Sobig wasn’t quite as big as they feared: The second stage of the virus fizzled when folk disconnected the servers the virus had instructed infected PCs to download new instructions from, CNET reports. The experts feared that the software could be used to spy on the computers’ owners or launch another wave of spam. The … Read more
Conspiracy theorists reckon the big power blackout in the U.S. Northeast and part of Canada may have been caused by the Blaster worm. Here’s Robert X. Cringely from InfoWorld: “Many plants on the grid run a Windows-based SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system that receives remote commands through the same RPC (Remote Procedure Call) protocol … Read more
From the This Sounds Like A Good Thing, Or Are We Being Luddites? Dept comes news that privacy protests against the trial of RFID tags by Gillette at a Tesco store in Cambridge have prodded Gillette to abandon their trial, according to Indynews. RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags are small tags containing a microchip which … Read more
From the Obscure Info But Store It Away Because You’re Bound To Need It Someday Dept comes an interesting service: new and legacy memory for desktop computers, notebooks, servers, workstations, laser printers, digital cameras and palm-top computers. Memory4Less uses a state-of-the-art user-friendly website featuring the “Ultimate Configurator” and “Advanced Search Tools”, which sound exciting … Read more
Fears that the next U.S. presidential election is going to be a spamfest has helped launch a Political Spam Hall of Shame. If you receive a political spam, particularly for a national campaign where the winner gets to go live in Washington DC, (and particularly if you don’t actually live in the U.S. or are … Read more