Technology Vault - NewsBytes
Thursday 29 April, 2004
BT to scrap 'ADSL Trigger Registration Scheme' by turnitonagain @ 2:13 pm
Thanks to Hairy 'I really want Broadband!' Haggis for this one… ;-)
BT announced on Tuesday that they are scrapping their trigger registration scheme for ADSL roll-out. This was the process that required an exchange to reach a trigger level of interest before they would ADSL-enable it. In place of that, they plan to roll-out ADSL to another 1128 exchanges by summer 2005 - allowing 99.6% of the UK, access to an ADSL enabled exchange. This comes on the back of news last week that the reach of ADSL from local exchanges was to be increased also.
People Power
It seems that BT have been coming under increased pressure from local campaign groups to enable rural exchanges. Alison Ritchie, BT’s chief broadband officer says, "The impact that local campaigners have had has been phenomenal - their efforts have meant take-up rates on trigger exchanges have exceeded those for exchanges that were enabled before the registration scheme. These local heroes have helped change the market and this in turn has contributed to our decision to take this approach.". They do admit though, that ADSL will not be delivered to the very small exchanges (serving approximately 100,000 homes in total) but they will work to find "suitable ways" to bring broadband to these exchanges.
A detailed plan of the roll-out will be available from BT at the end of June and (wait for it HH…) this scheme will help bring forward some of the published broadband switch-on dates. Certainly more good news for those who are eagerly waiting ADSL availability.
Tuesday 27 April, 2004
Who called for the AA? by bluetracker @ 5:40 pm
Netsky.AA on the loose
After going through all 26 letters of the english alphabet, the writers of the NETSKY or SKYNET (as the author prefers to be know as) virus came up with yet another variant to carry on their quest for the black hat and all round pain in the butt award.
This new variant as many of it's predecessors uses its own inbuilt SMTP engine to spread. Again like many others it 'harvests' e-mail addresses from the computer it is resident on and mails itself to everyone in the victims address book as well as all the addresses it can find on the machine in whatever file they may reside. Currently the list of files this worm scans for in its search for potential e-mail 'victims', have extensions of.... ppt, nch, mmf, mht, xml, wsh, jsp, xls, stm, ods, msg, oft, sht, html, htm, pl, dbx, tbb, adb, dhtm, cgi, shtm, uin, rtf, vbs, doc, wab, asp, mdx, mbx, cfg, php, txt and .eml.
The harvested e-mail addressess are also used to spoof the From addresses of infected mails. Upon execution, this memory-resident worm drops a copy of itself in the Windows folder as the following file: winlogon.scr, it also creates a registry key to ensure it starts up every time Windows starts. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run SkynetsRevenge = "%Windows%\winlogon.scr"
Rated by Trend Micro as having a HIGH damage potential, although low numbers of infections have been reported to date, the numbers of infected machines is likely to grow as many people still, for some strange reason, think that computer viruses and Trojans are something that other people get and they are immune.
Undoubtedly your Anti-virus program vendors have already, or will soon be publishing updated signature files to combat this latest variant.
You are advised to check for updates of your particular 'flavour' of av solution on a daily basis to ensure you are fully protected.
Users of AVG anti-virus are reminded that Update AVG 7.0 - AVI 262.9.8 and AVG 6.0 - 670 Added detection of the new variants of I-Worm/Netsky.AA, I-Worm/Bugbear.D. This update is dated April 27, 2004
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Monday 26 April, 2004
Another day, another lawsuit by turnitonagain @ 3:35 pm
Thanks to forum member Obewan1st for the tip on this one
Software company (and owner of a patented algorithm used in .jpg compression) Forgent announced at the weekend that it was to renew a 2-year-old assault on the tech industry giants by perusing royalties for use of their algorithm.
The defendants are companies that use the JPEG compression algorithm in their products. These include big names like HP, Apple, Adobe, Creative, IBM, … in fact there are probably only one or two of the 31 companies that you will not recognise the name of. This isn’t surprising when you think how ubiquitous .jpg has become – digital cameras, PDA’s, mobiles, not to mention the oodles of .jpg images you probably have on your PC. Interestingly enough (as Obewan pointed out) Microsoft was not one of the names on the list.
What’s in a number?
Well quite a lot if the number is 4,698,672. This is the patent number of the algorithm in question, and Forgent has generated $90 million in fees from licensing its use to companies all over the world. It says that it has given the accused companies every chance to pay up, but as yet, they have not spilled the dough.
Although the patent expires in 2 years, according to Forgent, they can still claim the fees from the algorithm’s 20-year life span. You'd better get comfy - this might take a while...
Off into the wide Blueyonder... by turnitonagain @ 10:37 am
Blueyonder have announced today that they are going to increase the speed of most of their broadband packages by 50% at no extra cost for the user! Hazzah!
Their standard package, the 512Kb/s service, will be upgraded to 750Kb/s, so users can expect to see an extra 30KB/s in their max download speeds. To save you hurting your heads adding on 50%, the 1Mb service will become 1.5Mb and 2Mb will become 3Mb. The entry-level package (256Kb/s) will not be changing in speed at the moment.
According to their upgrade calendar (worth keeping an eye on for further updates) current Blueyonder users will be upgraded automatically by the end of May.
But…
After a quick delve about on their site though, it seems the Upstream speed (the speed at which you can upload things from your machine to the outside world) will not be upgraded at the moment and will remain as it is just now for each package. This is a bit disappointing for Remote Desktop users and the like, as a speed increase here too would have been the icing on the Blueyonder cake. It has to be said though, that the main use of the upstream bandwidth is probably P2P sharing so this 'restriction' might not be as daft as it sounds.
Telewest Blueyonder is currently in the midst of "ongoing financial restructuring", so this move might go some way to heal its financial woes. It will certainly up the ante with the other Broadband providers and ISPs and it will be interesting to see what they do in reply. We wait with baited breath.
Tuesday 20 April, 2004
BT to expand ADSL distance 'limit' by turnitonagain @ 1:21 pm
Broadband Britain could be one step closer as BT announces that an extra million homes could be connected to ADSL if their new trial is successful.
At the moment, if you live further than 6Km from an ADSL enabled exchange (or the line takes longer than 6Km to get to you), chances are you will not be able to get an ADSL connection due to the drop in signal strength.
After testing at BT labs at Adastral Park, they have found that this 6Km 'limit' can be extended to 10Km and beyond and still offer a 500Kbps (60KB/s approx) ADSL service. They stress however, that it may not work on all lines.
Currently 4% of people who are connected to an ADSL enabled exchange cannot get ADSL due to their distance from the exchange (regardless of the fact it is enabled). BT hopes that this trial could enable almost 100% of people who are connected to an enabled exchange to obtain ADSL.
BT have chosen Milton Keynes as a test bed for the service as it has a higher percentage of people (18%) who are connected to an ADSL enabled exchange, but are unable to receive ADSL due to their distance from the exchange.
If you are in the Milton Keynes 01908 area code, and are interested in being involved in the trial you should register on this site: www.bb4mk.org/bttrial. If you do get involved in the trial, you can keep us up-to-date on the forum about your progress. :)
Saturday 17 April, 2004
6800 reasons by bluetracker @ 12:36 pm
Thanks to forum member obewan1st for dropping me in the deep end with his newsy 'heads up'...cheers Mick.
It's here, it's stunning, it's the top of the tree as far as graphics cards are concerned
(Upto now anyway)
Firstly my apologies for waxing lyrical over something I normally shy away from in the technology world...what?
NVIDIA recently announced the release of the new G-Force 6800 series graphics doofah. You know, the one that the world +dog are praising as the best thing since bread came ready sliced?
No doubt in my mind, the beast that is the 6800 is impressive in the rendering of animations, wow...even I with my lowly and almost obsolete Matrox card noticed the high end definition of the demo's that are available on the NVIDIA site (although they were constantly interrupted by old 'troxy' buffering in an attempt to keep up). But somehow I can't seem to get excited over such things but never-the-less here goes....
For those who know what they're looking at, here comes the 'tech stuff' on the 6800....(I make no apologies for the copy&pasting of something I know absolutely nowt about)....
"The groundbreaking new NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6800 graphics processing units (GPUs) and their revolutionary technologies power worlds where reality and fantasy meet; worlds in which new standards are set for visual realism and quality, performance, and video functionality. The GeForce 6800 GPUs deliver powerful, elegant graphics to drench your senses, immersing you in unparalleled worlds of visual effects for the ultimate PC experience".
Graphics Core 256-bit
Memory Interface = 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth = 35.2 GB/sec.
Fill Rate = 6.4 billion texels/sec.
Vertices per Second = 600 Million
Memory Data Rate = 1100 MHz
Pixels per Clock (peak) = 16
Textures per Pixel* = 16
RAMDACs = 400 MHz
*Maximum in a single rendering pass
Was that good for you?...Glad to hear it, although I'll be the last in the queue when the card goes on general sale...window shopping is the most NVIDIA will get out of this poor old duffer. Unless of course there are any 'freebies' on offer?...No?...thought not.
As is their won't, NVIDIA have produced oodles of videos and related paraphernalia to lure you into investing in their newest addition to their range of wares; you all know where to find them, Geez ther's even a desktop wallpaper showing a Female 'fish type' person...mermaid is the word I was looking for...y'know...nice hair, shame about the body type peeps?...I digress...... but just in case you hail (as I do) from planet Fuddy-duddy in the CCL (Couldn't Care Less) Galaxy (first star on the right and straight on 'till morning)... and (Like me again) Animated GIF's are your level of expertise, graphics wise, but just want to view the goodies on offer and see what all the fuss is about then, THIS should satisfy your/our curiosity.
Reading around the 6800's release, there appears to be one or two 'flies' in the NVIDIA ointment regarding this new card on the block...a few downsides in fact. According to info gleaned from a VNUNET review, firstly, it's a double slot card and unsuitable for a lot of small form factor (SFF) cases. Yet another worry is its power requirements. Nvidia is recommending a 480W power supply, perhaps someone ought to suggest they include a kit form portable generator free with every purchase? 480 watts! Fire up yer computer and as the card kicks in, lights all over town dim!
Pricing and availabilty info is yet to be found 'around the web' but you can expect that this baby will create a hole large enough to rival the Grand Canyon as far as your Bank balance is concerned. But no doubt there are oodles of graphic gurus drooling over this latest from the NVIDIA stable with hammers poised over piggy banks even now.
Edit...just in case a few of you didn't get your full 'Tech fix' in the abbrieviated specs shown above....
HERE are the full specs of the 6800...Enjoy
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Friday 16 April, 2004
Three years on by bluetracker @ 10:58 pm
Waddya wanadoo? Dunno whaddya wanadoo?...Wanadoo want to do away with the Freeserve brand name!
As you'll prolly have seen on TV and around the news sites on the web....Internet service provider Freeserve is to be rebranded, taking the name of its French parent Wanadoo who have owned the well known UK ISP since March 2001 when it severed ties from the High Street electrical giants Dixons.
Wanadoo, owned by France Telecom, is putting all of its ISP businesses across Europe under a single brand and now Freeserve is to also be re-branded.
Freeserve are at pains to point out that the name change will not affect any current 'Freeserve customers' directly; their e-mail addresses will remain the same and they even go as far as updating all credit card and direct debit arrangements for them.
So why the change in name? "changing the brand to Wanadoo will enable us to use the strengths of our parent company to help us bring an even greater range of benefits to you." Freeserve's (or should that be Wanadoo's) announcement tells us, although it may be a while before customers see Wanadoo on their invoice headers.
Meanwhile Customers are told they can "expect improvements in value, service, reliability, and a greater range of products and services to choose from."
If my Firewall attack logs are anything to go by, we can expect more port scans as well ten this week all from wanadoo.fr IP addys, the reply from their abuse@ addy was in French neccessitating liberal use of the BABLEFISH online translating service on their reply which turned out that they were grateful I had passed on the info..
"Bonjour,
Nous avons pris note de votre message relatif à la transmission de virus par un de nos abonnés.
Nous vous remercions d'avoir porté ces faits à notre connaissance. Nous avons adressé un courrier d'alerte à cet utilisateur. Au-delà du rappel des risques encourus pour ce type de délit, volontaire ou involontaire, nous l'avons invité à se préserver de toute infection -pour lui et les autres Internautes- par l'installation d'un antivirus à jour.
Cordialement,
Service Abuse Wanadoo"
Mercy bucket for your respondez...mange too mon amy, canst ride tandem? ;-)
****
New variant old routine by bluetracker @ 10:35 pm
Just out and already old news
Netsky V is now officially OUT THERE although it has not caused a significant number of infections according to Panda software's daily virus advisory, which tells us it , "stands out for the means of transmission it uses. Unlike the majority of worms, Netsky.V does not hide in an attached file and wait for the user to run it, but exploits a vulnerability to download itself from another computer that it has already infected".
The Panda alert goes on to say: -
"Nestky.V follows this routine: it opens TCP ports 5556, where an FTP service is located, and 5557, with an HTTP service, which become servers from which it can download itself"
So basically it uses other people's HTTP & FTP capabilities to propagate..
"In order to spread, instead of sending an infected file via e-mail, Nestky.V sends an HTML message that exploits the ObjectData vulnerability in Internet Explorer" (which used to allow code to be run remotely and transparently without user intervention) " When the message sent by Netsky.V is viewed, the computer connects to another infected computer (through the ports mentioned above) in order to download an HTML page. This page then downloads a file carrying the worm via FTP and runs it, thereby infecting the computer".
It's a bit like surfing for a while with IE and shutting down to find a Dialler has appeared on your desktop or the next time you connect your browser has been hijacked and instead of your usual dial-up number it's connecting via a £1.50+ a minute phone number...where it came from or how it happened, you don't know, but it's there none the less and it takes a lot more getting rid of it than it did getting it in the first place!
It should be noted here that the exploit that this variant uses was 'patched' by Microsoft in October last year (2003) and only those of you out there who don't pay regular visits to Windows Update and fail to update your anti-virus solutions are at risk from this worm. But don't be lulled into a false sense of security. Already there are diallers out there that still 'auto-magically' install without your knowledge even though you are fully Windows Update compliant. As proof I quote from experience...I use Firebird as my browser...the kids however prefer 'Internet Exploder'. Only last night I went on-line to check e-mails before turning in after another long day at the office...I logged off and cleared up all my temp/history and cache files as is my routine...all was well...then the kids went online. This morning when I started windows...a dialler was sitting on mine and everyone else’s desktop where no dialler should have been...yup you guessed it...IE had let another one load in the background It had a JavaScript I.D. so my resident Malware utility Spywareblaster had already set a 'kill bit' and the dialler was as dead as a dodo. Things could have been worse as for all intents and purposes this 'rogue dialler' looked exactly like the one I usually connect through a common or garden DUN, no fancy icon just the two 'telly's 'joined at the hip'!
So you see there are still vulnerabilities yet to be patched in Internet Exploder.
So there you have it...a new variant of Netsky using outdated methods to propagate preying on the foolhardy and the 'It won't happen to me' brigade.
Not wishing to tempt fate, but it looks as though ideas a running thin in the world of the author of this worm. Perhaps variant W will exploit Win32 or DOS 1.0 machines?
Geez... I'm still getting Netsky variant B in e-mails so I suppose there are still lots of 'couldn't care less' folks around, or people running 'hooky copies' of MS's operating systems out there unable to get Windows update to work on their machines to warrant the 'Black Hat fraternity using old exploits right up to letter Z and back again.
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Friday 9 April, 2004
Japanese FTC raid offices by bluetracker @ 7:49 am
Japanese Fair Trade Commission Raid INTEL offices
Just another day at the office...not if you are an employee of the Japanese arm of INTEL Corp.
Early yesterday morning the FTC in Japan raided several of Intel's buildings. Their reason? Alleged anti-monopoly violations that raised concern that Intel was witholding processor shipments to OEM PC firms that didn't use INTEL technology in their computers'. Cries of "FOUL" had been made and the Japanese authorities acted upon the complaints without delay.
A spokesman for the FTC is quoted as saying "Intel is suspected of asking personal computer makers not to use other rivals CPU's"
Which rival is getting it's nose put out of joint by the alleged anti-monopoly violation? Accordng to the story on The Register AMD is thought to be that rival.
It's no secret that INTEL and Microsoft are 'bosom buddies' in the world of the computer both working hand in glove on technology for tomorrows computers on the 'planet Microsoft'.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have perhaps only now become an irritation that needed to be scratched as their products rivalled and in some cases bettered those of INTEL.
If that wasn't enough the consumer was getting more Gigahertz for their buck running their machines with an AMD processor compared with similar Intel chips. OEM's started buying more and more AMD chips in preferance to those of INTEL and computers started to have "AMD inside" stickers stuck on their cases. The corporate 'biscuit tin' started to get low on Custard Creams and something had to be done.
Whether or not INTEL did do something remains to be seen; the FTC has yet to complete it's investigations. Whatever their findings,this latest allegation involving the 'Corporate Buddies' does nothing to endear Intel nor Microsoft in the minds of consumers both corporate and private around the world.
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Wednesday 7 April, 2004
Government tips for safe online trading by turnitonagain @ 8:39 am
The Office of Fair Trading have created a new website for anyone who does any, or is interested in, online 'trading' and aims to help consumers trade more safely. The advice concerns any sites where the site itself is not directly selling the items available (for instance internet auction sites like EBay) but gives would-be sellers the ability to set up online 'stalls' to sell or auction their wares.
As more users become comfortable with buying online, the number of complaints regarding auction and trading sites has risen. Among the most common complaints are:
- Late or non-delivery of items to buyers or non-payment to sellers
- Goods of lesser value or substantially different from the description sent to the buyer
- Failure to disclose relevant information about a product or terms of sale
To combat this, the site includes some advise for consumers. This includes: questioning the seller, checking the item's description fully and understanding how the feedback procedures operate, e.g. checking the feedback on recent items sold by a seller. The site also strongly recommends that the consumer fully understands the terms and conditions of that particular trading site and wards against being drawn to 'off-site' trading if their initial bid was unsuccessful.
For those interested, the site is available HERE
Happy Shopping! :)
Thursday 1 April, 2004
April Fool or WebMail Uptopia? by turnitonagain @ 1:31 pm
As ever one on this forum probably knows by now, it is not that difficult to catch me out with April Fools jokes, but this one seems a bit too good to be true...
Google have claimed today that they are testing a search-based webmail service, called GMail, giving users 1Gb of free storage so that we'll "never need to delete another message" ever, ever again. Apart from the spam. Oh, but wait; it's going to have sophisticated spam filtering too, so you should never be asked if you want 12" crown jewels again either. They also claim that there will be no pop-ups, and the service will the totally free - but they will use targetted advertising banners (much like the bar they currently use on the right of their search results).
Larry Page (Google co-founder and president) claims the idea came from a complaining female user (why she was complaining to Larry in the first place about webmail, I am not sure) and she asked if the good people at Google could fix this. With their 'can do' attitude, they seem to have lept at the project, with a press release and a wee website and, well, that's it for now.
The story certainly has plenty of coverage on the web for what seems to be an unrealistic idea. For one, it could be open to quite heavy abuse (something which the site does not touch on). I am sure if it is real, the good people at Google will have considered this, although I have to wonder why is doesn't even get a passing mention on the Google labs pages.
Give them their due, they have certainly caught the media's attention...
What happens when we reach 'Z'? by bluetracker @ 12:41 pm
Netsky R 'S' heading your way
As if we all hadn't had enough of the war, between the Bagel and Netsky writers!
The Good Guys(Hah!) have released yet another variant. Much like the preceding ones, this beast likes to self-execute on peeps computers when they view their mail in the preview pane of Outlook Express et al.
Another feature is that the code reveals that this worm will perform a denial of service (DoS) attack on the following Web sites, starting from April 12 to the 16th, 2004. www.keygen.us, www.kazaa.com, www.emule-project.net, www.cracks.am and www.emule.dn the upshot is that when that day dawns all the computers infected by this worm will send thousands of 'get' requests to these sites using your computer. If your machine is infected then you'll likely see an abundance of activity on the dates mentioned and your Internet connection will slow to a crawl as this worm 'does it's stuff' and the targeted sites buckle under the demand from infected computers' browsers wanting to view them.
Also if you computer emitted 'beeping noises' on 30/03/04 then chances are you have either this or one of the variants installed on your pride and joy! The worm also adds a copy of itself to the Windows folder disguised as pandaavengine.exe the worm dropper temp09094283.dll worm component and uinmzertinmds.opm the encoded worm itself.
The Netsky or SKYNET writers (as they like to be called) continue their war of words and this is included in the coding of the R variant.... (Courtesy Trend Micro)
Yes, true, you have understand it.
Bagle is a shitty guy, he opens a backdoor,
and he makes a lot of money. Netsky not, Netsky
is Skynet, a good software, Good guys behind it.
Believe me, or not.
We will release thousands of our
Skynet versions, as long as bagle is there and the
people...
Thanks to Bruce Schneider.
And to all people in cz and russia.
Best regards - We are the only SkyNet
To whom it may concern
Dear Mr Skynet ,
"Thousands of skynet versions" huh? How many letters in your alphabet then Mr Good Guy? We "the people" are still here but you don't care about us at all otherwise you wouldn't be doing this to our computers, now would you?
If this is your idea of "good software" then give us the bad stuff anyday.
Meanwhile, whilst the authorities search for you, we "the people" find ever increasing amounts of your work heading for our inboxes, mail servers get clogged up we.."The People".. spend ages ridding your infestations from our computers etc etc etc
You should really wake up to the fact that...software will ALWAYS be flawed in one way or another. Just because you find these flaws doesn't entitle you to infest everyone's computer with your viruses and worms utilising those flaws...why not put your obvious talents to good use and apply for a JOB with one of the software vendors you target?
Perhaps then we..."the people"... whom you claim to represent and send your " Best Regards" to, can look forward to non-buggy software in the future. But no...We..."the people"...suspect you will continue on with your individual 'ego trips' until you do finally slip up and land in jail....what a waste of talented minds!
Best Regards
The People
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