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The Globus Consortium, founded by Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, and Sun Microsystems, announced today plans to design and market commercial grid-computing software applications. The consortium will promote technical standards to make grid computing a viable option for businesses. With a quarter million dollar investment from each company, the organization is sufficiently funded to begin operations. Other contributing participants include Nortel Networks, Univa Corp., and private individuals.

 

Panda Software, a respected vendor of antivirus software applications within the technical community, has named a Trojan, Downloader.GK, as the most malicious virus of 2004. Even though Downloader.GK isn’t technically a virus, an application that independently distributes itself, the program has caused the most damage to users’ computers, according to data collected by Panda Software’s ActiveScan process.

 

Symantec Corp., manufacturer of the popular Norton series of antivirus products, yesterday warned customers of a multiple critical holes in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system. The security holes make the Windows systems vulnerable to remote attack.

 

The U.S. Navy is developing a service-wide policy regarding the acceptable use of information technology. The policy will affect approximately 900,000 users, including Navy and Marine Corp service members, civilian employees, and contractors. The policy, which is scheduled to be effective during the first quarter of 2005, is designed to guide users and personnel managers in applying consistent rules of operation. The policy will affect all IT devices, including desktops, notebooks, handhelds, cell phones, and fax machines.

 

The new Santy worm uses the Google search engine to find vulnerable websites and then defaces the sites’ bulletin boards. The worm, formally named Net-Worm.Perl.Santy, attacks website bulletin boards (Internet forums or message centers) running versions of the popular phpBB bulletin board application. The worm exploits a known security vulnerability in early releases of the phpBB application, defacing the contents of the bulletin board.

 

Watch out for a special present included with your e-mail Christmas greetings. A mass-mailing worm, W32/Zafi.d@MM or Zafi.d, is making the rounds of e-mail users and is transmitted in the form of a Christmas greeting card with the subject line of either “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” The e-mail message will appear to come from one of your acquaintances.

 

Google, Inc., flush from a solid IPO, is serving five of the leading libraries by offering to pick up the tab for scanning the hallowed collections and making the resulting texts available online, in many cases, at no charge to the reader. The new project, Google Print, offers an entirely new way of conducting library research.

 

Three academic computer scientists have uncovered a serious security hole in the Google Desktop Search Toolbar that was released on October 14th. Dan Wallach, assistant professor of computer science at Rice University and two graduate students, Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson, have known of the security problem for a month; however, this is the first confirmed report of a serious problem with Google’s popular search tool.

 

Pennsylvania State University now urges all students to stop using Microsoft Internet Explorer and use an alternative web browser, such as Firefox, Opera, or Safari. This week the university, famous for its Nittany Lion mascot and graduates who seem to never forget their alma mater, took serious notice of the security issues caused by Microsoft’s flagship web browser and took the public step of recommending students use an alternative. The university’s decision is based on reports in the media and a long series of warnings by Carnegie Mellon University’s Computer Emergency and Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC).

 

Lycos Europe has, temporarily, perhaps, discontinued its controversial Make Love Not Spam screensaver; however, crackers have picked up on the antispam application’s popularity and are riding its coattails right onto your computer. Should you invite the crackers in, you’ll be installing a keylogging application that will track everything that you type at your keyboard.

 

Microsoft Corp.’s MSN service debuted a free blogging service, this past week. Users can create a new weblog (blog) and be posting to their online journal in less than five minutes. This is proof positive that blogging is a mainstream activity.

 

Following a major digital brouhaha, Lycos Europe has turned off it’s antispam screensaver, named Make Love Not Spam. The service’s website urges users to stay tuned; however, it’s unclear whether the service will be restarted, after savvy users realized what the service really did.

 

A flaw in the Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) in Windows NT Server 4.0, Server 2000, and Server 2003 creates a security hole that would allow a cracker to gain full control over the network server, thereby putting corporate data at risk.

 

Make Love Not Spam, regardless of it’s poorly-punctuated name, is an antispam effort lead by Lycos Europe. Users who download the screensaver allow their unused processor time to go toward flooding the websites advertised in spam e-mail. Sounds good, but there are two catches, and they are both significant. First, what is flooding.

 

Today may mark a watershed for web designers and users. America Online, Inc. released a preview version of its Netscape web browser. The new version is based on the open-source Firefox browser; however, it has a twist: it is designed to better display and interact with websites that are designed to specifically work with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser.

 

Secure Sockets Layer, the fundamental security service for the world’s websites and many networks is at risk in the face of a new spyware application, Marketscore, an application that promises to speed up web browsing. The software is bundled with iMesh P2P (peer-to-peer) software and is popular with university students.

 

Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) are vulnerable to infection by the Bofra worm, downloaded through website banner ads.

 

Sales of network servers running the open-source Linux operating system are topped $1 billion last fiscal quarter, according to International Data Corporation (IDC), a market research and analysis firm.

 

Adobe Systems, Inc. will released updated versions of its popular document delivery applications today. Adobe Acrobat converts electronic documents to Portable Document Format (PDF), a digital format that enables cross-platform transfer of files, including across operating systems.

 

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is developing its own, private, computer network and web, a la the Internet and World Wide Web. The new computer network web, called the Global Information Grid (GIG) will provide military commanders a “God’s-eye view” of the battle. The GIG will enable real-time digital communication and data dissemination through a familiar technology, similar to the World Wide Web, anytime and anyplace, under any conditions, with requisite security.