All you need to do to be infected by this virus is visit the homepage of Web hosting provider FortuneCity.com.
CNET reports that a malicious program, dubbed QHosts, infects PCs using a recent flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to take control of how computers look up Internet addresses. The program takes advantage of a critical flaw in Internet Explorer , which Microsoft has made an integral part of its Windows operating system. The Trojan horse used a banner ad that the attacker somehow placed there to install the Trojan horse on the user’s PC.
The QHosts program then changes the Internet addresses of the computers the infected PC will go to to resolve unknown Web sites and domain names. Known as the domain name service (DNS) servers, such computers are generally operated by a trusted organization, such as an Internet service provider. However, QHosts will send the requests to other servers, which Schmugar believes are likely to be owned by the originator of the Trojan horse.
This raises a few troubling questions, such as: How did the banner ad get there? And what is the purpose of the trojan? Is it just malicious or is it commercially related? We should be told.
I kinda liked this correction from online survey/ratings firm Nielsen//NetRatings:
Emusic.com, the pioneer among online music sites, has been sold, and, more importantly, is scaling back its service. It’s still the only service offering downloads in the standard MP3 format, still has the best selection of independent labels, but is now owned by Dimensional Associates LLC, a private equity group, but has limited its main subscriber base, paying $10 a month, to no more than 40 downloads a month.
Folks, this blog won’t be updated as regularly as usual as I’m on the road. But here’s something for those of you who either bought the Logitech io digital pen, or were thinking about it: a free software update that includes handwriting recognition, meaning you can search through everything you write — before you could do so only through text that you had entered into fiddly little boxes. You can also convert handwritten stuff to digital text.
AP is reporting that not all products that flaunt the latest version, USB 2.0, are as speedy as consumers might expect. It turns out that while a growing number of devices feature USB 2.0, some actually transfer data at the slower speed of its predecessors — i.e. 40 times slower than they should. Also, there’s a significant difference between “full-speed” and “hi-speed” USB 2.0.