executives were being talkative at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) held in Seattle. Greg Sullivan, the giant's lead product manager, said the next major Windows version, codenamed Longhorn, will feature three graphical user interfaces. The software giant will be using the full capabilities of contemporary video cards in order to enhance user experience, but systems with older video devices will only be able to run in a Windows 2000-style mode.
Microsoft is signaling that Longhorn will offer features depending on the hardware configuration. Another move in this direction is the potential capability of Longhorn systems to make laptops mimic portable media devices. The software maker is mulling the idea of allowing music and movie playback on notebook computers in a separate interface that does not require a user login.
More from: CNET News.com 1 2 | Computerworld | InternetNews.com | TechNewsWorld | Windows & .NET Magazine
In Other News...
 The Royal Bank of Canada has sold $20 million of its $30 million investment in The SCO Group to BayStar Capital, a hedge fund already with $20 million in the company. The controversial UNIX software company used the two investments to finance its expensive legal assault on the Linux operating system. The Royal Bank of Canada has converted the remaining portion of its preferred shares to common stock which could later be sold.
Tom Siebel stepped down as chief executive officer of Siebel Systems, the company he founded in 1993. Siebel will remain chairman of the board, while the position of chief executive will be filled by IBM veteran Mike Lawrie who resigned as an IBM executive on the day of the announcement.
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Time Warner's America Online unit announced it has purchased 7.4 million shares of Google for about $3 each. Under a 2002 agreement with Google, AOL had the option to buy these shares at that fixed price.
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