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A computer virus is alive and well on the International Space Station (ISS). Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG. The worm was first detected on Earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games. Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected. [snip] The laptops carried by astronauts reportedly do not have any anti-virus software on them to prevent infection.

In November, I wrote that many Windows users who are switching to the Mac are doing so because they're fed up with viruses, spyware and other threats aimed at the platform. Many are victims of malware that often relies on social engineering to infect a system. They're enticed into taking some action that places malevolent code on their machines. In other words, these users' bad computing habits are a major cause of their own woes. These security-clueless folks, I wrote, are now bringing those bad habits to the Macintosh platform, and according to a new story on Times Online, the...

Is anyone else using Avast Free Virus Scan getting a Trojan alert on Super Anti Syyware.exe command? I'm getting it on the boot up scan and Avast has no way of marking it a false positive. Warning shows Win32: Trogan-Gen with no anme associated except the Spyware program.

In the US, most deaths are attributable to chronic afflictions, such as heart disease and cancer. Typically the medical community has attributed these diseases to accumulated damage, such as plaque formation in arteries or mutations in genes controlling cellular replication. This view is changing. Scientists are now beginning to recognize that many of these chronic illnesses are due to microbial infections. A recent report in the American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that schizophrenia, a mental illness leading to errors in perception, is associated with the pathogen, Toxoplasma gondii. "Our findings reveal the strongest association we've seen yet between infection with...

GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Scorpions scamper in bowls, water snakes coil in tanks and cats whine in cramped cages, waiting to be slaughtered, skinned and served for dinner. Welcome to the Qingping market in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, where everything from turtles to insects are sold alongside fowl and freshly caught fish. An outbreak of the SARS virus in 2002 resulted in a local gourmet favorite -- the civet -- being banished to the black market. The racoon-like animal was blamed for spreading SARS, which infected 8,000 people globally and killed 800. But exotic wildlife and squalor have...

(Two years after amazing recovery, Fond du Lac girl is graduating today) Fond du Lac, WI - Jeanna Giese stood in the middle of the atrium at Marian College, nervously twisting a sparkly ring and frequently touching a blue bracelet that symbolized her miraculous recovery from rabies. As she cycled between anticipation of her date's arrival and fear that he might not show up, it was hard to believe that doctors once questioned whether the teen would be able to return to school - let alone recover enough to dance with friends at her senior prom or graduate on time...

Researchers reported for the first time last week that they have found the Marburg virus in a nonprimate species — bats. Now, they have turned their attention to a bat-infested lead and gold mine in western Uganda, in an attempt to determine if bats harbor the disease between periodic outbreaks in southern Africa. One miner working in the mine died of Marburg disease on July 14, and several others apparently recovered from it. “We’re trying to see where this goes,” Jonathan Towner, the lead author of the report, published Aug. 22 in the online journal PloS ONE, said in a...

Terrorists 'may have access to deadly viruses in NHS hospitals' 12.07.07 Lax hospital security could give terrorists easy access to deadly viruses Lax security in Britain's hospitals could give terrorists working in the NHS easy access to deadly viruses and dangerous chemicals, an expert has warned today. The warning comes just days after it emerged that seven of the eight people held over the failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow had links to the NHS. Hospitals are "just as vulnerable as any nightclub", a security management specialist based in a London hospital told the Health Service Journal. The...

A little-known virus is causing a big fuss in Micronesia, the Pacific island nation partly managed by the United States. The Zika virus, spread by mosquitoes, produces an itchy rash, pinkeye, joint pain and fever. Since its discovery 60 years ago in an ill monkey in the Zika forest in Uganda, it has caused rare cases and outbreaks in Africa and Southeast Asia. There is no specific treatment or vaccine. Now Zika has made its first appearance in Micronesia, on the island of Yap, where health officials say there have been at least 42 confirmed cases and 65 probable ones....

Apple has begun running a new online "Get a Mac" ad which is currently running on CNET and other online tech outlets. No word on whether this ad is also intended for TV airing and it is not currently available on Apple,com's "Get a Mac" ad section: In the ad, Windows PC tries to hide from viruses and spyware much to Mac's bewilderment. The ad closes with the text, "114,000 viruses? Not on a Mac."

CHICAGO, April 20 — A virus that has already killed tens of thousands of fish in the eastern Great Lakes is spreading, scientists said, and now threatens almost two dozen aquatic species over a wide swath of the lakes and nearby waterways. The virus, a mutated pathogen not native to North America that causes hemorrhaging and organ failure, is not harmful to humans, even if they eat contaminated fish. But it is devastating to the ecosystem and so unfamiliar, experts said, that its full biological impact might not be clear for years. It is also having a significant impact on...

Flu viruses may be developing drug resistance Updated Tue. Apr. 3 2007 5:22 PM ET Canadian Press TORONTO -- There is new and unwelcome evidence that flu viruses can evolve to develop resistance to the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza and that those less susceptible viruses can spread from person to person. Japanese researchers reported Tuesday that influenza B viruses recovered from several people who had not taken flu drugs were partially resistant to Tamiflu, Relenza or both, suggesting these less susceptible viruses were spreading at low levels in their communities. It had been hoped that viruses that developed resistance...

A deadly bacterium known as Klebsiella pneumoniae is believed to have killed some 120-200 patients in hospitals across the country."Between 400 to 500 people have been infected by the bug, and 30 to 40 percent of them have already died. However, it is important to note that most of them were in a serious condition, and some were suffering from prior medical conditions," said Prof. Yehuda Carmeli, the head of the epidemology unit at the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv.

Web address: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070228082232.htm Source: University of Delaware Date: March 2, 2007 More on: Water, Microbes and More, Virology, Viruses, Sustainability, Environmental Issues New Technology Removes Viruses From Drinking Water Science Daily — University of Delaware researchers have developed an inexpensive, nonchlorine-based technology that can remove harmful microorganisms, including viruses, from drinking water.Pei Chiu (left), an associate professor in UD's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Yan Jin, a professor of environmental soil physics in UD's plant and soil sciences department, have developed an inexpensive, nonchlorine-based technology that can remove harmful microorganisms from drinking water, including viruses. (Credit: Image...

Excerpts - ... 1. Make ISPs (and all organizations providing computer access to more than 100 people) responsible for filtering scan and attack traffic across their networks. ... 2. Make ISPs (and all organizations providing computer access to more than 100 people) responsible for knocking customer PCs off their network if they become bots. ... 3. Make end users liable if losses are incurred because of outdated security software. ... 4. Write some kind of law concerning efficient security software. ...

MADISON -- In a study of non-human primates infected with the influenza virus that killed 50 million people in 1918, an international team of scientists has found a critical clue to how the virus killed so quickly and efficiently. Writing this week (Jan. 18, 2007) in the journal Nature, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka reveals how the 1918 virus - modern history's most savage influenza strain - unleashes an immune response that destroys the lungs in a matter of days, leading to death. The finding is important because it provides insight into how the virus...

Source: Cornell University Date: January 4, 2007 Avian Flu Virus Unlikely To Spread Through Water Systems Science Daily — A close relative of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1) can be eliminated by waste and drinking water treatments, including chlorination, ultraviolet (UV) radiation and bacterial digesters. The virus is harmless to humans but provides a study case of the pathways by which the influenza could spread to human populations. To test whether the H5N2 virus could survive water treatments, such as chlorine, UV light and bacterial digesters, chicken embryos were inoculated with the treated virus. Days later researchers removed...

LOS ANGELES - MySpace devotee Kary Rogers was expecting to see a gut-busting video when a friend from the popular online hangout messaged him a link. First, though, he was directed to a page where he was supposed to re-enter his password. Rogers realized that someone was trying to steal his information, and he didn't take the bait. At best, he would be spammed with junk e-mails; worse, the Web thief might steal his real-life identity. "I immediately went back and changed my password," said Rogers, 29, a network analyst for Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss. MySpace bills itself...

Wikipedia Spreads Computer Viruses By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem----November 19...... Wikipedia, which brands itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", now appears to be the "site that anyone can get a computer virus from." Wikipedia, which has been condemned by almost every responsible news organization and university for its lack of credibility, recently had many of its pages hijacked and tricked Wikipedia users into downloading a virus. Most viruses which users of Wikipedia encounter are of the emotional abuse variety, creating oceans of libel and slander. But the most recent transmission of viruses from Wikipedia were...

Microsoft's browser gets upgraded IE 7 will be the browser that ships with Windows Vista Microsoft has made Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) available to the general public.The new version is the first upgrade to the web browsing program for more than five years. New features include tabbed browsing, the ability to search the net directly and an anti-fraud system to thwart phishing attacks. The new program is available as a free download on 19 October, but many will get it as an automatic update to Windows XP in November. Phish fighter The new version of the browser has...

Hotel-room surfaces can harbor viruses Nathan Seppa From San Francisco, at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy Rhinovirus, which is responsible for roughly half of all common colds, survives on surfaces in hotel rooms for hours and can be transferred from there to people, a study shows. J. Owen Hendley, a pediatrician at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, and his colleagues obtained mucus samples from 15 people who had active rhinovirus infections. The scientists then invited each participant to spend a night in a hotel room. Each person was instructed to remain awake in...

Threat of 'superflu' rampage as mutant viruses resist drugs By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent (Filed: 01/10/2006) The drive to fight deadly flu pandemics with special antiviral drugs risks creating an untreatable "superflu", the head of -Britain's public health watchdog has warned. Sir William Stewart, the chairman of the Health Protection Agency, warned that the widespread use of antiviral drugs to treat illnesses, including bird flu and seasonal influenza, is causing- viruses to mutate into drug-resistant- forms. He claimed that drug-resistant viruses now represented as big a threat to public health as antibiotic-resistant superbug bacteria, such as MRSA. His comments come...

In an advance that speeds up diagnosis of the most dangerous avian flu, scientists have developed a detailed influenza test that takes less than 12 hours, federal health officials said yesterday. The new technology, a microchip covered with bits of genetic material from many different flu strains, cuts the typical time needed for diagnosis of the A(H5N1) flu to less than a day from a week or more. In addition, rather than giving just a yes-or-no result, it usually reveals which flu a human or an animal has. That means that public health officials investigating, for example, a flu outbreak...

Bird flu viruses diversifying, making vaccine target harder to pick: WHO 19:23:04 EDT Aug 18, 2006 Canadian Press: HELEN BRANSWELL, The Canadian Press (CP) - The World Health Organization urged influenza vaccine makers Friday to use newer strains of virus when making vaccine to protect against H5N1 avian flu, saying the evolution of the microbe has led to increased variety in circulating strains. While the diversity creates challenges for vaccine manufacturers - and potentially additional costs for the governments paying them to make and test vaccine against H5N1 - it does not mean the worrisome virus has moved closer to...

Bot Networks What could you do if you controlled a network of thousands of computers -- or, at least, could use the spare processor cycles on those machines? You could perform massively parallel computations: model nuclear explosions or global weather patterns, factor large numbers or find Mersenne primes, or break cryptographic problems. All of these are legitimate applications. And you can visit distributed.net and download software that allows you to donate your spare computer cycles to some of these projects. (You can help search for Optimal Golomb Rulers -- even if you have no idea what they are.) You've got...

In the 30-plus years that Richard Atkinson has been studying obesity, he has always maintained that overeating doesn’t really explain it all. His epiphany came early in his career, when he was a medical fellow at U.C.L.A. engaged in a study of people who weighed more than 300 pounds and had come in for obesity surgery. “The general thought at the time was that fat people ate too much,” Atkinson, now at Virginia Commonwealth University, told me recently. “And we documented that fat people do eat too much — our subjects ate an average of 6,700 calories a day. But...

I have a two-year-old eMachine T3092 running Windows XP Home Edition. Over the past six months it has become progressively slower until it now takes 30-60 seconds to open a new screen or start an application. I use Norton Antivirus, Spy Sweeper, and BlackIce Firewall. I suspect the problem is simply too much extraneous crap in it. Is there a product that can clean-up Windows and my files to get it up to speed again? Thanks.

ITHACA, N.Y. — In May, scores of dead fish started washing up along the eastern shoreline of Lake Ontario. James O. LaPlante, 59, first noticed them at a friend’s house. By the following week, so many carcasses had come ashore, they littered the beach near his home in Cape Vincent. “There were lots,” he said. “When I say lots, I mean hundreds and thousands.” The fish had fallen victim to an unknown disease. At first, residents and fishermen were not alarmed, since the victims were round gobies, a nuisance fish that consumes the eggs of more prize-worthy catches. But in...

"Overall, the research shows that many consumers have a false sense of security while online," ESET Chief Research Officer Andrew Lee said in a statement. "With the number of zero-day threats rapidly increasing, users need to be even more cautious and proactive in their own protection." While nearly 90 percent of computer users have software on their machines to protect them from malware like viruses, Trojans, worms and spyware, almost two-thirds of those users are reluctant to upgrade the software after it's installed. That was the finding in a survey released Monday by security software maker ESET, of San Diego....

Rockets bursting in air, fireworks everywhere! Thank you for helping mark the 200,000th entry into the VirusScan malware (malevolent software) detection database. But truly, this is not a moment to celebrate. For, larger and larger numbers of malware is a plague, not a cause to celebrate. Instead, we mark this moment simply as a milestone in our continual trip to fend off the bad stuff from everyone’s machines. It is alarming that we reach this milestone so soon after September 2004 when the count reached 100,000. Eighteen years to reach 100,000. Less than two years to double. Looking ahead, our...

Excerpt - A security researcher with expertise in rootkits has created a working prototype of new technology that is capable of creating malware that remains "100 percent undetectable," even on Windows Vista x64 systems. Joanna Rutkowska, a stealth malware researcher at Singapore-based IT security firm COSEINC, says the new Blue Pill concept uses AMD's SVM/Pacifica virtualization technology to create an ultra-thin hypervisor that takes complete control of the underlying operating system. Rutkowska plans to discuss the idea and demonstrate a working prototype for Windows Vista x64 at the end at the SyScan Conference in Singapore on July 21 and at...

Excerpt - Security software makers, the 800-pound gorilla has landed. Microsoft Corp. was to announce Wednesday that it is releasing software that aims to better protect people who use its Windows operating system from Internet attacks. The move pits the world's largest software maker head-to-head with longtime business partners Symantec Corp., McAfee Inc. and others. Windows Live OneCare, which will protect up to three computers for $49.95 per year, marks the latest step in Microsoft's effort over the years to make its operating system less vulnerable to crippling Internet attacks. Windows, which runs on the vast majority of personal computers,...

By studying chimpanzee droppings in remote African jungles, scientists reported yesterday, they have found direct evidence of a missing link between a chimpanzee virus and the one that causes human AIDS. Scientists have long suspected that chimpanzees are the source of the human AIDS pandemic because at least one subspecies carries a simian immune deficiency virus closely related to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. But because the simian virus, known as S.I.V.cpz, was identified in chimpanzees in captivity, researchers could not be sure that the same simian virus existed among these apes in the wild. It does, the team...

My wife woke me up yesterday morning and told me she had to restart the computer. An ad had popped up that said, "A major virus could be on your computer, download from us and we'll fix it..." Being familiar with pop-ups, I didn't think much of it, until four hours later when I went to use my computer. There were 47 Internet Explorer windows open and something was trying to open more. My system was almost at a standstill. Even a simple click of the mouse took two minutes to process. I disabled and deleted the P2P application, but...

Despite widely available testing, about a quarter of the Americans infected with H.I.V. don't know it. Those who are unaware of their infections can spread then unknowingly. They also miss out on powerful drug therapies that have been shown to extend lives, while protecting infected people from the diseases to which H.I.V. makes them prone. Rapid AIDS tests — which have cut the waiting time for results to 20 minutes from as much as two weeks — have greatly helped the outreach effort. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will take another important step forward this summer when...

The virus one is funny

People tell me I bash Microsoft too much; that Microsoft's products really are great. OK, so I won't bash Microsoft this time around. I'll let Microsoft's own friends do it.

My son recently downloaded the google toolbar and I ran the AV program and there were viruses detected in this particular item. After the scan, AVG said, "selected object is located inside the archive and cannot be healed." How in the world do I handle something like this?

Most people who use e-mail now know enough to be on guard against "phishing" messages that pretend to be from a bank or business but are actually attempts to steal passwords and other personal information. But there is evidence that among global cybercriminals, phishing may already be passé. In some countries, like Brazil, it has been eclipsed by an even more virulent form of electronic con — the use of keylogging programs that silently copy the keystrokes of computer users and send that information to the crooks. These programs are often hidden inside other software and then infect the machine,...

142---Number of unique I.M. viruses in 20042,403---number of unique I.M. viruses in 2005The number of viruses transmitted through instant-messaging software surged in the last year. . . . Such viruses typically arrive in innocuous-looking messages, ostensibly from an I.M. buddy, [urging] the recipient to download software that turns out to be malicious.[E]-mail inboxes are increasingly well protected against viruses, forcing hackers to look at other modes of transmission. . . . Another innovation last year was the first talking I.M. virus, which chatted with its targets. . . . [O]ne of its favorite phrases was "lol that's cool."

Haven't seen a thread concerning this yet. I've got 10 e-mails unopened.

Two decades ago, Brain, the first boot sector virus which infected personal computers via the floppy disk, was detected. While Brain itself was relatively harmless, it marked the genesis of the world of computer viruses. This year marks the 20th year of the existence of viruses after Brain was detected on January 19, 1986. Boot sector viruses, now long extinct along with the floppy disk, held a relatively long reign from 1986 to 1995. Since transmission was via disk from computer to computer, infection would only reach a significant level months or even years after its release. This changed in...

Computer security experts were grappling with the threat of a newweakness in Microsoft’s Windows operating system that could put hundreds of millions of PCs at risk of infection by spyware or viruses. The news marks the latest security setback for Microsoft, the world’s biggest software company, whose Windows operating system is a favourite target for hackers. “The potential [security threat] is huge,” said Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at F-Secure, an antivirus company. “It’s probably bigger than for any other vulnerability we’ve seen. Any version of Windows is vulnerable right now.” The flaw, which allows hackers to infect computers using...

<p>Since it was discovered in 1976, the Ebola virus has killed more than 1,200 people in scattered outbreaks in Central Africa, the World Health Organization calculates. But while health workers have managed to contain the outbreaks, scientists have been frustrated that they do not know the virus's hiding place in nature.</p>

China's economy continues its incredible growth, but the IT infrastructure at all the new offices, research parks and other projects isn't keeping pace and is increasingly imperiled by hackers and other Internet predators, experts tell UPI's The Web. The IT problems -- hackers, viruses, worms, malware -- are so severe in China that entire enterprises are at risk, and doing e-business with companies with such shoddy Internet security could pose a threat to U.S. companies. By Gene Koprowski

Successful assaults by viruses and other malware on the Mac operating system are rare as it has better security and attackers are less keen Ilya van Sprundel writes: In this article about the Mac Mini (see BW, 2/14/05, "And For Steve Jobs's Next Trick...") you say, "The Mac does have inherent security advantages, and it is much less prone to the sort of mysterious glitches that often make Windows a challenge." I was wondering what "inherent security advantages" OS X has and why it is "much less prone to the sort of mysterious glitches." The only reason I can think...

Give me one reason why "judicial extraordinaire" Harriet Miers is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court. One.

It's time for politicians to protect the film industry and implement stiff anti-piracy laws. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, "pirates are costing the film industry billions of dollars each year." Thank you, J. Scott Davis

Firefox's 'retreat' ensures Microsoft excels Open source web browser Firefox has lost the momentum it has steadily gained since it was unleashed last year, according to Web analysts at Net Applications. The online portal’s unique Hit List service reveals a slump in the Mozilla browser’s market share, falling from 8.7% to 8.1 % in July. Coinciding with its demise, was the advance of Microsoft's IE that has gained some of the ground surrendered in June, climbing back from 86.6 % to 87.2% last month. The revival for the dominant browser comes on the back of average monthly losses of between...

I am running my AVG AV program and it has detected this worm. This is the first time we have had anything like this. I don't even know how this happened as I do not open attachments. Will AVG remove this or is there something I need to do? I am NOT computer literate in this area.