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Sunday the 27th of December 2009

Welcome to the Helpforce Daily Briefing, on Sunday the 27th of December 2009

1. Virus Warnings
2. Daily Technology News
3. Latest Shareware and Freeware
4. FAQ for the day
5. Advice of the day
6. Internet Advice

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1. Latest Virus Alerts From Sophos
---------------------------------------
Troj/Dloadr-CYD on 27 December 2009 01:46:28 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojdloadrcyd.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/SWFLdr-L on 27 December 2009 01:46:28 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojswfldrl.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Swizzor-QI on 27 December 2009 01:46:28 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojswizzorqi.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Zbot-KU on 27 December 2009 01:46:28 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojzbotku.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Dloadr-CXW on 26 December 2009 20:15:03 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojdloadrcxw.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Buzus-BY on 26 December 2009 15:49:14 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojbuzusby.html?_log_from=rss
W32/Autorun-AXD on 26 December 2009 15:49:14 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/w32autorunaxd.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/Dloadr-CYC on 25 December 2009 19:29:20 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojdloadrcyc.html?_log_from=rss
Troj/PWSteal-H on 25 December 2009 16:08:53 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/trojpwstealh.html?_log_from=rss
Mal/AgRot-A on 25 December 2009 04:13:41 Z
http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/viruses-and-spyware/malagrota.html?_log_from=rss

2. Latest Technology News From Slashdot
-----------------------------------------------

-- What DARPA's Been Up To, At Length
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wLA_zSfInbg/What-DARPAs-Been-Up-To-At-Length)
The New York Times takes an inside look at DARPA, the secretive defense agency, mentioned frequently on Slashdot, that is "changing the way we use machines — and the way they use us" in the form of a review of Michael Belfiore's The Department of Mad Scientists. Besides tracing the history of the agency, Belfiore's book expounds on the well-known Grand Challenge and its link to ever-more-automated vehicle control in civilian and military contexts, as well as other DARPA pet projects, including robotic surgery, information analysis, and the integration of electronics with the human body.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- World's First Production Hybrid Motorcycle To Hit Market In India
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/UK84Pqr5bYI/Worlds-First-Production-Hybrid-Motorcycle-To-Hit-Market-In-India)
bluemanlines writes "The Indian company Eko Vehicles has announced the development of the world's first production hybrid motorcycle, called the ET-120. In a short time this motorcycle will run on the Indian streets, offering about 280 miles per gallon with a top speed of 40 miles per hour."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- TSA Wants You To Keep Your Seat, and Your Hands In Sight
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NkZDhrHOBug/TSA-Wants-You-To-Keep-Your-Seat-and-Your-Hands-In-Sight)
An anonymous reader excerpts from an AP story as carried by Yahoo News about changes stemming from yesterday's foiled bombing attempt of a Northwest Airlines flight: "Some airlines were telling passengers on Saturday that new government security regulations prohibit them from leaving their seats beginning an hour before landing. The regulations are a response to a suspected terrorism incident on Christmas Day. Air Canada said in a statement that new rules imposed by the Transportation Security Administration limit on-board activities by passengers and crew in US airspace. ... Flight attendants on some domestic flights are informing passengers of similar rules. Passengers on a flight from New York to Tampa Saturday morning were also told they must remain in their seats and couldn't have items in their laps, including laptops and pillows." The TSA's list of prohibited items doesn't seem to have changed in the last day, though.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- A Brief History of Modems
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/O-Q5HAwR_zY/A-Brief-History-of-Modems)
Ant points out this two-page TechRadar article about the history of modems; the photographs of some behemoth old modems might give you new respect for just how much is packed into modern wireless devices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- The Secret Lives of Amazon's Elves
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/YaSnbVS7suw/The-Secret-Lives-of-Amazons-Elves)
theodp writes "If Amazon is Santa, says Gizmodo's Joel Johnson, then the 400 folks living in RVs outside the Coffeyville, KS fulfillment center at Christmas time are the elves. Amazon didn't always lure in 'workcampers' from the RV community with the promise of free campgrounds and $10.50-$11 an hour seasonal jobs. 'Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa,' explained tech nomad Chris Dunphy. 'There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren't really serious.' Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour round-trip commute to a grueling 10-to-12 hour shift, Cherie Ve Ard added. 'They'd get there exhausted.' The work wasn't exactly what Cherie had envisioned."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Groklaw Putting Comes v. Microsoft Docs Online
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/qjvtELZxLBA/Groklaw-Putting-Comes-v-Microsoft-Docs-Online)
An anonymous reader writes "PJ of Groklaw is working on putting the documents from Comes v. Microsoft online, to make them searchable and accessible to everyone. If you don't remember their history, the plaintiffs got these documents from Microsoft during discovery after fighting the lawyers tooth and nail. After realizing how embarrassing the documents were to Microsoft, they put them online and later got a very large settlement from Microsoft by agreeing to take their website down. The web being what it is, these documents had already been mirrored and were later (legally) made available on the Pirate Bay. Now Groklaw has put them online and is looking for people to help transcribe them, so that documents like the infamous Evangelism is War presentation will not be forgotten."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Patrolling the US Border Via Webcam
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/2bNiEduVHrs/Patrolling-the-US-Border-Via-Webcam)
The BBC features a story today on a controversial effort to patrol the border between Mexico and Texas by means of 21 hidden cameras, the output of which is streamed online for viewers at home, who can then report suspected illegal border crossings; more than 130,000 people have registered to observe the streams, from as far afield as "Australia, Mexico, Colombia, Israel, New Zealand and the UK."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Real-World Synthehol In Development
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/RXGXYv1SrO0/Real-World-Synthehol-In-Development)
Ada_Rules writes "Researchers at the Imperial College London have announced development of an alcohol substitute that has many of the same properties as the Synthehol from the series Star Trek, in that one will get a buzz from it but will not end up with a hangover. In addition you will have the option of getting immediately sober if you so desire it. Let's hope this is not the typical vaporware. It is not that I really want a drink of Synthehol, but with its release I assume Romulan Ale won't be far behind."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Microbes That Keep Us Healthy Starting To Die Off
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/w6XHfCE-6l0/Microbes-That-Keep-Us-Healthy-Starting-To-Die-Off)
Dr_Ken writes with a quote from Scientific American: "The human body has some 10 trillion human cells—but 10 times that number of microbial cells. So what happens when such an important part of our bodies goes missing? With rapid changes in sanitation, medicine and lifestyle in the past century, some of these indigenous species are facing decline, displacement and possibly even extinction. In many of the world's larger ecosystems, scientists can predict what might happen when one of the central species is lost, but in the human microbial environment—which is still largely uncharacterized—most of these rapid changes are not yet understood. 'This is the next frontier and has real significance for human health, public health and medicine,' says Betsy Foxman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor. Meanwhile, each new generation in developed countries comes into the world with fewer of these native populations. 'They're actually missing some component of their microbiota that they've evolved to have,' Foxman says."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Preventing My Hosting Provider From Rooting My Server?
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/E5nO8KnVUYw/Preventing-My-Hosting-Provider-From-Rooting-My-Server)
hacker writes "I have a heavily-hit public server (web, mail, cvs/svn/git, dns, etc.) that runs a few dozen OSS project websites, as well as my own personal sites (gallery, blog, etc.). From time to time, the server has 'unexpected' outages, which I've determined to be the result of hardware, network and other issues on behalf of the provider. I run a lot of monitoring and logging on the server-side, so I see and graph every single bit and byte in and out of the server and applications, so I know it's not the OS itself. When I file 'WTF?'-style support tickets to the provider through their web-based ticketing system, I often get the response of: 'Please provide us with the root password to your server so we can analyze your logs for the cause of the outage.' Moments ago, there were three simultaneous outages while I was logged into the server working on some projects. Server-side, everything was fine. They asked me for the root password, which I flatly denied (as I always do), and then they rooted the server anyway, bringing it down and poking around through my logs. This is at least the third time they've done this without my approval or consent. Is it possible to create a minimal Linux boot that will allow me to reboot the server remotely, come back up with basic networking and ssh, and then from there, allow me to log in and mount the other application and data partitions under dm-crypt/loop-aes and friends?" Read on for a few more details of hacker's situation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Scientists Create First Functional Molecular Transistor
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/8u4hirXgQYw/Scientists-Create-First-Functional-Molecular-Transistor)
Dananajaya Ramanayake sends along this excerpt from Wired: "Nearly 62 years after researchers at Bell Labs demonstrated the first functional transistor, scientists say they have made another major breakthrough. Researchers showed the first functional transistor made from a single molecule. The transistor, which has a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts, could behave just like a silicon transistor. The molecule's different energy states can be manipulated by varying the voltage applied to it through the contacts. And by manipulating the energy states, researchers were able to control the current passing through it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Man Tries To Use Explosive Device On US Flight
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/h1s_XT3yUDw/Man-Tries-To-Use-Explosive-Device-On-US-Flight)
reporter writes with news that a Nigerian man allegedly attempted to set off a small explosive device — possibly a firecracker — on a Delta Airbus 330 airliner bound for Detroit yesterday. "There was a pop and then smoke wafted through the cabin. A passenger then climbed over several seats, lunged across the aisle and managed to subdue the suspect, the eyewitnesses said. The Nigerian man was placed in a headlock before being dragged up to the first class cabin. Passenger Zeina Seagal told CNN that after the suspect was collared and parts of his burning pants were removed, flight attendants quickly grabbed fire extinguishers and doused the fire at his seat." The man has claimed links to al-Qaeda, though the investigation hasn't confirmed that yet. (They're not taking anything for granted given that his pants were literally on fire.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- 50 Years of Domesticating Foxes For Science
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NIRJhmK-17M/50-Years-of-Domesticating-Foxes-For-Science)
gamebittk writes "In 1959, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set out to breed a tamer fox that would be easier for their handlers in the Russian fur industry to work with. Much to the scientist's shock, changes no one had expected emerged after just 10 generations. The foxes began behaving playfully, were smaller in size, and even changed color — much like dogs." Belyaev died in 1985, but the experiment continued (PDF) in his absence, and to this day provides strong evidence to parts of evolutionary theory. The experiment eventually branched out to involve other species as well.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- NetBIOS Design Allows Traffic Redirection
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/GxINcqApg20/NetBIOS-Design-Allows-Traffic-Redirection)
iago-vL writes "Security researchers at SkullSecurity have demonstrated how the NetBIOS protocol allows trivial hijacking due to its design, through the use of a tool called 'nbpoison' (in the package 'nbtool'). If a DNS lookup fails on Windows, the operating system will broadcast a NetBIOS lookup request that anybody can respond to. One vector of attack is against business workstations on an untrusted network, like a hotel; all DNS requests for internal resources can be redirected (Exchange, proxy, WPAD, etc). Other attack vectors are discussed in a related blog post. Although similar attacks exist against DHCP, ARP and many other LAN-based protocols, we all know that untrusted systems on a LAN means game over. NetBIOS poisoning is much quieter and less likely to break other things."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

-- Simplifying Search For a Younger Audience
(http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ZA5Frpvl5JU/Simplifying-Search-For-a-Younger-Audience)
An article in the NY Times discusses how kids interact with search engines, which are primarily designed for adult users who are familiar with basic internet concepts. From the article: "When considering children, search engines had long focused on filtering out explicit material from results. But now, because increasing numbers of children are using search as a starting point for homework, exploration or entertainment, more engineers are looking to children for guidance on how to improve their tools. ... Stefan Weitz, director of Bing, said that for certain types of tasks, like finding a list of American presidents, people found answers 28 percent faster with a search of images rather than of text. He said that because Bing used more imagery than other search engines, it attracted more children. ... Children also tend to want to ask questions like 'Who is the president?' rather than type in a keyword. Scott Kim, chief technology officer at Ask.com, said that because as many as a third of search queries were entered as questions (up to 43 percent on Ask Kids, a variant designed for children), it had enlarged search boxes on both sites by almost 30 percent."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

3. Latest Shareware from Planet-Shareware
-----------------------------------------------

4. FAQ of the day from Helpforce
-----------------------------------------------

-- I uninstalled Norton 2000 and now cant startup Windows
(http://www.helpforce.com)

Question: I had 2 Antivirus's on my Compac Computer and I deleted one of them which was the Norton 2000 Antivirus. I did it incorrectly and my Computer will only start with my start up disk. At first I got a message saying that I deleted Norton incorrectly and to install it again but I don't have the CD on that version to install; I must have gotten it with another program I purchased. I am not getting that message anymore because I tried so many different things to fix this problem that it went away. I want to put in the recovery disk but when I put it into the CD Drive on the screen it recognizes it, pops it out of the CD drive, and then goes into the screen that gives me 3 options: Normal Safe ModeI don't remember what the 3rd and 4th are. I want to know how to either fix my problem or be able to put my CD in to do a recovery which would put me back to Factory Settings. I am so desperate I would be willing to do that.I did buy Norton Antivirus 2003 and I got Norton Doctor 2002 but I don't really know how to use them. I bought both of these last Sunday thinking this could fix the problem. Please help?

Answer: If you are running Windows XP or ME the safest course of action would be to use 'System Rollback' to roll your system back to a point before these changes were made.Please see Windows Help for details on how to do this.Without the origional Norton CD's used, it would be impossible to restore your PC to a working state. You would need to use your origional Compaq Restore CD to restore your computer to the factory settings.If you have the origional Norton CD's, installing the program again and then uninstalling it should correct the issue.NB: It is unsafe to have two anti-virus program's running on once PC. Anti-virus programs interact with Windows at a very deep down level and can cause problems with each other if they are running at the same time. Usually, one anti-virus program will protect your PC as long as it is kept fully updated from the anti-virus producers web site. Reply Posted on 14/12/2002 It would be best to use the restore feature of Windows XP to take your computer back to the time before you deleted Norton 2002....Or the similar feature of Windows Me.It safe (and wise) to have more than one antivirus program. It is very important to have ONLY ONE running as a real-time or active monitor...The other can be installed and used for manual or schedules antivirus scans. This is reccomended because if one antivirus program (even if kept up to date) may, on occasions, miss a virus. If you have two antivirus programs, keep both up-to-date, and run full system scans with both on a regular basis, you should be able to catch and remove any virus. Personally, I have eTrust EZ Antivirus as my real-time monitor, and run daily scans of my system with it and also with Norton 2002 and Kaspersky Antivirus.I have the original Norton 2002 installation file saved. If you wish, I could e-mail it to you It is a zipped file that when opened will install Norton 2002. It is several months old, so you would need to update it to make it current (as well as enter your registration information). If you do re-install Norton, make sure you disable the "real-time" antivirus scanner that is running first....The Norton "real-time" scanner will be activated by default, and, as stated above, you do not want two real-time monitors running. After installation, you can disable the Norton 2002 real-time monitor and enable the other if you wish. Having Norton 2002 re-installed may allow you to uninstall correctly if that is what you choose to do. I hope this helps

5. Advice of the Day from ask-leo
-----------------------------------------------

6. Internet Advice
-----------------------------------------------

-- Who Are 'Hackers'? And Are All Hackers Bad?(http://netforbeginners.about.com/b/a/257964.htm)

We've all heard of "hackers", and seen sensationalized versions of them in movies. But what exactly is a modern-day computer hacker? And are they the same as "haxors"? Well, friends,...

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