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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.

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about the Zobot worm, eWeek is reporting that multiple exploits are circulating for the vulnerability outlined in bulletin MS05-039. Researchers at eEye Digital Security also raised the alarm after testing the published exploits. "Upon discovering two instances of exploit code online, [we] conducted thorough testing to confirm that both present a legitimate threat to Windows 2000 systems (completely patched SP 4 with all hotfixes). One exploit, released by an anonymous author, will bind a command prompt to TCP port 8721," the company warned. Get patched folks! The entire article can be viewed here

A Karaganda resident will be tried for a computer virus A trial will soon begin in Karaganda district court, the likes of which have never before been seen in our city. Twenty-three year-old Valeriy Vodnev will be tried for selling a diskette containing a computer virus. The transaction's circumstances are unique, since the harmful program was requested by a young man who, after a fight with his wife, decided to pull a prank on her - wrecking her home computer by 'infecting' it with a virus. IMPERATIVE REQUESTS In his free time, Valeriy Vodnev helped his relatives in their tiny...

Run Fast, Run Naked Alternative Approach to Internet Security Sometimes the best way to win the game is not to play it at all. What has all the net security programs, spy ware blockers, pop up blockers, firewalls and the like gotten you? In many cases, slower net browsing, a whole lot of configuration headaches and time to maintain all those programs. Running naked may be the answer for you. Running naked on the internet means running completely open with no spy ware protection programs, no pop-up blockers, no anti-virus software. Just a simple open connection. Before you go into...

Hackers, viruses, worms, spam, spyware and phishing sites have proliferated to the point where it's nearly impossible for most computer users to go online without falling victim to them. Last year, the Carnegie Mellon University CERT Coordination Center logged 3,780 new computer security vulnerabilities, compared with 1,090 in 2000 and 171 in 1995. Computer security firm Symantec Corp. over the past decade has catalogued 11,000 vulnerabilities in 20,000 technologies, affecting 2,000 vendors. "I'm very pessimistic about it all," said Haugsness, who has worked for the storm center for two years. "There are huge problems and outages all the time, and...

Two reported new outbreaks of avian flu among birds in western China have raised fears that the virus is being spread widely by migrating birds and mutating rapidly. The regional director for the World Health Organization, Dr. Shigeru Omi, told reporters in Beijing yesterday that the two recent outbreaks in remote areas in which hundreds of birds died were worrisome because they involved migratory waterfowl and domestic geese, birds that until now had been fairly resistant to the disease. More than 13,000 geese were destroyed in Tacheng, in the Xinjiang autonomous region, after about 500 died of H5N1 avian flu,...

The number of new cases of people infected with the Marburg virus in Angola has declined in the past few days, but the epidemic is still not under control, the World Health Organization is reporting. New cases are still occurring in Uíge, the same northern province where the epidemic has been centered since it was first identified on March 21. In recent weeks the disease invaded several neighborhoods that it had not reached before, said Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, a spokeswoman in Uíge for the health organization. In addition, she said, in some areas where the virus had been detected before, new...

In an attempt to pre-empt computer hackers, Microsoft is developing "virtual" PCs to scour the web for previously unseen attack code. At the software giant's Cybersecurity and Systems Management lab, based in Washington State, US, researchers are building a squad of the virtual PCs - created in software rather than hardware - to explore the darker corners of the world wide web. To any website they visit, the machines appear to be a normal home computer. But the PCs are seeking out code designed to attack a computer and will sound an alarm if any code is executed in contravention...

JOHANNESBURG, May 13 - Nine people have died in the Congo Republic since late April from what appears to be an outbreak of the Ebola virus, the second episode of a deadly hemorrhagic fever to strike the region this year, a spokesman for the World Health Organization said Friday. The latest outbreak is taking place as the Congo Republic's southern neighbor, Angola, battles an epidemic of Marburg virus, a hemorrhagic fever closely related to Ebola. So far, 280 people have died in that epidemic, which has yet to be contained eight weeks after the virus was first identified. Health officials...

A case of polio has been detected in Indonesia, World Health Organization officials said yesterday, indicating that an outbreak spreading from northern Nigeria since 2003 has crossed an ocean and reached the world's fourth most populous country. The virus, found in a village on the island of Java, is most closely related to a strain that was found in Saudi Arabia in December, the officials said. The most likely explanations of how it got there are that it either was brought back by an Indonesian working in Saudi Arabia or by a pilgrim who went to Mecca in January. Indonesia's...

INCREASED MAC OS X HACKING ACTIVITY Current Assessment: Hype Current Assessment Date: 04/06/2005 Executive Summary: The attention devoted to the non-existent Mac OS X malicious code "problem" during the past several days is not warranted. However, it is possible to configure or use a system running Mac OS X in such a way as to make it vulnerable to malicious attackers. Proper configuration and use is critical with all Internet-connected devices. Threat: Low Vulnerability Prevalence: Low Cost: Medium Details: The past several days have seen a rash of technology press stories regarding Mac OS X ("ten") malicious code (malcode) and...

Dangerous mistakes at a hospital in Angola in recent days could undo the work of medical teams who have been battling an epidemic of the deadly Marburg virus, the World Health Organization reported on Friday. Twice in the past week, doctors at the provincial hospital in the northern city of Uíge were exposed to blood from infected patients, and so are now at risk of developing the disease themselves. The virus causes a hemorrhagic fever that can be fatal within a week. The outbreak in Angola, the largest on record, has killed 255 of the 275 people known to be...

In any given year, perhaps a third of the people infected with hepatitis C and more than 15 percent of those with AIDS spend time behind bars. With infection levels far higher than in the outside world, the jails and prisons are a potential public health menace. Officials have a special duty to curb the spread of disease among the more than 11 million people who pass through the system each year. No one knows for sure how many people pick up H.I.V. while incarcerated. But a 2002 survey of prisoners' own estimates found that about 44 percent of the...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR TIMOTHY McVEIGH'S bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City seems as if it happened less than 10 years ago, but its 10th anniversary, which happened a week ago, seems as if it didn't happen at all. And for practical purposes it didn't. Lots of stories made a bigger ripple in the week's zeitgeist - some of them understandably (new pope chosen), some less so (on "American Idol," Anwar's journey ends). This attention deficit is partly explained by what took place in Lower Manhattan six years after the bombing. Osama bin Laden's atrocity dwarfed Timothy McVeigh's along...

UÍGE, Angola, April 19 - Traditional healers here say their grandmothers knew of a bleeding disease similar to the current epidemic of hemorrhagic fever that has killed 244 of the 266 people who have contracted it. The grandmothers even had a treatment for the sickness, the healers told Dr. Boris I. Pavlin of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the remedy has been lost. The old disease was called kifumbe, the word in the Kikongo language for murder. But kifumbe did not seem to be contagious. And so, Dr. Pavlin said, though he did not doubt it was...

Microsoft Gives Details on Windows Release Microsoft's Plan to Hardwire Computer Security in Chip to Debut in Next Windows Release SEATTLE (AP) -- Microsoft Corp.'s ambitious plan to keep data safe on PCs will make a scaled-down debut in the next release of Windows, though the operating system's most anticipated improvements in graphics appear to mirror what's now available from rival Apple Computer Inc. The long-delayed Windows upgrade, now expected in December 2006, has been touted as the most significant update to the ubiquitous operating since Windows 95 launched in 1995. In a speech Monday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates...