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Dot.coms bounce back

As investor confidence in hi-tech companies revives, the BBC's Money Programme finds that more of the original dot.coms made it through the stock market crash than was once thought. On revisiting these companies, it  found that two-thirds of them are still in business. In fact, some are now thriving because competitors have closed, and there are more potential customers online. Read More

IE security patch released

Microsoft has released a patch for IE to cure several security flaws, including the Phishing Flaw. Get it while it's hot if you're running:

• Microsoft Windows NT® Workstation 4.0 Service Pack 6a
• Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Service Pack 6a
• Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, Service Pack 6
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 2, Service Pack 3, Service Pack 4
• Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1
• Microsoft Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, Microsoft Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Service Pack 1
• Microsoft Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003
• Microsoft Windows Server® 2003
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, 64-Bit Edition

However, there's reports today (5/Feb/04) that the patch doesn't play nicely with other browser applications - and doesn't patch all the holes. My Accessibility toolbar inexplicably stopped working after I installed the IE patch with a "unable to parse toolbar definition file" error when re-starting IE.

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MyDoom kills SCO site, tickles Microsoft.com

CRN reports that the MyDoom-A virus killed SCO.com and forced the company to move their website to www.thescogroup.com, but the small number of computers infected with MyDoom-B (presumably because of all the media attention, even in consumer newspapers and TV news) ensured that www.microsoft.com survived the Denial of Service attack.

Bruce

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Critical ColdFusion patch released

ColdFusion MX 6.1 is vulnerable to a denial of service attack if a malicious user creates a ficticious request containing a large number of form fields. Here's the patch.

Bruce

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Booble! makes a boob.

Readers may recall from last week's newsletter that a new "adult-oriented" search engine has launched, called Booble. Completely unexpectedly, Google have sent them a cease-and-desist letter:

"We dispute your assertion that your website is a parody... Your website does not comment on the Google website at all; it merely uses the Google look and feel and a similar name for a search engine. Your web site is a pornographic web site."

To which Booble respond: "Booble's web site is an adult search engine, not 'a pornographic site,' as referred to in your letter. In fact, entering the terms "porn" and "sex" in the Google search engine return 98,400,000 hits and 269,000,000 hits, respectively, while entering these same terms in the Booble adult search engine return 268 hits and 291 hits, respectively. Therefore, the Google mark - which has a longstanding association with pornographic terms and material - is obviously not tarnished."

Be interesting to see how this plays out.. I bet Booble won't settle for an X-box....

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U.S. goverment launch Computer Emergency Readiness Team website

U.S. government launches National Cyber Alert System with nice buttons to centralise all computer security announcements, and alert people of virus threats etc. Read More

MyDoom virus hits companies, spreads fast

The MyDoom virus has been spreading like wildfire in the last 24 hours. Some companies are receiving 1000 infected emails a minute. The virus installs a trojan that can leave the host machine open to sending spam or denial of service attacks before it grabs email addresses off an infected computer, and emails itself on. Reportedly, it records keystrokes on affected machines so can mail off passwords, user names etc to whoever coded it. Read More

On-line fraud is 50% of all U.S. fraud complaints

The Register reports that, for the first time, on-line fraud is up to 55% of the $437 million complained of in the U.S.A. "The most popular Internet scams reported were online auction rip-offs -- 15 percent of the cases -- and spammy quit-your-job-and-work-at-home-for-big-bucks swindles, which made up nine percent of the complaints."
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90% of top UK company sites Inaccessible

Nine in ten of the UK's top companies are failing to make their Web sites accessible to people with disabilities, reports The Register.

The report can be obtained from Nomensa.

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New Virus alert

Warnings are being issued about the rapidly spreading Bagle Windows worm, reports the BBC. The Bagle worm can be spotted in e-mail inboxes as it always has a subject line that reads simply: "Hi". Running the attachment causes it to mail itself to all email addresses it finds on your machine.

Bruce

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