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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 09 Issue 13
Volume 9, Issue 13 Atari Online News, Etc. March 30, 2007
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2007
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #0913 03/30/07
~ Hackers Have Private IM ~ People Are Talking! ~ Managing Your Inbox!
~ PayPal Seeks Blockage! ~ Surfing the Junk Web! ~ XXX Domain, Strike 3!
~ Gaming Rivals Team Up! ~ Most Asian E-mail Spam ~ US: Malware Capital?
~ Web Fraud Rampant In UK ~ Legit Users Headaches! ~ New Zero-Day Warning!
-* Vista Sales Double Vista Pace *-
-* Yahoo Offers Unlimited E-mail Space *-
-* Many Americans See Little Use for the Web! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
I'm going to tell you right up front, this is going to be a very quick
editorial this week. And, Joe and I need to stop thinking on the same
track! The calendar says it's Spring, and I made it official earlier
today. The sun was out, and the temperature was rising. So, I decided
to take a ride out to my local golf course and play a short round if the
course looked in good shape. It did, and I did. The season is still
very early, so there were no riding carts to use. So, I had my pull cart
with me and was relegated to walking the course.
I have to say, the winter months haven't been good for my physical
condition!! I've gained a few pounds over the winter, and certainly
haven't exercised very much. I'm definitely out of shape, and as a
result, I was huffing and puffing for much of the day. And, the arms and
legs are sore. Amazingly enough though, I played fairly well for the
first time out this season. Not great, but not poorly. And now I'm
hooked for another season.
So, while I try to get the kinks worked out and wonder how I ache in
places I didn't know I could, let's get to the reason why we're all here,
this week's issue of A-ONE.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
compiled by Joe Mirando
joe@atarinews.org
Hidi ho friends and neighbors. First of all, I'd like to thank those of you
who have emailed me with opinions and leads to aid in my hunt for the
perfect job. It's much appreciated.
Second of all, it seems that you don't need to be doing manual labor to
cause yourself injury. I woke up this morning after having slept wrong,
and now have a fairly painfully pulled muscle right smack-dab in the
middle of my back. So here I sit, with a hotpad against my aching back
(for the moment, anyway... I alternate between hot and cold for things
like this... I find that it keeps the irritation to a minimum).
I guess it's all part and parcel of getting older. Hey, I'm not saying that
I LIKE the idea, just that I understand it.
Anyway, I don't know if you've had the need to look at the help-wanted ads
lately, but it's really depressing. I mean, after you get finished
discounting the 'paper hat' positions and the 'stuff envelopes at home'
ads, there's precious little left out there.
Thank goodness there're places like monster.com, dice.com and
careerbuilder.com out there. I haven't gotten any solid hits from them
yet, but at least they show me that there ARE jobs out there worth having.
Of course, my plan WAS to take a temporary job at someplace like Circuit
City... yeah, that's just the way my luck runs. If you're not familiar
with their current little scheme, read this:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20070329-9999-1n29circuit.html
Yep, looks like the days of the robber-barons are back. Or did they never
really go away? Perhaps it's just that, in the current political and
business climate, they don't feel the need to rely on subtlety anymore.
You've probably heard me (or read me) rant about how the gulf between the
haves and the have-nots is getting wider and wider, or about how we're
being pacified and lulled into going along things that are, on their face,
not in our best interests.
Well, I'm not going to mention anything more about it this week... you
deserve a rest too, right? And that includes my hitting you over the head
with my beliefs and such.
Don't get me wrong, I've still got lots to say and tons of opinions, but
I'm content to bide my time. It's not important to me that everyone agree
with me, just that they have access to information. And in this day and
age, information is a commodity. The difference between information and
other commodities (at least for the time-being) is that information is
mostly free.
So, in keeping with that "mostly free" thought, let's tank up on some right
now... My treat! [Grin]
From the comp.sys.atari.st NewsGroup
====================================
Derryck Croker asks about dealing with some old floppies:
"Is it possible to extract individual titles from Automation Menu disks,
and, if so, what with and how?"
'RoyE' tells Derryck:
"This site has a converter that will allow extractions, but a lot of MSA
DISKS have encryption (i.e) ICE, and will not run with out being
decrypted.
Anyway the site is :
http://msaconverter.free.fr/index-uk.html
I would like to find a Windows based program that will decrypt ICE
encryption."
Derryck tells Roy:
"The Automation disks are in .ST format. Best I can do with the utility you
linked to is to delete files from the image. That leaves their entries in
the menu screen.
Better than nothing, but there must be a utility out there, somewhere?"
Jerome Mathevet adds his craving for the same type of app:
"I take it that you want to run games from a hard disc, right? I'd love
that too (The MSA dearchiver with decryption, that is). I found
"file-based" cracked games on D-Bug's web site (which seems to be
regularly updated). http://www.dbug-automation.co.uk/falcon.htm "
Mark Bedingfield jumps in and adds:
"Woa mama. Thats freaking awesome. Now what to do with my MegaSTE and
Falcons..."
François Le Coat posts this about his new game machine:
"I got my brand new PlayStation 3 yesterday. I use it for the
moment as a media centre, because it requires a HD display to
install Linux (YDL 5.0 <http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/>) and
that my 20" 16/10 DELL screen has no HDCP decoding chip to handle
High Definition. I'll probably have to get a VGA-Box to connect
it, but all this is so fresh !
Looking at this for Linux:
http://tinyurl.com/yv48k4 {URL converted by Editor}
I was wondering about great opportunity to port ARAnyM's VM on PS3.
Somebody of us is interested in that challenge ? That really looks
promising to me... My own conviction!
Feel free to comment. The French community is not enthusiastic."
Mickael Pointier tells François:
"Well, I think we were more objecting on the price/power ratio of this
machine; specially when the idea is to run a virtual machine.
If an Atari emulator was spending it's time doing floating point
operations, no doubt that the PS3 would be quite an efficient machine for
that. But for running an emulation core, I fear that it will be less
efficient than any standard desktop pc processor.
We will see.
I promised a bottle of champagne to François if he managed to run Aranym on
a PS3 showing benchmarks which indicate numbers superiors of what we would
got on a similarly priced PC at the time of demonstration (similarly priced
meaning "only the desktop unit, without counting the price of screen,
keyboard, mouse, loudspeakers, etc... because they are not coming with the
PS3 either). So well, this can be interesting to see."
François replies:
"PlayStation3 has a lot of different usages. I'm only discovering some of
them."
'Dave' asks for help with HD DRiver and a 100mb ZIP drive:
"Once HDDRIVER has recognized the ZIP drive do I just add an icon onto
the Falcon's desktop.?"
Uwe Seimet, author of HD Driver, tells Dave:
"Yes, just like you would with any other drive. In order for HDDRIVER (and
not just HDDRUTIL) to find the drive ensure that HDDRIVER is configured to
check the ZIP's SCSI ID. The manual provides details on how to configure
which drive IDs should be checked."
Dave replies:
"Right, I've enabled 1.7 in the 'Devices & Partitions' box, the device
check confirms that the ZIP is on bus 1 07.00 (is that the LUN?).
Now if I go into the ZIP/JAZ drives menu all I can see is the Toshiba
IDE hard drive as before. Adding further desktop icons still does not
allow access to the ZIP.
Just be be sure I'm doing everything there are a few points in the
printed manual I could do with clarification on...
1.1.1 - There should be no HDDRIVER.PRG in the auto folder?
1.2 - This states that the program is installed to the root (boot)
drive as hddriver.sys but then says if run from a floppy it needs to
be .prg. Are .sys and .prg mutually exclusive?
Right, just had another scan through the manual and I think I've done
everything correctly but nothing but nothing will allow this ZIP to be
picked up."
Henk Robbers tells Dave:
"In your previous post it was bus 1 unit 6
Use HDRUTIL and perform a autoconfigure (rightmost menu title)
reset
Which OS do you use? if TOS, do Options->install devices
One of the icons should be your ZIP, probably the highest letter.
If you don't use TOS, I don't know, unless you use Mint/XaAES/Teradesk.
Factory formatted ZIP disc are not recognized by single TOS. For those you
must use MiNT.
However, you can repartition ZIP media for use with single TOS. HDRUTIL is
your friend."
Uwe adds:
"As Henk already pointed out, your device is 6.0, as displayed by the ID
check, not 1.7.
.sys is used when booting from hard disk, .prg when booting from floppy
(AUTO folder)."
Dave messes around with stuff and tells Henk and Uwe:
"Ok, success! It all works now and I can see the ZIP drive in all it's
glory. Thanks for your advice!
Now I have a backup of the C:\ drive I'm going to install one of the MiNT
distributions along with the free AES. What are people suggestions?
Also does anyone know where I can find an English install doc for the
EasyMiNT or one of the simpler distributions?"
Paul Williamson asks about an HP printer to go with his Atari:
"Does anyone know if an hp business inkjet 1200d printer will work on an
Atari? I need to replace the printer on my Hades, which I use in single
TOS to print from Cubase Score, and also in MintNet to print from Papyrus.
The hp business inkjet 1200d has a parallel port as well as USB, but I
don't know if the NVDI HP Deskjet 1200 colour driver will work with it
(I use NVDI 5.01).
Alternatively - any other ideas for a good replacement printer with a
parallel port - preferably one with a USB port as well?"
Everybody's favorite techie, Aly, tells Paul:
"This program just may be of interest..
http://www.printcapture.com/
It basically turns your PC into a serial printer. Captures the data from
an ST or whatever, and turns it into a bitmap on the PC. I use it as it's
easy."
Paul tells Aly:
"Thanks for the link. It looks an interesting way to do things, but I've
ordered the printer now - and I'm keeping my fingers crossed in the hope
it will work."
Peter Schneider adds:
"I'm not really sure, but I suppose very strongly that the mentioned
printer will *not* work with any - not emulated - Atari.
For last year I had to make some bad experience with a recent HP laser
printer:
Trying to put out one single character (even ESC...) stopped my TT's
TOS at once. Ok, inkjet is unequal to laser, but HP printers used to
be compatible to one another. Sorry! But please do tell me if I'm wrong!"
David Wade adds his thoughts:
"It says it supports:-
'HP High Performance Architecture PCL3'
If this is the same as PCL3 then it should work fine....
Some recent HP Laser only support PCL6 which is not backwards compatible
with PCL5
http://www.csgnetwork.com/hppclhist.html
has some info but a google search on PCL6 and compatibility will yield many
more.
They [HP printers] are not [compatible] anymore. PCL6 is not backwards
compatible...."
Well folks, that's it for this time around. Tune in again next week, same
time, same station, and be ready to listen to what they are saying when...
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Two Gaming Rivals Team Up!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Retirees Taking To Wii!
Xbox 360 Gets Big HD!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Gaming Rivals Team Up
Mario the plumber and Sonic the Hedgehog, rivals in the video game world
for two decades, will team up for the first time in a game based on the
2008 Beijing Olympics.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, due in stores this holiday season for
Nintendo's Wii console and DS handheld system (prices not yet set), will
also include other popular characters such as Luigi and Yoshi (from
Nintendo's Mario games), as well as Knuckles and Tails (from the Sonic
games), all competing in such summer Olympic events as running, swimming
and table tennis.
"This is something we've been talking about for two to three years now but
never really had quite the right opportunity," says Simon Jeffery of Sega,
which secured video game licenses for the upcoming summer games. "With
(that), we started thinking of some way to take advantage of the Wii and
DS, and then magic happened."
Rumors of a Mario-Sonic collaboration have been around since Sega quit
making video game consoles itself in 2001. Back in 1991, Sega's release
of Sonic the Hedgehog provided a much-needed power boost to the Sega
Genesis system, then in hot combat with Nintendo.
By that time, Mario was well on his way to appearing in nearly 100 games
and selling more than 193 million video games. He first appeared as
"Jumpman" in 981 in the arcade game Donkey Kong. Then in 1985, the game
Super Mario Bros. helped fuel the success of the Nintendo Entertainment
System and became the top-selling game of all time (40 million worldwide;
some came bundled with the NES). That game is credited with helping the
video game industry's resurgence after its crash several years earlier.
To catch the attention of the Sega Genesis' target market, a slightly
older, edgier consumer, Sega's designers created Sonic with "attitude and
speed, to kick things up a notch in the video game character wars,"
Jeffery says. Eventually, Sonic games sold more than 44 million worldwide
and the character appeared in an animated TV series and comic books
(Mario also had his own TV series for a time, and a 1993 live-action
movie starring Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper bombed).
The new Olympics game, to be designed by Sega with oversight by Mario
creator Shigeru Miyamoto, will make unique use of the Wii's
motion-sensitive controller. "It's going to be very interactive and fairly
physical," says Jeffery, adding that more will be revealed in coming
months.
Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan says the gameplay will involve "something that
has not yet been imagined on Wii and DS."
This Nintendo-Sega collaboration is another coup for Nintendo, which has
strengthened its hold on the handheld game market with the dual-screened
DS and so far outdueled Sony's PlayStation 3 with the Wii.
At Wedbush Morgan Securities, Michael Pachter calls the game "a pretty big
announcement" in that the two companies are teaming up on the game and
Nintendo is sharing its intellectual property. "You are looking at a
genre-widening partnership."
Wii Game Console Bowling Over Retirees
Until two weeks ago, Ruth Ebert never had the slightest interest in the
video games favored by her one and only granddaughter.
"I'm 82 years old, so I missed that part of our culture. Soap operas, yes.
Video games, no," chirped Ebert, who recently started playing a tennis
game on Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s new Wii video game console at the Virginia
retirement community she calls home.
"It was funny, because normally I would not be someone who would do
that," said Ebert, who picked up the console's motion-sensing Wiimote and
challenged the machine to a match.
"I played tennis, if you can call it that, as a high school student. I
had such fun doing it," she said.
Ebert swung the Wiimote just like a tennis racquet and said playing the
game reminded her of the feeling she had all those years ago.
While she took the early on-court lead, the Wii beat her in the end.
Still, it hurt less than her real-world losses: "I didn't mind losing to
a video game. It couldn't rub it in."
Japan's Nintendo has been on a mission to expand the $30 billion global
video game market far beyond the children and young males who make up its
core consumers.
And the company, a former underdog best known for fun, high-quality games
based on off-beat characters like plumbers - think Mario Bros. - has sent
shock waves through game industry with the unexpected and runaway success
of the Wii.
That $250 console has been stealing the show from Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox
360 and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, higher-powered consoles that are much
more expensive than the Wii.
While those rivals focused on cutting-edge graphics and high-tech bells
and whistles, Nintendo focused on making game play easier, more intuitive
and more appealing to a mass market.
That bet paid off.
The Wii outsold the new Microsoft and Sony consoles in January and
February and is generating its own buzz with everyone from nuns to cancer
patients to toddlers.
There are Wii parties and Wii bowling contests. Players, who often look
quite silly and occasionally injure themselves in fits of overzealous
play, upload video of their Wii antics to a variety of technology Web
sites like GameTrailers.com and Google's YouTube.
"I thought it was tremendous," said Ted Campbell, 77.
Last week he played the Wii for the first time at Springfield, Virginia's
Greenspring Retirement Community, where Ebert is also a resident.
The community hasn't yet decided where to keep the Wii, although Ebert has
volunteered her one-bedroom apartment, with its big-screen TV.
Flora Dierbach, 72, chairs the entertainment committee at a sister
facility owned by Erickson Retirement Communities in Chicago and helped
arrange a Wii bowling tournament - the latest Wii craze.
"It's a very social thing and it's good exercise ... and you don't have
to throw a 16-pound (7.25-kg) bowling ball to get results," said Dierbach,
who added the competition had people who hardly knew each other cheering
and hugging in the span of a few hours.
"We just had a ball with it. You think it's your grandkids' game and it's
not," she said, noting that Erickson paid for the Wiis in its facilities.
Greenspring resident and long-time bowler Sim Taylor said his
grandchildren are also great fans of video games.
"I never could understand it," said Taylor, who at 81 has surprised
himself by adding video games to his list of hobbies.
That isn't the case with Millicent, his wife of 55 years.
"She sticks with bridge," Taylor said.
'Tiger' Looking Fine On Nintendo's Wii
When the Nintendo Wii was released this past November, it became clear
certain games would translate better than others to the Wii's
motion-sensitive control scheme. The golf portion of "Wii Sports" - which
comes bundled with the Wii - hinted at the possibilities of a
breakthrough golf experience on the Wii, but control issues and its
overall brevity limited it to little more than a mini-game.
Enter "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07" for the Wii. As the preeminent golf
videogame from EA Sports, the "Tiger" franchise was destined to be a
system seller for the Wii. While almost all other relevant golf games are
cartoonish fantasies, "Tiger" features actual golf pros, authentic
courses and sponsored equipment - it's a game golf enthusiasts can
appreciate.
And by and large, the initial "Tiger" outing on Wii is a success. The
Wii's controls allow players to grip their Wii Remote like a club and
swing away. The days of pulling and pushing an analog stick are gone and
seem archaic by the Wii's new standard.
The controls are not perfect. Unlike golf in "Wii Sports" which features
1-to-1 controls where every articulation of the Wii Remote is translated
on-screen, "Tiger" registers movements from the controller but not in a
1-to-1 manner. Instead, bringing the controller backward begins and
completes the player's backswing, regardless if the controller is brought
back all the way. Controller speed and direction is translated by the
system, but once the on-screen character completes their backswing it's
impossible to strike the ball at less than 75 percent. The only way to
hit the ball lightly is to quickly swing the controller forward during the
onscreen player's backswing. It's a little awkward at first, but it can be
mastered within a few rounds
In addition to the basic swing mechanics, the angle with which the
controller is held and manipulated during the swing results in hooks and
slices in the game. If you have a natural slice in real life, chances are
you will in the game, too, but it can be counteracted relatively easily.
Like other "Tiger" games, ball spin can be applied while the ball is in
the air. To do this on the Wii you simply select the spin direction you
want on the d-pad and shake the controller. It's definitely not the most
realistic aspect of the game, but it allows players to correct errant
shots.
While putting was an issue with "Wii Sports" golf, it's a breeze in
"Tiger." Practice swings allow the player to gauge the power necessary for
sinking a shot and breaks in the green are clearly displayed.
As far as game modes go, "Tiger" has a lot to offer. Everything from a
full-on PGA Tour mode with a custom character, to quick 9-hole rounds and
arcade games involving shooting balls through hoops is included. The only
thing the game is missing is online play - but so is every other Wii game
to date.
Visually the game is far from pretty and appears to be a straight port
from the previously released Gamecube version of the game. But after a few
minutes of play, gamers won't notice the poor graphics at all. The
gameplay is so immersive and just plain fun that the dated visuals won't
even cross your mind.
Ultimately that's the beauty of the Wii and "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07;" the
gameplay is a blast. The controls may not be perfect and the graphics may
be unstylish, but you will not find a game as fun as "Tiger 07" on Wii.
Microsoft To Sell Xbox 360 With Larger Hard Drive
Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it will begin selling a new version of
its Xbox 360 console that transmits high-definition video and comes with
a larger hard drive in its latest effort to position the video game
machine as a digital media hub.
Microsoft's new Xbox 360 Elite, with a 120-gigabyte hard drive and High
Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port, will be available on April 29
in the United States and Canada for $479.99.
The hard drive on the new machine is six times bigger than the current
high-end Xbox 360 model, which retails for $399.
Microsoft said the Elite hard drive has space to hold a library of arcade
games and thousands of songs, as well as high-definition TV shows and
movies downloaded from the company's Xbox LIVE online service.
"Today's games and entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for
digital high-definition content," said Peter Moore, corporate vice
president for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft.
Microsoft said it will sell the Elite alongside existing Xbox 360 systems
and it will offer the detachable 120 gigabyte hard drive for $179.99.
Microsoft released the Xbox 360 a full year ahead of Sony Corp.'s new
PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s Wii, grabbing an early lead in the
new, three-way video game console war.
The Xbox 360 and PS3 are also battling on the home entertainment front
with each shooting to take control of the digital living room.
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said Microsoft is making a play for
a niche market.
"Very few consumers will care," he said, noting that most gamers can
probably get by with a 20-gigabyte hard drive while owners of pricey
high-definition televisions are still a small percentage of the overall
audience.
Sony's PS3 includes a next-generation, high-definition, Blu-ray DVD player
that is slowly gaining popularity with movie buffs. Microsoft did not put
a competing high-def DVD player in its console, but with the Elite, the
world's biggest software maker is making its own assault on the living
room.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said earlier this year it would offer an
Xbox 360 that would double as a set-top box for Internet Protocol TV, or
IPTV. Telephone carriers and cable companies provide set-top boxes to
pipe high-definition movies and television into homes.
Executives at Sony, whose $600 high-end PS3 has racked up fewer sales than
the Xbox 360 and Wii, said Microsoft's new console does not seem to
address any consumer need.
"We're scratching our heads. They're fragmenting their product offering
and fragmenting their consumer base," said Peter Dille, a Sony Computer
Entertainment America senior vice president of marketing, who said Sony
has no current plans to increase the size of its 60 gigabyte hard drive.
New Site Aims To Be The YouTube of Gaming
When video game maker Jim Greer approached Silicon Valley investors to
give him nearly $1 million for his start-up. he had an irresistible pitch:
"It's video games meets YouTube."
He named the site Kongregate.com and last June began inviting game
developers and players to test it. After Christmas he opened the site to
users of all stripes, who can submit and play games free of charge.
So far, the advertising-supported site at www.kongregate.com offers 300
games that are rated by players, who chat online as they play.
"Not all of them are gems, but the top 100 are," said Greer, 36, who
founded the company with his younger sister Emily, 32, and offers game
makers a share of the site's advertising revenue.
Reid Hoffman, founder of business networking site LinkedIn and a former
PayPal executive, said timing played a big role in his decision to become
an investor in the company.
Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash software, which is used to make those Web ads
that wiggle and shake, has made it easy for developers to quickly churn
out fun games. At the same time, advances in Web technology have spurred
all kinds of new ways to rate and share information online.
"If you get thousands of people creating content, really interesting
things emerge," said Hoffman, an occasional gamer who said that while 70
percent of amateur games tend to be stinkers, about 10 percent are great.
Greer, 36, is not new to the $30 billion global business.
He started making games on his Apple II computer when he was 12 and his
first job was at Origin Systems, where he worked on several iterations of
the company's "Ultima" games.
Greer was most recently technical director at Electronic Arts Inc.'s
Pogo.com Web site, where more than 14 million mostly middle-aged females
play word, puzzle and card games monthly.
Kongregate debuted amid rising interest in independent games. Developers
have more avenues than ever to distribute their such products - from
Shockwave.com and AddictingGames.com to new entrants like Microsoft
Corp.'s Xbox Live Arcade online game service.
Rival console makers Nintendo Co. Ltd. and Sony Corp. are also preparing
to launch their own indie game outlets.
Alabama college student Brad Borne, 21, made "The Fancy Pants Adventures,"
a "goofy and cartoony" offering that's one of the top-ranked titles on
Kongregate.
The easy-to-play and addictive game stars a stick figure in big yellow
pants.
Borne said he made his first full game "SnowBlitz" when he was 19. He has
lots of other ideas percolating, is working on a follow-up to "Fancy
Pants" and is a Flash game programmer for hire.
He said his daily share of advertising revenues from Kongregate is about
$2 a day - which he expects to go higher as traffic grows - and is a big
fan of the site's live chat.
"It puts a name and a personality behind your audience. It does the same
thing for developers," said Borne, who said players have given him good
ideas for the his "Fancy Pants" sequel, which he's testing on Kongregate.
He hopes one day the experience will take his career to a new level, but
said he has something else to finish first.
"I'm just taking it one step at a time. After college I'll see what I can
do with it," he said.
Experts: Take-Two Coup A Governance Win
The shareholder uprising that threw out nearly the entire board of
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. was a victory for investors who are
fighting for new leadership at troubled companies, corporate governance
experts said Friday.
The upheaval at the publisher of "Grand Theft Auto" and other video games
culminated Thursday with the election of a new chairman, the appointment
of new directors and the ouster of the CEO.
Experts marveled at the swiftness of the coup, saying it reflects the
growing sense of cooperation among disgruntled shareholders looking to
dispatch with embattled corporate leaders.
Grievances with a public company's board are typically fought in drawn-out
proxy battles that can be costly and frustrating even for large
shareholders.
But the Take-Two revolt took less than a month to pull off.
It started earlier this month when a group of large shareholders mounted
a public campaign to weed out directors they blamed for the company's
financial woes and ethical lapses. The final vote tally was revealed
Thursday, shortly after the game maker's annual meeting in New York.
"Institutional shareholders are much more aware now, and they're much
more organized; they're not acting as lone wolves anymore," said Eleanor
Bloxham, president of The Value Alliance and Corporate Governance
Alliance in Westerville, Ohio. "And when a company has lost its way, like
Take-Two obviously has, they're willing to come together and make
something happen."
A spate of corporate scandals has spurred investors to push for ways to
make it easier to replace board members, but such efforts don't always
work out.
Earlier this month, for example, Hewlett-Packard Co. shareholders voted
down a proposal that would have changed the company's bylaws to allow
investors to nominate directors. The proposal was pitched as a way to
ensure director accountability after the boardroom spying fiasco involving
former Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and several senior HP employees.
HP opposed the changes, as did some of the company's biggest
stockholders, and the measure failed.
The situation at Take-Two also had unique characteristics:
o The investor group that spearheaded the revolt controls nearly half of
the company's shares. At most public companies, even large investors
usually control only a small fraction of shares.
o A former Take-Two executive carries the dubious distinction of being the
first chief executive to be convicted of backdating stock options. Ryan A.
Brant, the company's former chairman and CEO, pleaded guilty in February
to first-degree falsification of business records.
Still, the takeover sends a message to directors of other companies that
their jobs are in jeopardy if they lose sight of their commitment to
shareholders, said B. Espen Eckbo, the founding director of the Center for
Corporate Governance at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
The company's underlying financial troubles have rankled investors and
were major reasons behind the push for a change at the top.
Despite having a lineup of top-selling games, Take-Two, one of the
world's biggest video game publishers, lost nearly $185 million last
fiscal year while rivals Activision Inc., THQ Inc. and top-selling
Electronic Arts Inc. all managed to post healthy profits.
"The pendulum is swinging in the U.S. toward more hiring and firing of
directors; the board is being held to a higher standard as we go forward
than ever before," Eckbo said. "Boards are literally being re-educated
about what their jobs are."
Still, Take-Two's stock price rose more than 13 percent from last year
until Thursday.
The stock lost 96 cents, or more than 4.5 percent, to close at $20.14 in
Friday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on concerns that the new
directors didn't offer enough guidance on how they intend to turn the
company around.
Michael Pachter, a research analyst at investment banking and brokerage
firm Wedbush Morgan Securities, said he was unimpressed with the
appointment of an acting CEO instead of a permanent one and the board's
lack of clarity on how to return the company to profitability.
"I thought they would have identified someone right away," he said. "And
I was a little surprised that they said they would have a strategy in 3
to 6 months. It's probably unfair to expect that the dissident
shareholder group could pull something together this fast, have a strategy
ready and move on, but certainly that was the implication."
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Many Americans See Little Point To Web
A little under one-third of U.S. households have no Internet access and do
not plan to get it, with most of the holdouts seeing little use for it in
their lives, according to a survey released Friday.
Park Associates, a Dallas-based technology market research firm, said 29
percent of U.S. households, or 31 million homes, do not have Internet
access and do not intend to subscribe to an Internet service over the next
12 months.
The second annual National Technology Scan conducted by Park found the
main reason potential customers say they do not subscribe to the Internet
is because of the low value to their daily lives they perceive rather than
concerns over cost.
Forty-four percent of these households say they are not interested in
anything on the Internet, versus just 22 percent who say they cannot
afford a computer or the cost of Internet service, the survey showed.
The answer "I'm not sure how to use the Internet" came from 17 percent of
participants who do not subscribe. The response "I do all my e-commerce
shopping and YouTube-watching at work" was cited by 14 percent of
Internet-access refuseniks. Three percent said the Internet doesn't reach
their homes.
The study found U.S. broadband adoption grew to 52 percent over 2006, up
from 42 percent in 2005. Roughly half of new subscribers converted from
slower-speed, dial-up Internet access while the other half of households
had no prior access.
"The industry continues to chip away at the core of nonsubscribers, but
has a ways to go," said John Barrett, director of research at Parks
Associates.
"Entertainment applications will be the key. If anything will pull in the
holdouts, it's going to be applications that make the Internet more akin
to pay TV," he predicted.
Microsoft Says Vista Sales Doubling Windows XP Pace
Microsoft Corp. said on Monday that it sold more than 20 million Windows
Vista licenses in the first month since the operating system's general
debut on January 30.
The world's biggest software maker said the pace of Vista adoption is at
more than twice the rate of its predecessor, Windows XP, which had sold
17 million licenses after its first two months of release.
"It's a little bit better than what we were expecting," said Bill Mannion,
a director in the Windows marketing group.
The numbers released by Microsoft follow mixed messages from the company
about the pace of adoption for Windows Vista, the company's first major
operating system upgrade in more than five years.
Prior to Vista's general release, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer
had predicted that consumers would move to Vista faster than past Windows
upgrades.
However, several weeks after the release, Ballmer tempered expectations
by saying analysts' forecasts for revenue from Windows Vista in fiscal
2008 - Microsoft's next business year starting in July - were "overly
aggressive."
Microsoft said it was surprised by how many Vista customers were choosing
to buy the premium, or more expensive, versions of Vista. The sales
figures represent licenses sold to computer manufacturers, copies of
upgrades and boxed software sold to retailers.
Also, more retailers were stocking computers loaded with the premium
versions of the operating system, which comes with the "Media Center"
digital entertainment system.
The Windows franchise is the centerpiece of Microsoft's business, because
the company makes more than 75 cents in operating profit for every dollar
of sales. The cash flow generated by Windows allows Microsoft to make
investments in new businesses like digital music players and online
services.
Windows operating systems run on more than 95 percent of the world's
computers and represent the company's biggest profit driver.
Yahoo To Offer Unlimited E-mail Storage
Yahoo Inc. plans to offer unlimited e-mail storage to its roughly quarter
of a billion users, starting in May, it said on Tuesday.
The world's biggest e-mail service is scrapping its free e-mail storage
limit of 1 gigabyte, or about a billion bytes of data, responding to
explosive growth in attachment sizes as people share ever more photos,
music and videos via e-mail.
Microsoft has a 2 gigabyte free e-mail storage limit, while Google caps
its Gmail service at 2.8 gigabytes.
"We are giving them no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails," Yahoo
co-founder David Filo said in a phone interview. "You can keep stuff
forever."
Officials said the decision to remove e-mail storage limits reflects the
plunging cost of storage as new personal computers store up to a trillion
bytes of data and owners of 80-gigabyte iPods can carry 100 hours of video
in their pockets.
By contrast, when Yahoo first introduced its e-mail service a little under
a decade ago, it capped individual storage at 4 megabytes per user. At
that time, an "ultra high-density" floppy disk for personal computers then
held 144 megabytes.
"People should think about e-mail as something where they are archiving
their lives," said Filo, who remains active in managing technical
operations at the Sunnyvale, California, company and carries the honorific
title of Chief Yahoo.
Starting in May, the changeover to unlimited storage should take a month,
said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail.
"We have been closely monitoring average usage. We are comfortable that
our users are far under 1 gig(abyte), on average," Kremer said by phone.
"What we see are an increasing number of rich media files as consumers
send more photos."
One caveat Yahoo makes is that the offer is for personal use and subject
to guidelines against abuse that apply to Yahoo Mail. No one can build a
business giving away unlimited storage to other consumers using Yahoo
Mail, executives said.
Two countries - China and Japan - are excluded. "We will continue working
with these markets on their storage plans," Kremer said in a statement.
Yahoo is a minority owner with partner Softbank in Yahoo Japan Corp. and
a part owner with Alibaba of the Yahoo business in China.
Filo said Yahoo is looking at lifting caps on storage for other services
such as its Flickr photo-sharing service. "We are looking at those on a
case-by-case basis," he said.
It's a far cry from when giving away 2 megabytes of data was considered a
big deal, said David Nakayama, Yahoo's group vice president of engineering
and developer of RocketMail, which Yahoo acquired and relaunched as Yahoo
Mail in 1997.
In a posting to Yahoo's corporate blog, he said capacity when Yahoo Mail
started was 200 gigabytes for all customers.
"I remember getting in a room to plan our RocketMail launch over a decade
ago and worrying that our original plan of a 2 megabyte quota wasn't
enough, and that we needed to be radical and DOUBLE the storage to 4
megabyte per account!" he wrote.
Almost 70 Percent Of All Email From Asia Is Spam
Almost 70 percent of all electronic mail from Asia is "spam", or
unsolicited advertisements, an anti-virus firm said Friday.
The Philippines had the worst record with spam making up 88 percent of all
emails, Symantec Corp. said in excerpts of its Internet Threat Security
Report released here.
The average percentage of emails sent from the Asia-Pacific region that
were spam was 69 percent, the report added.
Although the Philippines had the highest proportion of spam, China was the
largest source of spam by sheer volume, the report said.
Thirty-seven percent of all spam detected from Asia-Pacific originated
from China.
Symantec said in a statement that it could not provide the total number of
e-mails monitored but that the results was based on data from over two
million "decoy accounts" attracting email from 20 different countries.
It also uses a statistical sampling of networks used by Symantec's
customers, the statement said.
Virus Disguised as IE 7 Download
If you receive an e-mail offering a download of Internet Explorer 7 Beta
2, delete it. A new virus is making the rounds that comes disguised as a
test version of Microsoft Corp. current Web browser.
Security experts reported no widespread damage Friday morning, but they
said the virus is notable for a couple of reasons. The e-mail includes a
convincing graphic that looks like it could really be from Microsoft, and
the virus is delivered when recipients click on a link rather than in an
attachment, which makes it harder to stop it from reaching in-boxes.
"The idea of sending a link seems to be a trend among attackers; it's
still fairly new and it works much better than sending a file," said Mikko
Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure Corp.
The e-mails carry the subject line "Internet Explorer 7 Downloads" and
appear to come from admin@microsoft.com. They include a blue,
Microsoft-style graphic offering a download of IE 7 beta 2. Clicking the
graphic will download an executable file called IE 7.exe.
The file is actually a new virus called Virus.Win32.Grum.A, and security
experts were still analyzing it Friday to see what it does. Sophos PLC
said it can spread by e-mailing itself to contacts in a user's address
book. The virus tampers with registry files to ensure it gets installed,
and it tries to download additional files from the Internet, said Graham
Cluley, a senior technology consultant for Sophos.
Other specifics were unknown yet, but such viruses often install a
keystroke logger to steal personal information, and establish a network of
infected computers to launch a denial of service attack, Cluley said.
"We don't know anything yet about where it is coming from," Hypponen said.
"It's fairly well made and hard to analyze with normal tools."
F-Secure had received many reports of the e-mail but few submissions of
the virus itself, indicating that damage so far is limited. Cluely agreed:
"I wouldn't classify this as one of the biggest viruses of the year, but
that doesn't mean it isn't a threat" he said.
Detection of Win32.Grum by antivirus programs was "mediocre" on Thursday
evening, according to Sunbelt Software Inc., and some big vendors were
still not picking it up Friday morning, Hypponen said.
F-Secure and Sophos are blocking the virus and all major vendors are
likely to do so soon, he said. Some e-mail filtering systems were also not
blocking the virus on Friday morning.
The virus is being hosted on several servers around the world, which will
increase the time it takes to identify and clean them all. They appear to
be Web servers that have been hacked, Hypponen said. The SANS Internet
Storm Center asked administrators to check their logs to make sure they
are not hosting the file.
The virus affects only Windows users. "Microsoft is aware of this issue
and is currently investigating this matter, including customer impact," a
spokeswoman said via e-mail.
The final version of IE 7 was released last October, so Microsoft is
unlikely to be advertising a beta of the product. Users can download a real
version of the software at Microsoft's Internet Explorer home page.
Microsoft Warns of New Zero-Day Exploit
On Thursday, Microsoft warned that hackers are actively exploiting a
zero-day vulnerability in animated cursor, or .ANI, files for Windows.
Some security researchers are comparing it to last year's widespread
Windows Metafile (WMF) attacks.
Users of most supported versions of Windows and Windows Server,
including Vista, are at risk of attackers taking complete control of their
system. However, Microsoft offered a silver lining: Users running Windows
Vista and Internet Explorer 7 in protect mode should be safe because the
security feature doesn't allow files to access or modify any system files
without user permission.
"In order for this attack to be carried out, a user must either visit a
Web site that contains a Web page that is used to exploit the
vulnerability or view a specially crafted e-mail message or e-mail
attachment sent to them by an attacker," Adrian Stone from Microsoft's
Security Response Center, wrote in an official advisory.
Microsoft is reporting very limited attacks against the newly reported
vulnerability in the way Windows handles animated cursor files.
Nonetheless, some security researchers believe the new ANI exploit has
similar potential to last year's WMF attacks, which rank among the most
dangerous and widely exploited vulnerabilities since the Zobot worms of
2005.
Security researchers are scrambling to gather information on the breadth
of the risk. Ken Dunham, director of VeriSign iDefense's Rapid Response
Team, worked late into Thursday night to collect data on the latest
Windows zero-day threat.
"iDefense has confirmed active exploitation of the new ANI exploit in the
wild," Dunham reported. "Multiple domains point back to two different
hostile servers at this time." There is no known e-mail or file vector
exploits in the wild to date, he added, but e-mail possibilities are being
researched. In short, Dunham said iDefense has proven that, with few
modifications, file execution is possible through the exploit.
Meanwhile, Craig Schmugar, researcher for McAfee Avert Labs, tested the
Vista vulnerability and posted a video of the ramifications of the attack
on YouTube at youtube.com/watch?v=hf0S0Vk7j6I. "In the process of setting
up the environment, I dragged and dropped a malicious ANI file to the
desktop," he wrote in the McAfee Avert Labs blog. "This causes Vista to
enter an endless crash-restart loop."
At the time of this writing, mitigation data remains mostly unproved.
However, Dunham said unconfirmed data suggests that configuring e-mail
clients for plain text might help mitigate the primary vector of initial
attacks, though not the vulnerability itself. In addition, he said,
blocking all types of e-mail attachments might be required to trap any ANI
files that might be disguised within other file types, such as JPEG.
Another security firm, eEye Digital, released a workaround for the
zero-day vulnerability as a temporary measure for Microsoft customers.
However, the company said the workaround is not meant to replace the
forthcoming Microsoft patch.
"The temporary patch aims to mitigate the vulnerability by preventing
cursors from being loaded outside of the SystemRoot," the company said in
a statement. "This disallows Web sites from loading their own, potentially
malicious animated icons, while causing little to no business disruption
on hosts with the patch installed."
For its part, Microsoft said it has added detection to the Windows Live
OneCare safety scanner for up-to-date removal of malicious software that
attempts to exploit this vulnerability. The software giant said it will
continue to investigate the issue.
E-mail Users Want More Control Of Inboxes
Bombarded by spam, e-mail users are eager for tools like a "report fraud"
button that would help weed out unwanted messages that litter inboxes,
according to a survey by the Email Sender and Provider Coalition released
on Tuesday.
More than 80 percent of e-mailers already use tools such as "report spam"
and the "unsubscribe" button to manage their in-boxes, the survey found.
The survey, which was also conducted by marketing research firm Ispos,
polled 2,252 Internet users who access e-mail through service providers
such as AOL, MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail.
"The direct engagement of consumers has game-changing potential in the
fight against spam and other forms of e-mail abuse," said Dave Lewis, vice
president with StrongMail Systems, a member of the coalition and a company
that provides software for service providers.
Nearly 80 percent of users surveyed said they use the "report spam" button
when they don't know the sender, while 20 percent said they used it as a
quick way to remove their address from a mailing list.
E-mail users typically decide whether to click on the "report spam" or
"junk" button based on the address and the subject line without opening
the actual message, the survey found.
"That is, I think, a wake up call for marketers," said Trevor Hughes,
executive director of the coalition. "You are getting deleted before it is
even opened."
Nearly all users said they would use an unsubscribe button if it was built
directly into their e-mail program. Likewise, users believe there should
be a "report fraud" button.
Lewis said up to now, the Internet service providers have relied on
proxies for the voice of consumers' content filters, blacklists and the
like in determining e-mail that is wanted.
"The problem with this approach is that unwanted e-mail still bleeds
through and legitimate e-mail gets caught up in the filters, impacting the
trustworthiness and reliability of the e-mail medium," he said.
Charles Stiles, who helps manage the billions of e-mails that come through
AOL's system, said a tool such as the "report spam" button benefits all.
"It's a win for the consumers because they don't have to see the messages,
it's a win for the (Internet service providers) because we don't have to
store it, manage it and process it, and it's a win for the sender because
they don't have to pay for all the bandwidth and processing to send it,"
Stiles said.
AOL was one of the first Internet service providers to include a "report
spam" button. Now AOL, whose entire worldwide mail operation goes through
one system, blocks 1.5 billion to 2 billion unwanted e-mails a day, or 80
to 85 percent of all e-mail that crosses its wires.
The survey was accurate to within 2.5 percent, according to the coalition.
Spam Causing Headaches for Legit Marketers
Despite the growing number of antivirus, antispyware, and antimalware
options flooding the market, Internet users are crying out for additional
spam-fighting tools.
So says an e-mail-management survey released by the E-Mail Sender and
Provider Coalition (ESPC) in conjunction with market research firm Ipsos.
The implications could spell headaches for legitimate e-mail marketers.
More than 80 percent of the 2,200 online users surveyed said they report
spam or use unsubscribe options, but about 90 percent would still like to
see an unsubscribe tool in their e-mail applications. What's more, about
80 percent said they wanted a "report fraud" button in their e-mail
clients to earmark suspicious messages.
ESPC Executive Director Trevor Hughes said the report provides actionable
information for both the sending and receiving community.
"Today's consumer is educated about e-mail and, according to the results,
very willing to use the functions available to them to manage their e-mail
and to provide feedback about how they manage unwanted e-mail," he said in
a statement. "The industry as a whole should listen to their needs to
ensure e-mail is viewed with trust and acceptance."
The survey results have implications for both e-mail senders and
receivers, but could mean new practices for e-mail marketers, especially
with IronPort reporting that spam has increased more than 100 percent
since October 2005, and worldwide spam volumes are now estimated at 63
billion messages each day.
The ESPC report suggested that senders should ensure recipients recognize
them by the information in both the "From" and "Subject" lines of the
e-mails. ESPC also discovered that 53 percent of survey respondents would
be more likely to open and read e-mail if the sending company displayed a
certified icon in the e-mail program.
"These survey results validate the fact that e-mail senders must
constantly monitor both unsubscribe and complaint rates in order to
carefully manage their reputation with recipients and ISPs," Ben
Isaacson, privacy and compliance leader for CheetahMail, said in a
statement.
John Levine, cochair of the Internet Research Task Force's antispam
research group, and author of "Internet For Dummies," said the enormous
volumes of spam has made recipients skeptical of any message that arrives
via e-mail.
"Spam hasn't completely poisoned e-mail, but legitimate advertisers do
have to try harder to make it clear that not only is this the e-mail you
asked for but this is the e-mail you want," Levine said.
He also noted that e-mail marketers who use sweepstakes and contests as a
means to get e-mail addresses that they can share with partners might find
a blight on their reputation.
PayPal Asking E-mail Services To Block Messages
PayPal, the Internet-based money transfer system owned by eBay, is trying
to persuade e-mail providers to block messages that lack digital
signatures, which are aimed at cutting down on phishing scams, a company
attorney said Tuesday.
So far, no agreements have been reached, but the idea is one that PayPal
would like to see from other e-commerce businesses, said Joseph E.
Sullivan, PayPal's associate general counsel, at the International E-Crime
Congress in London.
An agreement with, for example, Google for its Gmail service could
potentially stop spam messages that look legitimate and bypass spam
filters.
PayPal is using several technologies to digitally sign its e-mails now,
including DomainKeys, Sullivan said. DomainKeys, a technology developed
by Yahoo Inc., enables verification of the sender and integrity of the
message that's sent.
PayPal is one of the most highly spoofed brands, with fraudsters sending
out spam to lure vulnerable users to look-a-like Web sites where their
log-in details and passwords are collected and abused for profit.
Once a hacker has gained control of a PayPal account, it's possible to
send money to other PayPal accounts or purchase goods. PayPal has
introduced rules to counter fraud, such as limits on how much money can be
transferred. PayPal also compensates users who've had their accounts
hijacked, Sullivan said.
But the phishing problem is getting worse than when he started working for
eBay five years ago, Sullivan said.
Last week, Sullivan said he got a call from his father, who said he'd fell
prey to a phishing scam. While spam filtering technologies have improved
and awareness around phishing is rising, users tend to be the weakest
point, falling for sometimes very convincing social engineering tricks.
"I think one lesson we've learned is that education isn't going to stop
this," Sullivan said. "Phishing attacks are too good now. Every company
that does business on the Internet is being targeted by phishing scams
now."
The number of phishing sites is also rising. A report released last week
by the Anti-Phishing World Group, a consortium of vendors and government
agencies, said the number of fraudulent Web sites in January reached an
all-time high of 29,930.
More Evidence Of U.S. As Malware Capital
Contrary to beliefs that overseas crime networks and unemployed computer
programmers in Eastern Europe remain the leading sources of virus code on
the Internet, new research supports the growing perception that the United
States is producing greater volumes of malware code than any other region
of the planet.
According to security hardware maker Finjan's latest Web Security Trends
Report - which analyzes data collected by the San Jose-based firm over the
first three months of 2007 - more than 80 percent of the Web sites it
found to be distributing malicious code were hosted on servers located in
the U.S.
Although Finjan officials concede that much of the malware distributed by
those sites may indeed be written and controlled by hackers operating
outside of the U.S., the results indicate that efforts by legislators and
law enforcement officials to crack down on illegal computing activity in
the nation may not yet be succeeding.
According to the Q1 Finjan report, published on March 26, the United
Kingdom ranked second in the list of countries hosting infected sites,
accounting for roughly 10 percent, followed by Canada, Germany, and Italy.
Noticeably absent from the top of the rankings are Russia and China, which
have been widely perceived in recent years as leading sources of malware
worldwide.
Finjan'sresults jibe with rival Symantec's latest Internet Security Threat
Report - released earlier this month - which also maintains that attacks
are increasingly emanating from sources in the United States. Symantec's
research, which focused on all types of threats, not just Web-based
attacks, reported that the U.S. is the source of about 31 percent of all
malware and phishing schemes.
The reason why so many threats are coming from sites hosted in the U.S.
and other relatively wealthy nations - most of which have stricter laws in
place to combat such efforts than their developing neighbors - is simple,
said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at Finjan.
No matter what region the code writers live in, he said, attackers are
flocking to markets where the most money is changing hands to carry out
their crimeware schemes, and increasingly doing so by hijacking legitimate
URLs to pass out their work.
"If you look back at many reports over the last few years, the perception
has been that the malware is coming from Russia and other areas where laws
are fewer and harder to enforce, but when we analyzed the live end-user
content, we realized that a vast majority of malware was coming from
servers in the U.S. where there are advanced laws and practices,"
Ben-Itzhak said.
The upside of the issue is that security researchers can take action when
they find malware URLs that are based in the U.S. by reporting them to
authorities and applying pressure to the companies hosting the sites to
take them offline.
For the most part, the malware delivery pages are supported by cheap
hosting companies that don't appear to closely monitor their behavior,
Ben-Itzhak said. But an even more alarming trend is the high number of
attacks being passed along to end-users via seemingly legitimate sites.
In many of those cases, the attacks are being served up as advertisements
that site operators may not even recognize as malware sources, making the
situation even harder to fight.
"It's very clear that a lot of malware is coming from advertisements, and
it's difficult to track where the code is originating because of the
layers of ad systems, aggregators and agents that work together to create
and distribute this content," Ben-Itzhak said. "There are so many third
parties pushing ads to these sites, and there is no official process among
these parties for seeking out the bad code."
A high-profile example of this type of attack was being distributed on a
banner ad posted to social networking site MySpace.com in July 2006, which
specifically attempted to use a security flaw in Microsoft Windows to
infect Web surfers with spyware.
Finjan's report indicates a trend of new efforts to spread malware using
Web pages that have been filtered by automatic translation
services, which
are typically used by people to read content written in foreign languages.
Because the translation services don't scan for threats, and are often
distributed in cooperation with known sources such as news sites or search
engines, attackers can use the systems to sneak infected links through to
end-users without tipping off security applications that look for unknown
content.
"The translation service sends a link that looks fine but the malware is
still in there," Ben-Itzhak said. "This is another reason why people need
real-time dynamic scanning for protection, because it's so hard to tell
what you might actually be looking at these days."
Third Time No Charm for XXX Domain
The Internet's agency for overseeing domain names on Friday rejected a
proposal for creating a voluntary domain ending in .xxx. The 9-5 vote to
block the plan is the third time the agency has decided against some form
of the proposal.
The Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), meeting in Lisbon, voted against a request by ICM Registry to
create the .xxx top-level domain (TLD) for adult sites.
"This decision was the result of very careful scrutiny and consideration
of all the arguments," ICANN Chairman Dr. Vint Cerf said in a statement.
"That consideration has led a majority of the Board to believe that the
proposal should be rejected."
ICM President and Chief Executive Stuart Lawley said in a statement that
his Florida-based company "was extremely disappointed" by this most recent
rejection. The proposal had initially been presented by ICM nearly seven
years ago.
"It is not supportable for any of the reasons articulated by the board,"
he said, adding that the vote "ignores the rules ICANN itself adopted for
the RFP (request for proposal), and makes a mockery of ICANN bylaws'
prohibition of unjustifiable discriminatory treatment." He reportedly said
that a lawsuit was "likely."
Larry Walters, a Florida attorney with extensive experience in First
Amendment and online adult issues, had expected ICANN to approve the new
top-level domain.
"Any other TLD with this amount of supporting material," he said in an
interview before the vote, "would have been approved a long time ago. The
contract being proposed by ICM Registry is well within the range of other
TLD contracts."
The multiyear effort to create voluntary, adult site .xxx domains has been
a controversial one. Some Board members have expressed concern over
whether ICANN, by approving such a domain, could find itself in the
content-regulation business.
ICANN board member Steve Goldstein said in Friday's meeting that, if
passed, the resolution would mean that the agency would need to "assume
ongoing management and oversight roles regarding the content." ICANN
defines itself as the agency "responsible for the global coordination of
the Internet's system of unique identifiers," not as a manager or definer
of content.
ICM's Lawley criticized this concern over content management, saying that
ICANN itself put those sections into the proposal during negotiations.
There is opposition to the idea among the adult Web site industry. Some
have said that the .xxx domain, even if voluntary, would create an online
ghetto that could more easily be controlled and isolated by governments
or others. Religious and other groups also oppose the domain as a way to
legitimize adult sites and make them easier to find.
Because the .xxx domain would be voluntary, questions have been raised as
to whether parents and teachers would actually be able to block all such
sites.
After its initial proposal was tabled and effectively rejected in 2000,
largely because of ICANN's concern about becoming a content regulator,
ICM resubmitted it in 2004 with provisions to handle any regulation issues
outside of ICANN.
ICANN's board rejected that proposal in mid-2006, expressing concern that
the language was vague and that ICANN would end up having to step in as a
regulator. The newest proposal, rejected Friday, was the result of
negotiations between ICANN and ICM to clarify enforcement.
Online Fraud Runs Rampant In The UK
One in 10 Internet users in the United Kingdom was a victim of online
fraud last year, according to an official survey of 2,400 people, who were
asked about their online surfing habits, level of security protection, and
encounters with fraud and theft.
Approximately 6 percent had been hit by fraud while shopping online, 4
percent saw "general fraud," and 3 percent were victims of crime related
to banking and credit cards.
The survey was done by YouGov for Get Safe Online, a group created by law
enforcement, private companies, and the government. One of the most
notable aspects of the project was the discovery that many users did not
take basic steps to protect themselves online, such as installing
antispyware software.
About one-fifth of those surveyed said they had replied to spam messages,
and 10 percent had clicked on a Web site link within a spam e-mail. About
25 percent said most of their online security passwords were the same, and
five percent used the same password for every site.
The survey is indicative of the type of efforts that are being put
together throughout the world to increase user awareness, said Ron
O'Brien, senior security analyst at security firm Sophos.
"There are an increasing number of campaigns and Web sites geared toward
trying to preserve the integrity of the Internet browsing experience," he
noted. "The effort is being underwritten by banks, and makers of operating
systems, like Microsoft. It's in their best interest for users to be
informed."
It is probable that more funds will be put toward surveys like the one
done in the UK, and toward user-education initiatives that target younger
users in particular, O'Brien said.
"Younger people have lifestyles that have taken on an electronic element;
they're much more inclined toward technology," he said. "Teaching these
users is a huge undertaking, but it's vitally important for making sure
that e-commerce survives."
As more organizations band together to fight the growing threats, malware
writers are becoming more savvy, O'Brien said. Realizing that users have
become wary of attachments, many fraudsters are now using links within an
e-mail or trying social engineering to draw users to malicious sites.
For example, malware writers are aware that many incoming college students
will be signing up for online bank accounts for the first time, so the
number of phishing attempts in August and September spikes, compared to
the rest of the year.
These efforts can strike any user, O'Brien noted, and it is likely that
Mac and Linux users will have to become more aware of security issues that
are related more to their surfing habits than to their systems. "Social
engineering doesn't discriminate between operating systems, or countries,"
said O'Brien. "Everyone is at risk."
Hackers Build Private IM
Hackers have built their own encrypted IM (instant-message) program to
shield themselves from law enforcement trying to spy on their
communication channels.
The application, called CarderIM, is a sophisticated tool hackers are
using to sell information such as credit-card numbers or e-mail
addresses, part of an underground economy dealing in financial data, said
Andrew Moloney, business director for financial services for RSA, part of
EMC Corp., during a presentation at the International e-crime Congress in
London on Wednesday.
CarderIM exemplifies the increased effort hackers are making to obscure
their activities while continuing to use the Internet as a means to
communicate with other criminals. "They're even investing in their own
custom tools, their own places to work," Moloney said.
CarderIM's logo is humorous: two overlapping half suns in the same
red-and-yellow tones as MasterCard International Inc.'s logo. The name,
CarderIM, is a reference to the practice of "carding," or converting
stolen credit-card details into cash or goods.
Often, the hackers who obtain credit-card numbers aren't interested in
trying to convert the data into cash. But other people are. On the
Internet, the two can meet. But the data buyers and sellers are constantly
on the lookout for the "rippers" - security experts or police who are
gathering data on them, Moloney said.
It's not known how widely CarderIM is being used, but its distribution
appears to be limited, Moloney said. Searches through Google uncover a few
passing but incomplete references to the program. It's also not easy to
find a copy of it.
"To get ahold of it [CarderIM] you need to be part of one of the trusted
groups, which we have agents within," Moloney said.
During his presentation, Moloney showed a screenshot of an advertisement
for CarderIM, which addressed the need to "secure the scene." The
application supposedly uses encrypted servers that are "offshore" and does
not record IM conversations.
Hackers may have needed a more secure IM application, since most of the
free ones, such as ICQ, transmit messages in clear text, which can be
intercepted, Moloney said.
"They know that we watch and listen," Moloney said.
Researchers Untangle The Junk Web
You search for something and click on one of the first returned links. But
it's a junk Web page, filled with nothing but low-end ads that might or
might not relate to your search.
It's more than an annoyance. It prevents users from finding what they
need, and blocks valid businesses from getting their messages across.
These sites are the virtual equivalent of billboards blocking your view
from the highway when you're trying to find a gas station.
A new technical study released late last week by researchers from
Microsoft and the University of California at Davis (UCD) indicate that
there are only a handful of operators generating these pages, and that
there might be technical methods to minimize their impact.
The complete study, by Yi-Min and Ming Ha from Microsoft Research and Yuan
Niu and Hao Chen from UCD, will be presented in May at an international
Web conference in Alberta, Canada.
According to the study, a small group of as few as three operators create
most of the false "doorway pages" on the Internet to attract spiders from
search engines, thus gaining higher rankings on search results. Search
engines are continually changing tactics to avoid such search engine
spam, but the spamming can still be effective. After clicking from a
search engine to one of these sites, the user sees a page with lots of
ad links and nothing else.
The creators of the doorway pages, according to the report, work with a
few Web hosting companies and advertising systems. The authors indicate
that their research shows most of the junk pages are served from just two
Web hosting companies, and as many as 68 percent of the ads were from
just three advertising syndicators.
The researchers found that search words such as "drugs" or "ring tone"
returned results with up to 30 percent of the links being junk pages. The
density of ad-only junk Web pages was 11 percent per 1,000 search
keywords.
However, the researchers also found that only two blocks of IP addresses
are used to attract search engines and deliver the spam ad content, which
might provide a means to address the problem.
"Ultimately, it is advertisers' money that is funding the search-spam
industry," their paper states, "which is increasingly cluttering the Web
with low-quality content and reducing web users' productivity."
They also report that some blog-hosting services are teeming with fake
doorway pages. They found that blogspot.com, owned by Microsoft
competitor Google, had more such pages than any other hosting service.
One of the hosting companies cited in the report, ISPrime in New York,
said that the junk pages were traced to a single customer, who was
violating the company's acceptable-use policy. ISPrime said that, as a
result of this report, it has discontinued its relationship with the
unnamed customer.
The paper, "Spam Double-Funnel: Connecting Web Spammers with
Advertisers," and related information, is available at
research.microsoft.com/SearchRanger/.
=~=~=~=
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