Jan 2, 2008, News Report

Experts at are warning workers returning from the New Year holidays to be wary of Internet attacks taking advantage of the celebrations. New versions of the Storm worm (also known as Dorf worm) have in recent days posed as Happy New Year e-cards.

The latest malicious e-mail campaigns contain links to Web sites containing malware, and have used a wide variety of subject lines including:

A brand New Year 2008

Blasting New Year 2008

Dance to the New 2008 Year tune

Happy New Year 2008 to the one I love

New Year 2008 Wishes

The New Year has arrived

“Many people will be returning to their desks this morning after a lengthy break for Christmas and New Year to a brimming bundle of unread e-mails. The danger is that the holiday hangover will make them less careful about which messages they click on,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. “Anyone clicking on a mystery weblink or an unsolicited e-mail attachment is putting their computer at risk of being taken over by hackers for the purposes for illegal ends. Everyone needs to make their New Year’s resolution to take computer security more seriously in 2008.”

Experts note that this is not the first occasion on which hackers have exploited New Year festivities to try and spread their malware. For instance, three years ago another worm, Wumark-D, distributed itself in an unusual Happy New Year message in the form of a photograph of naked bodies.

December 24, 2007, Mon 2:06 PM  Security

Last week many users of Kaspersky Antivirus found their operating system to be functioning incorrectly. The problem was related to antivirus updating, which by mistake detected the file explorer.exe as a virus. Kapsersky Lab. removed the error, however many of the affected users spent more than one hour to restore Windows.

Many users of Antivirus Kaspersky found last week that the desktop, ‘start’ menu and the ‘task bar’ of Windows installed on their computers were hidden. The problem resulted from incorrect updating of antivirus issued by Kaspersky Lab. on December 19th at about 10 p.m. Moscow time. The error was removed in about two hours, while on December 20th the company’s site published an official statement and a guide to deal with the problem.

Despite the antivirus base to have been promptly corrected, many of the Kaspersky antivirus customers spent much time to restore the system efficiency. Many visitors of Russian and foreign news sites and forums – CNews, the Register and others – complained to spent many hours on their operating system restoration. Those, whose antivirus automatically deleted the infected files, suffered the most.

The antivirus updating distributed by manufacturers contains errors very often. One of the last large-scale incidents occurred in China. On May 18th 2007 millions of computers with the installed Symantec Norton Antivirus were uploaded with incorrect updating, which resulted in the antivirus to define some Windows XP system files as malware and delete them.

Kaspersky Lab. product is not the only one facing the problem of false actuation

CNews was informed in Kaspersky Lab. that the company would like to apologize once again saying that the number of users affected by the problem is insufficient and at present there are practically no claims regarding the given problem. ‘Unfortunately, the problem is related to all antivirus vendors. Currently, there are so many new viruses that the antivirus laboratories can hardly deal with them. At the same time, regarding the spread rate of current threats, the most important parameters of antivirus protection are the proactive technologies to determine the new unknown viruses and response rate to new threats, the company reports.

Unfortunately, increasing the speed of uploading new signature and building the opportunities of proactive technologies, the antivirus companies are unexpectedly facing the problem of false actuation. ‘Many examples from antivirus industry prove that false actuations occur in the practice of all antivirus companies and their task is to minimize the given risk and possible consequences. Kaspersky Lab. is currently actively modernizing the test system to avoid false actuations in the future’, the company’s representative told.

According to Mikhail Kondrashin, Head of Trend Micro Competence Center in Russia, false actuations of antivirus products might coarse more harm than malware: ‘Currently virus programs are aimed at generating profit for their developers, who are not interested in anyhow affecting the users’ systems. If, for example, the user is not engaged in some certain kind of on-line transactions, then the virus focused on the given transactions will not be able to harm the user’.

Speaking about development of updating for antivirus programs, Mr. Kondrashin advises not to forget about the human factor, which inevitably influences any engineering process: ‘To minimize the possible risk the companies implement the quality management system ISO 9001’, - the expert concludes.

According to AV-Test, it is interesting to see the correlation between the speed of reaction of this or that products to new threats and the possibility of false actuations. Published in December 2007, the information reads that Symantec and CA software, whose new virus detection speed is 6-8 and 12-14 hours, relatively, are wrong in 0.00% and 0.01% cases. The reaction speed of McAfee development is 8-10 hours and failures occur in 0.02% cases, Trend Micro (6-8 hours) – 0.01%, Aviva (2-4 hours) – 0,02%. The antivirus software with the highest level of false actuation needs less time (0-2 hours) to detect a new virus: Kaspersky - 0,03%, BitDefender - 0,06%. Zone Alarm - 0,06%.

Does your computer system seem to run slower than it should? Does it crash often and display error messages you don’t recognize? Play musical tunes you’ve never heard before? If your computer acts like it’s inhabited by ghosts, you may have a computer virus or some kind of spyware.

On the other hand, an unhealthy or overloaded system could cause some of these same problems — particularly sluggish performance. Your hard drive could just be running out of space, or you could have insufficient memory resources for the applications you’re running.

So how do you tell the difference between a virus and a system problem? Generally speaking, if you notice sudden, unexpected behavior, like strange sounds coming from your computer or file names you don’t recognize, you probably have a virus.

If you think you’ve contracted a computer virus, you have several options:

• Run antivirus software. Antivirus software is available at costs ranging from free to about $50 and is invaluable to your PC’s health. Most utilities can be set up to scan your machine’s memory continuously and alert you if it finds a corruption. It will also alert you when you try to open an infected file. But scanning isn’t fail-safe, so if your computer behaves suspiciously, run the antivirus software over your entire system to find and repair the infected files.
• Replace files. If antivirus software can’t repair the damage, your only choice is to delete the infected files and replace them with clean copies from a recent backup.

• Run a disk-repair utility. After you start your computer from the boot disk, run a disk-repair utility. Both Mac and Windows operating systems come with a disk-repair utility that you can use for this purpose. Once you get the computer up and running again, scan your entire system with antivirus software.

• Reformat your drive. If running a disk-repair utility doesn’t work, your hard drive may be damaged. In this case, use a disk-repair utility to reformat it and then reinstall your system software from the original operating system disk.

Thank you: http://www.allbusiness.com

There is another new gadget out.  It looks pretty darn cool.  Not only does it illuminate itself in the dark, but you can also bend it and squeeze it and wash it with soap and water.  It is virtually indestructable.  I know, this would be a great thing for parents of toddlers!  My son is always at the keyboard, banging away.  (UMM…….I think I’m on my third keyboard right now). 

Are you staying up all night, writing papers, doing things for work?  I’ll bet I’m not the only one who’s spilt coffee on their keyboard, either early in the morning or late at night.  All you need to do is wipe it off, and continue to write.  It is even supposed to be good ergonomically for your hands!

Thanks to:  http://www.pccasegear.com/prod2428.htm

Can you imagine a flying hovercraft.  This is exactly what Mr. Rudy Heeman has done.  He has spent some years building hovercrafts before, but none that have flown.  On his first trial, the Hovercraft did a crash landing.  With a couple of bruises, Mr. Heeman was able to make some adjustments and make the Hovercraft working optimal again. 

Mr. Heeman is a mechanic, and has spent some time and lots of money into making Hovercrafts.  With this particular Hovercraft,  he was actually able to make it fly.  He reports that the optimal height is 1.5M above water and was actually able to get this going at 98kmh.

Mr. Heeman has no intentions of selling his new machine.  He plans to continue to work on this one and he’s really not to sure whom he is going to take with him on his next ride……Any one want to volunteer?  I think that one of the test crash dummies might be more appropriate for this ride.

Good luck to you Mr. Heeman, on your next venture out on the water.  Hopefully you will land safely!

Thanks to:  http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4245017a6007.html

Another great gadget, except this one is for the fridge.  This unique device will keep your food fresh and it will stay longer.  It is run with 4 C batteries, and will last for up to 150 days.  Want to keep your veggies fresher and longer, this gadget may help.  It is also supposed to kill E Coli and prevent cross contamination of food.

Sounds like a great thing……just don’t get one for mom on Mother’s day, or for Christmas.  I think your mom won’t be cooking you any meals, if you do that.
 

We hear so many stories of kids being beaten, neglected or abused by babysitters, nanny’s and even friends and relatives of the child.  With all of our technology, we can now see what’s going on at home, while away from home. 

This seems like a great camera.  The camera should be of high quality.  It even comes with a 2.4 GHZ receiver.  You can connect the receiver to the TV.  Here are some of the specs on this great camera. 

Features:

Thanks to:  http://gadget.brando.com.hk/prod_detail.php?prod_id=00477&cat_id=024&dept_id=001

While still in a Technology/Business Development Consuting position with a mid-sized Commercial Printing Company, I was faced with the now so common scenario of finding a new cost effective method for data back-up. 

In the past, I have implemented several SANS (Storage Area Network Solutions), NAS Devices (Network Attached Storage Drives, Off-Site FTP Back-Ups, Tape Systems, along with scores of data back-up software packages.  But, this time, I was faced with the need to back-up almost a terabyte of data on a budget of around $1,000.00. 

This seems a bit absurd, when I consider that not too many years ago, a high end computer came with 20-40 Gigabytes of hard drive storage, but it is amazing how much storage is required for a printing company that will store their client’s documents for reprints, modifications and general good practice for several years.

During my own dabblings in digital video editing, I found myself to load my computer with drive after drive and continue to clone these drives to the larger cheaper ones that hit the market when I ran out of space.  This is what led me to find DROBO, “The World’s First Storage Robot”.

Well, as it goes, this is a pretty cool device, that is so simple that it really makes sense.  It is an easy to use, well-designed USB Drive Enclosure that holds four SATA Drives in a cool black case about the size of a shoebox.  But, that is really the least of what it is…as it is a Hot Swappable Raid Storage Device that is almost fully self-managing.  Basically it leaves the user the responsibility of buying and inserting drives, when it becomes full. 

Here’s the skinny on Drobo, you plug it into a USB port on you PC or Mac, install a simple program, and it acts like a really big external USB drive.  Then, you move data to it and it does all of the RAID functions to protect your data even if a drive fails.  At this point of failure, the system will put your data into a safe state and warn you to replace a drive.

As a back-up solution in a Mac environment, I shared the drive to two G5’s and a Mac Mini that I use as a FTP sever. I installed a program called Super Duper to each computer to make routine back-ups and I have a good incremental back-up for each workstation.

The Drobo costs about $500.00, which is pretty reasonable, as I see it, but you still need to buy SATA drives to load it with.  In my case, I purchased four 500GB SATA drives at around $150.00 each giving me a very adequate solution for 1TB of back-up for about $1,100.00 and of course I spent about $75.00 on the Super Duper Back-up software, but I felt that $1,175.00 was pretty close to my $1,000.00 budget.  Besides, I know that I would charge much more than the extra $175.00 to the company if I needed to hack together a working back-up from any other type of storage device that I could put together in the same price range.

Well, I went over budget by a few bucks, but I am confident that this device is rock solid, so I have started the process to make Safe Computer Kids, Ltd. an authorized reseller of the Drobo product.

It is not often that I find a product that I really like, but Drobo passed the test and I will be spending some time in the near future to spread the word about it to others, as I am currently in the process of becoming a Drobo reseller, so look for it soon in the Safe Computer Kids Store at http://safecomputerkids.com/All_Products.html 

Ian McLellan

President

Safe Computer Kids, Ltd.

www.SafeComputerKids.com

U.K. Researchers Working on Prototype of Undergarment to Detect Tumors

While the conventional bra pictured here does little if anything to help women detect breast cancer, one U.K inventor says his “smart bra” may one day help women monitor themselves for early signs of breast cancer.

Ladies, this may be one invention to look for in the future.  This bra was made by a Professor Elias Siores, of the United Kingdom.  The bra essentially works by looking for thermal changes.  It would be using passive microwaves, to look for subtle temperature changes within the breast.  This could denote more blood flow, to a growing tumor that the lady may not know about.  Another feature is an alarm system, that would alert the woman to the temperature changes within the bra.  Reports say that thermography has been around for over 20 years and this prototype may not be accurate.  The reports state that benign tumors and inflammatory changes, could make the alert on this bra go off, thus alarming the woman for no reason at all.  The other major concern is that they do not woman to feel safe using this bra and not having regular mammograms on a yearly basis.  This bra could give some a false sense of security.

Bottom line.  This bra may be great to alert a woman, for changes in breast tissue, but should NOT be used as a replacement for regular yearly mammograms.

Thanks to: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/OnCallPlus/story?id=3722085&page=1

How about new fresh beer, made in 7 days.  This is the quickest beer making machine out there.  For all of you beer lovers, you can make your own beer.  It does’t matter if you like Lager, Ale, Stout or flavored beer.  You can make it right in this machine.  It holds up to 28 beers, but only takes up about a six pack worth of room in your refrigerator. 

Watch out Samuel Adams and Pete’s Wicked Ale.  Consumers now have their own ability to make their own microbrew right at home!

The Beer Machine is a self-contained, single-step brewer that makes brewing your own fresh premium naturally made beer as easy as brewing coffee. The idea is simple: after the simple one time assembly, you can make any of dozens of international or domestic styled beers in just seven to ten days. Included with your Beer Machine, you’ll get your first 28- 12oz. servings of heavenly brew that you can tap direct from The Beer Machine and keep right in your fridge.

Thanks to: http://www.beermachine.com/