Notorious Facebook 'spam king' Sanford Wallace

An American guy charged with sending more than 27 million spam messages to Facebook users has turned himself in. Sanford Wallace, who is known as the Spam King, surrendered to FBI agents in California.

Sanford Wallace, 43, was indicted in July by a San Jose, Calif., grand jury on three counts of intentional damage to a protected computer and two counts of criminal contempt, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of California. Wallace allegedly compromised approximately 500,000 Facebook accounts during three separate attacks on the social-networking giant between November 2008 and March 2009.

Wallace gained fame as one of spam's most vocal defenders back in the 1990s and he has faced numerous civil actions over his activities, including lawsuits from MySpace and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

However this is the first time he's facing criminal charges.

Wallace appeared in federal court on Thursday (04-Aug-2011) afternoon and was released on a $100,000 unsecured bond. He was again ordered not to access sites like Facebook and MySpace. He is scheduled to appear in court on August 22.

If convicted of all charges, Wallace could face nearly 40 years in prison and fines of more than $2 million.

Massive cyberspying across the globe detected

In the biggest ever series of cyber attacks uncovered to date, hackers were found to have broken into networks of the Indian government, United Nations and US defence companies, with security experts pointing to China as the culprit.

The security company has said it believes there was one "state actor" behind the attacks but declined to name it, though one security expert who was briefed on the hacking told Reuters that the evidence points to China.

Beijing has always denied any state involvement in cyber-attacks, calling such accusations "groundless,"

The company, McAfee, said it had alerted the 72 targets it identified and also informed law enforcement agencies, which it said were investigating. The 14-page report calls the attacks highly sophisticated and says they appear to have been operated by a government body, which it declined to name.

McAfee said that it had come across the extent of hacking in May and had dubbed the uncovering of the plot as ‘Operation Shady RAT’.

In his 14-page report on McAfee's findings, Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president of threat research, asserts that Operation Shady RAT may have cost its victims billions in terms of lost revenues and stolen secrets.

"What we have witnessed over the past five to six years has been nothing short of a historically unprecedented transfer of wealth," he said.

IE users are dumb, recent study says

If you are yet to ditch Internet Explorer 6, a web browser released in 2001, now is the time to do it. Unless you want to be called dumb.

Here comes the flame war. According to a new report, dumb people are more likely to use Internet Explorer than smart people.

A survey used tests offered through Web searches or in online ads to measure the IQ of browser users.

• Internet Explorer users scored lower on online IQ tests than users of other browsers
• Report says people on the old IE 6 browser scored lowest; Opera users the highest
• The survey, by a consulting company, wasn't conducted scientifically

It’s also interesting to note that average IQ scores of IE6 users were significantly higher in 2006, and that the IQ scores get better with newer versions of IE.

A company called AptiQuant, a self-proclaimed “world leader in the field of online psychometric testing,” tested the IQs of users and grouped the results according to which browser respondents used.

The survey findings were reported by Jared Newman on PC World with the headline "Internet Explorer Users Are Kinda Stupid" and as his story spread AptiQuant started to receive hate mail from IE users.

Fake Anti-Virus Imitates Microsoft Update

Sophos, the IT security and data protection firm, has released a new warning regarding a fake anti-virus attack. The specialty of this is that it masquerades as Microsoft's security update and tricks the user into installing malicious software.

According to Sophos, criminals are looking for increasingly convincible ways to persuade consumers to download fake antivirus and copying Microsoft's own security seems to be their latest trap.

"We are seeing the criminals behind fake antivirus continuing to customise their social engineering attacks to be more believable to users and presumably more successful," said Chester Wisniewski on the Sophos blog.

"This week they've started to imitate Microsoft Update." According to Sophos, the drive-by page is an exact replica of the real Microsoft Update page, but only appears on Firefox.

"It only comes up when surfing from Firefox on Windows," said Wisniewski. "The real Microsoft Update requires Internet Explorer."

The use of high quality graphics and professional interfaces means more users are likely to fall for the scam, says Sophos.

"Users need to be more vigilant than ever before, as bogus security alerts pop-up in their browsers," says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

Just like visiting one's bank one should only trust security alerts in the browser if one initiated a check with Microsoft, Adobe, Sophos or any other vendor for updates to their software.

Fake anti-virus attacks are big business for cybercriminals and they are investing time and effort into making them as convincing as possible, Graham Cluley says.

World IPv6 Day - Google and Facebook warn internet users

Google and Facebook have warned internet users to expect 'teething pains' on Wednesday (08-June-2011) as leading internet companies test drive a new global numbering system for cyberspace.

Wednesday 8 June 2011 is World IPv6 Day, which means around 200 organisations, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo, will offer content over IPv6 for a 24-hour trial.

Many in the industry are seeing the trial, which is supported by the Internet Society, as a "wake-up call" for organisations to prepare for IPv6 to ensure a smooth transition as IPv4 addresses run out.

"The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organisations across the industry – internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out," explained the Internet Society about the day.

The old system could handle several billion addresses. IPv6 has room 340 undecillion of them. That's 34 followed by 37 zeros -- enough for every human on Earth to have trillions of personal gadgets.

But the two systems aren't easy to integrate; they're essentially parallel, independent networks. Internet service providers, operating system manufacturers, browser developers and website operators have been working for several years on the extensive technical changes needed for the switch. Today's experiment is the first global road test of their work.

The transition from IPV4 to IPV6 will free up more than 4 billion new web addresses.

Microsoft previews Windows 8

Microsoft offers a preview of the new functions they are bringing to the latest version of the Windows operating system. Microsoft has offered its most extensive preview so far of the forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.

Having learned its lesson the hard way with Windows Vista, Microsoft offered assurances Thursday (02-June-2011) that its upcoming Windows 8 operating system won't require users to buy a new PC.

As it works to bring its touch-enabled Windows 8 operating system to market, Microsoft is trying to extend its influence over PC makers to ensure they build systems that are best able to run its new software.

Demonstrations of Windows 8 running on tablets, phones and desktop computers were given at separate conferences in the US and Taiwan.

As expected, the software can be used via either traditional keyboard and mouse or by gestures on a gadget's touchscreen.

No date has been given for the release of Windows 8 but it is expected to be available before October 2012.

New life-sized robot that can read

Computer scientists have created a life-sized robot that can read notice boards and signs. Working with a PR2 robot from WillowGarage, computer scientists at the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Lab pulled off this remarkable feat.

PR2, our favorite beer-fetching, laundry-folding robot helper, has learned how to read text.

The researchers successfully added the capacity for reading comprehension to an existing robot, one which had been originally built to perform myriad other tasks, reports CBS News.

The Robot PR2, which has been given the nickname Graspy, has the ability to read for itself.

Graspy can also helpfully point out the location of restrooms and professors' offices.

The Penn team said the amount of text that can be read at any one time is limited, though with time they hope it extends to longer texts.

Microsot Office 365 now in Public Beta

Microsoft has opened the tap on its cloud-based Office 365 and is now offering the service as a public beta for anyone to try out.

Available in 38 countries and in 17 languages, the new beta follows several months of limited testing among a couple thousand businesses that were able to kick the tires on the service. After the public beta, Office 365 will officially launch later this year.

Experts say MS Office 365 is far more than simply a Web version of Office 2010. Office 365 is a service comprised of cloud-based versions of Microsoft's four front-running business products.

A private beta of Office 365 has been initially launched by the company in October 2010 which was seen as an advancement of its web-based version of main business products like SharePoint, Office Lync Server.

The public beta comes in two packages: The first one offers a month-to-month deal for small business and provides access to these apps and Microsoft's community support site but does not include desktop Office clients or live support. The prices start at $6 per user per month for this package. The second plan is begins at a price of $24 per seat for enterprises with 24x7 admin support that offers advanced configuration with an annual contract. It provides subscription versions of Office 2010 for Windows and Active Directory Sync apart from the above.

In addition to targeting the business world, Microsoft is reaching out to the educational market with five different plans geared toward faculty, staff, and students.

Parties interested in the Office 365 beta can apply to join the beta test on Microsoft's site.

Windows 8 - Possible Features

Microsoft may still be plugging away at selling Windows 7 to consumers and the enterprise, but rumors have already started about the next version of the popular operating system—dubbed "Windows 8" by many in the media.

Perhaps people are overloaded on Apple rumors because the rumor mill has shifted to Microsoft and its next operating system, now referred to in the blogosphere as Windows 8.

Microsoft seems to be giving a design overhaul to its next major operating system Windows 8. Images from a pre-beta version of Windows 8 reveal that Microsoft is apparently expanding its use of the ribbon interface to replace traditional pull-down menus and toolbars.

The Internet Explorer is expected to work in full screen and shows browser history in the form of tiles. The Windows 8 UI is termed as Immersive and seems difficult to unlock for performing any checks or changes. This new Immersive UI is aimed at tablets and mobile phones.

Microsoft, however has stays tight-lipped about a possible release date for the next version of Windows.

Disposing Hard Disk Drive at home

A hard disk drive(often shortened as hard disk, hard drive, or HDD) is a non-volatile storage device that stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Nearly every desktop computer and server in use today contains one or more hard-disk drives.

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Is it safe to dispose of your HD at home?

While it is safe to dispose of your HD at home, it is only safe if you take certain steps to ensure that nobody can hack the data off of it and use it to harm you. By taking some time and making sure you go about it right, you will save yourself the headache of having your identity stolen by someone who picked up your HD out of the trash while dumpster diving.

Keeping your data safe is the first step to preventing identify theft. With so much of the world revolving around the use of computers and technology, doing everything in your power is the only way to go about disposing of a hard drive that contains sensitive information. If you fail to take disposal seriously, chances are you could set yourself up for some serious problems down the line if your hard drive fell into the wrong hands.