Banks, social networks new target for computer viruses

Cyber criminals are increasingly focusing their attacks on the hundreds of millions of users of social networks and on loopholes in bank security systems, security software vendors said on Wednesday. At the same time, spam e-mail messages rose sharply in the third quarter, Symantec Corp said.

And as Facebook reached 300 million accounts in September, social networks and social media continued to attract criminals, smaller research firm F-Secure said in its quarterly virus report. "As Twitter has grown in popularity, it has been increasingly targeted by worms, spam and account hijacking," F-Secure said.

Cyber criminals choose targets that are widely used, allowing them to go after the largest number of potential victims. "Cyber criminals continue to follow the money," said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, technology chief at a small security software vendor Finjan, who on Wednesday revealed a new method criminals use to steal money from bank accounts and hide their tracks.

Finjan said it expects a growing trend of using new software that forges on-screen bank statements, concealing the true transaction amount to dupe account holders and their banks, and then sends the stolen money to money mules accounts.

"With the combination of using sophisticated Trojans for the theft and money mules to transfer stolen money to their accounts, they minimize their chances of being detected," Ben-Itzhak said.

The amount of spam in all e-mail traffic rose to 88.1 percent in the third quarter from 81 percent a year ago, said Symantec's MessageLabs in its quarterly report. MessageLabs said botnets are now responsible for sending 87.9 percent of all spam. Hackers take advantage of the PC vulnerability by booby- trapping websites with a malicious code that loads onto computers.

Infected PCs are commandeered into a botnet, a network of hijacked computers. They are used for identity theft, spamming and other cyber crimes. "Over the past year, we have seen a number of ISP's (Internet service providers) taken offline for hosting botnet activity resulting in a case of sink or swim and an ensuing shift in botnet power," MessageLabs analyst Paul Wood said in a statement.

"However, this won't always be the case as botnet technology has also evolved since the end of 2008 and the most recent ISP closures now have less of an impact on resulting activity as downtime now only lasts a few hours rather than weeks or months as before," Wood said.

Agencies

Is Apple OS enterprise ready? Check out with Gartner

Apple Inc's soon to be on board operating system, Snow Leopard does not signal enterprise readiness, even though is noted for its native support of Microsoft Exchange 2007, stated analyst firm Gartner.

Snow Leopard, which runs exclusively on Intel-based Macs, includes full 64-bit support, Grand Central Dispatch (which allows programmers to more easily use multicore processors), OpenCL (to more fully utilise the power of graphics processors), and Exchange support for Apple mail, contacts and calendar.

From a business perspective, the most important feature is the ability for the Mac e-mail client to access Microsoft Exchange (2007 version only) in a native fashion.

The Mac client binds to Exchange Web Services (EWS) via its web services application programming interface (API), not the traditional messaging application programming interface (MAPI), which is difficult to write to and maintain.

Gartner analysts Mike Silver and Matt Cain said that they expect this ability combined with an improved version of Entourage, the e-mail client in Microsoft's Office: Mac would result in growing end-user demand for IT groups to grant support for the Mac.

According to Gartner, while native support for Exchange would allow users to run their Macs at work more easily, this does not mean that Macs can more easily replace Windows PCs in most organizations.

"Apple is not addressing business needs for service or support, and most organizations will continue to require Windows to run a majority of their applications. Furthermore, to the extent Mac users may still require Office, either natively onMac OS or running in a Windows virtual machine, native Exchange support, which does not support Outlook personal store files (PSTs), will address only part of the user need," added the analysts.

The analyst firm recommends businesses to understand the various ways Macs can support Exchange.

Mike Silver and Matt Cain noted, "Even if you don't officially support Macs, you will likely need to provide some assistance to users who are running them. Don't assume that because Apple is making Macs easier to integrate into the enterprise, the company is entering the corporate market. Also, understand that this development will not allow Macs to easily replace Windows PCs in most cases,"

For IT groups, Gartner recommends preparing to handle requests for Mac integration into corporate networks. Before granting widespread support for Macs, consider the full range of user needs and Apple's ability to offer corporate-grade support.

It advises to continue investing in web-oriented architecture and service-oriented architecture, which would help in becoming more OS-neutral and allow more choice in hardware and software.

"If you run web applications, move these forward to support the emerging set of Web standards, such as HTML5 and CSS2.1, and interoperability protocols such as OpenID and oAuth," said the analysts

Agencies

RIM now gets double attack from Microsoft, Nokia

Microsoft Corp and Nokia announced an alliance on Wednesday to bring business software to smartphones and counter the dominance
Apple of Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry.

The alliance between the world's largest software company and cellphone maker means the latest versions of Microsoft's Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and messaging, will be available on a range of Nokia cellphones, which make up 45 per cent of the global smartphone market.

The two companies, at one time fierce rivals in the mobile telecommunications business, expect to offer Nokia phones running Office sometime next year.

"This is giving some of our competitors -- let's spell it out, RIM -- a run for their money," said Nokia Executive Vice President Robert Andersson, in a telephone interview. "I don't think BlackBerry has seen the kind of competition we can provide them now."

Research in Motion's BlackBerry created the market for mobile e-mail, and its dominant position in the corporate sector, especially in North America, has protected it from Nokia's attempts to crack the market in recent years.

"RIM should be reasonably safe in the near-term because Nokia's presence in the US is relatively small," said Neil Mawston from research firm Strategy Analytics. "Partnering more closely with Microsoft will help to raise Nokia's profile in the US"

The alliance also aims to counter Google Inc's recent move into free online software, targeted at Microsoft's business customers, and the growing popularity of Apple Inc's iPhone device.

"It's clear that Nokia and Microsoft are both facing competitive challenges, most notably from Google," said John Jackson, an analyst at wireless research firm CCS Insight. "It makes sense for these two companies to work together to see if they can pool their competitive strengths to try and counter some of this pressure."

The alliance means Microsoft's new Office suite of applications could be available to a much wider audience than the users of Windows Mobile phones, which make up 9 per cent of the smartphone market.

"We see this as a great opportunity to deliver Office Mobile to 200 million Nokia smartphone customers," said Takeshi Numoto, an executive at Microsoft's Office business.

Analysts said Microsoft is clearly looking at the largest possible audience with the Nokia deal.

"The deal is a good win for Microsoft and it will surely now be hoping to upsell the Microsoft suite of operating systems
into Nokia's possible portfolios of smartphones, mobile Internet devices and netbooks over the next couple of years," said Strategy Analytics' Mawston.

The two companies stressed that the new venture will not affect the future of Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian operating systems for smartphones. Executives said Nokia has no plans to make a Windows Mobile device.

"We are extremely committed to Symbian," said Andersson. "This is very clear. This is a multi-year collaboration building on Symbian. We are as committed as before, if not more," he said.

Microsoft shares rose 2.1 per cent to $23.62 on Nasdaq while Nokia rose less than 1 per cent to 9.30 euros in Helsinki. Shares in RIM were 0.5 per cent lower in Toronto.

Agencies

Internet Users Warned of Serious Computer Security Hole

Microsoft Corp. has taken the rare step of warning about a serious computer security vulnerability it hasn't fixed yet.

The vulnerability disclosed Monday affects Internet Explorer users whose computers run the Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating software.

It can allow hackers to remotely take control of victims' machines. The victims don't need to do anything to get infected except visit a Web site that's been hacked.

Security experts say criminals have been attacking the vulnerability for nearly a week. Thousands of sites have been hacked to serve up malicious software that exploits the vulnerability. People are drawn to these sites by clicking a link in spam e-mail.

The so-called ``zero day'' vulnerability disclosed by Microsoft affects a part of its software used to play video. The problem arises from the way the software interacts with Internet Explorer, which opens a hole for hackers to tunnel into.

Microsoft urged vulnerable users to disable the problematic part of its software, which can be done from Microsoft's Web site, while the company works on a ``patch'' _ or software fix _ for the problem.

Microsoft rarely departs from its practice of issuing security updates the second Tuesday of each month. When the Redmond, Washington-based company does issue security reminders at other times, it's because the vulnerabilities are very serious.

A recent example was the emergency patch Microsoft issued in October for a vulnerability that criminals exploited to infect millions of PCs with the Conficker worm. While initially feared as an all-powerful doomsday device, that network of infected machines was eventually used for mundane moneymaking schemes like sending spam and pushing fake antivirus software.

Agencies

Air Deccan Gopinath proposes low-cost campaign in polls

To reach his electorate as well as keep costs within the stipulated budget of Rs 25 lakh for election campaigning, Air Deccan founder G. R. Gopinath is resorting to viral marketing, SMS messages, and e-mail.

Gopinath, who is standing as an Independent candidate from Bangalore South constituency, India's IT capital, has also launched a dedicated website with provision for suggestions, advice and feedbacks.

"We are using viral marketing techniques to keep our costs within the sum allotted by the Election Commission," said Gopinath. Viral marketing is a low-cost marketing technique that uses pre-existing social networks to increase brand awareness. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet, or any form of video clips, images, or even text messages.

As per Gopinath, the email blasters were done with database received from volunteers instead of buying the database. The SMSs are being sent free by service providers who are his well-wishers. Even the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are free sites.

Gopinath said he opted to contest these elections with the backing of Infosys Technologies' Nandan Nilekani and Mohandas Pai, Pradeep Kar of Microland; Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon and brand guru Harish Bijoor.

CXOtoday

Can an iPod be a poor man's iPhone?

I try to keep a stiff upper lip about not having an iPhone. Just couldn't afford it — not with the $75 a month or so AT&T charges for service on top of the $199 upfront cost for the device.

I could, however, afford the $229 iPod Touch — and got it as a gift, as it happened. It has most of the same goodies: a Web browser, e-mail, YouTube. And it stores way more music than the iPhone. (Ha!) Plus, the other day I used it to call China.

Yup, a call around the world — on a device that doesn't have a phone. A handful of applications on Apple Inc.'s iTunes store will let you do this, as long as you're in a Wi-Fi hot spot.

My iPhone complex hasn't disappeared, but at least now I have a device that looks just like it, has no monthly service fees, and lets me make free or cheap phone calls.

The best part of these applications — which require the second-generation iPod Touch that came out last year — is that they are free to download, and calls to other people using the same app won't cost you anything.

Two of the services I've tried, Truphone and Fring, will also let you make free calls to Google Talk users and type instant messages to friends online. Both automatically queue up a list of buddies from different services you might have, including Gmail chat, AIM and MSN Messenger, once you log in.

But it's Truphone's pay feature that puts it ahead of the others. TruPhone charges you to make calls to landlines or regular cell phones, but generally at better rates than most wireless carriers. And it's upfront about what you pay.

Your balance — which you can add to with a credit card, either on the device or on your computer browser — pops up with the dial screen. Calls in the U.S. are all 5 cents per minute (2 cents if you sign up to pay a $4 monthly fee).

Rates outside the U.S. vary wildly but you can check in the application before you dial. To call cell phones in China, for instance, is only 5 cents per minute, while France is 25 cents. Antarctica? A whopping $2.25.

You can make regular calls with Fring using a Skype account, but that's another layer to deal with.

The calls on these services sound pretty good, a little tinny but clearer than my regular cell phone connection. IPod Touch users will need Apple's $29 ear buds that have a tiny microphone on the back of the volume control along the cord.

The most serious drawback is the most obvious: While the iPhone uses AT&T's wireless network to provide Internet access anywhere, on the iPod Touch you'll need to stick to Wi-Fi hot spots. For rural or suburban dwellers who don't encounter lots of free Wi-Fi zones, that may very well mean limiting yourself to your house, or other places where there's a computer with the same Internet phone call capabilities anyway.

That means these apps probably won't replace your cell phone. But they can moderate your iPhone envy.

Agencies