All ATI' X1000 GPUs to add CrossFire

All of ATI's Radeon X1000-class graphics chips will support the company's multi-GPU technology, CrossFire, the company has revealed.

The move, announced yesterday by Edward Chou, ATI Asia-Pacific's marketing director, will presumably end the separation of the X1000 GPU lines into standard and "CrossFire Edition" cards.

Chou's comment comes on the heels of the release of X1600-based graphics cards, such as Club 3D's Radeon X1600 XT board, that support CrossFire but are not marked out as 'CrossFire Edition' products.

Chou said CrossFire cards will continue to be hosted by ATI's Radeon Xpress 200 chipsets and Intel's 975X chipset. The company, he said, has no plans to allow other chipset vendors to mark their products as CrossFire-compatible. VIA's K8T900 chipset is said to be capable of hosting CrossFire cards as well as the company's own RapidFire solution.

DigiTimes today claimed most of ATI's CrossFire-compatible GPUs have been sold to PC OEMs, according to Taiwanese motherboard-maker sources. Supplies for the channel are expected to ramp up through Q1 2006, it said.

Instant Message Worms Gets Mean

For the longest time, worms circulating over instant messaging networks like AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo!, MSN and ICQ were considered more childish than harmful, threats that for the most part simply spread themselves to everyone in a victim's buddy list.

As evidenced by a recent spate of particularly nasty IM worms, however, those days are fading fast. The latest IM worm to make the news -- dubbed IM.GiftCom.All by security firm IMLogic -- arrives in an instant message from someone who has you on their buddy list, urging you to click on a link to view a Santa Claus file. While the link appears to display an image of jolly ol' St. Nick, it quietly installs a rootkit on the victim's PC as the image is being displayed. The worm also tries to disable anti-virus and firewall software and drops a keylogger on infected machines.

The definition of a rookit varies depending on whom you ask. But generally speaking, rootkits are designed to help malware remain hidden on your machine, and decently-designed rootkits can successfully hide from anti-virus software. In most cases, when a rootkit takes hold of a system, security experts consider it "game over" -- that is, only a system reinstall can guarantee that attackers do not still have a foothold on the affected system.

I'm afraid that destructive and invasive IM worms such as this IM.GiftCom.All will become just as common as e-mail borne threats in the coming year. A great many companies now filter executable files and other viruses that arrive via e-mail, but relatively few do the same for IM traffic. According to IMLogic's latest quarterly report, some 300 million IM users send more than one billion messages per day, and the company projects that IM traffic will surpass e-mail traffic by the end of 2006. The company found that IM threats increased roughly 1500 percent in the 12-month period from Oct. 2004 to Oct. 2005.

Disturbingly, IMLogic said traditional anti-virus updates to detect IM threats were available for just six percent of reported threats at the time the worms were first spotted online. That means that unless users are super-vigilant about not clicking on links that arrive in IM (at least until they verify that the link was indeed sent by their buddy) most people who fall for these social engineering malware scams will not know their PC is infected. That is, of course, until an appropriately cautious someone on that victim's buddy asks the question, "Hey, did you mean to send this? What gives?"

JAPAN'S OWN SEARCH ENGINE

Japan is limbering up to challenge the might of Google and Yahoo by developing its own search engine.

The country's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has organized a study group consisting of about 20 Japanese electronics companies--including Hitachi and Panasonic--and universities, which will consider the merits of creating a search tool specifically for the country's Web users.

"The group will look into issues including whether Japan will start its own search engine," said Fumihiro Kajikawa, a ministry official in charge of information policies. According to reports, the Japanese government is considering spending up to about $885 million on the plan, as part of its drive to become a more dominant online player.

Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, has previously said that the country needs to extend its influence in the IT arena.

According to The Times, just over $100 million has already been earmarked for the plan, which could start in early 2007.

MOBILE USERS TO BE ALERT IN 2006 FOR MOBILE VIRUSES

Next year will be a grim one for smartphone and PDA users.

Rising threat levels for mobile users should come as no surprise, but McAfee’s Avert Labs division has marked 2006 down as a potential turning point in the spread of malware to these platforms.

Keylogging Trojans, adware, bots and backdoor programs will all hit users with greater frequency in 2006, with smartphone and “converged” users witnessing damage much greater than that seen on PCs because few currently bother to protect themselves.

“Consumers are less likely to install mobile security versus PC security because the perceived risk from mobile threats is much less,” a company release said.

According to McAfee, mobile malware has grown ten times more rapidly than PC threats over any period of one year, and that in general “potentially unwanted programs” (PUPs) have grown by 40 percent in 2005 alone.

The problem appears to be the increasing usefulness of Smartphones and PDAs. Having spent years as technological curiosities, they are now being sold to perform a variety of useful but risky operations such as mobile banking.

The most plausible threat to mobile users remained that of fast-infecting viruses, however.

Sceptics will contend that McAfee is indulging in a spot of end-of-year scaremongering as a marketing aid for its own mobile anti-virus systems. The company’s Virusscan Mobile, for instance, is a $29.95 download for anyone who wants to protect a device running Microsoft Smartphone or Pocket PC.

There is little doubt that mobile threats will be on the rise in the next year, but it is hard to compare these levels with that faced by PC users. However attractive a target, the average mobile cannot be attacked for much profit, and there are also several platforms to contend with.

A more likely scenario is that there will be a series of nuisance attacks, building on the crude information hacking that has afflicted mobiles in the least year. In principle, the best defence against this is not to wait for users to buy a software defence, but to build it in as a standard feature from the outset.

Worm catches worm, good?

Computer viruses can do some good, at least some of the time, it appears. A German who allegedly produced computer-based child pornography gave himself up to the police after having been convinced by the Sober e-mail worm that the authorities could prove he had visited illegal websites.

The worm tricked the 20-year-old into believing that he was being investigated by Germany's Federal Crime Office (known as the BKA) and he phoned the police to confess. Officers in the city of Paderborn, near Hanover, said that investigations later found child pornography on his computers and led to charges.

The widely-distributed Sober worm had been doing the rounds for months, telling recipients that they were being investigated by the FBI, the CIA or the BKA. It claimed that the authorities knew they had been visiting illegal sites and urged them to turn themselves in.

It was viewed as a nuisance, annoying the FBI so much that the American agency uncharacteristically released a statement in November denying that it was sending the e-mails. So it came as a surprise to the anti-virus community that it had actually succeeded in netting a criminal.

"We're used to explaining to people that there's no such thing as a good virus," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at UK anti-virus company Sophos. "But in this case it appears that the Sober-Z worm has accidentally scared an internet paedophile into contacting the police.

"If he had been scanning his e-mail for viruses he would never have received the message. If jailed he'll have plenty of time to reflect on whether he should have believed everything that was sent to him via e-mail."

The latest variant of the Sober worm e-mail, which Sophos said accounted for 78 per cent of recent virus reports, typically appears as below. When recipients click on the attachment, the worm is let loose on their computer.

Dear Sir/Madam,

We have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.

Important: Please answer our questions! The list of questions are attached.

Yours faithfully,
Steven Allison
Federal Bureau of Investigation-FBI-
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW , Room 3220
Washington , DC 20535
Phone: (202) 324-30000

The Sober report came as anti-virus software companies were warning users of internet instant messaging services to beware of a Santa Claus worm, seemingly carrying a festive message from one of their known contacts, but which once downloaded, inflitrates the host computer and spreads its virus to other contacts.

Instant Messaging Worm

An instant messaging worm, reported by US firm IMLogic, has not been noticed in Australia.

Jakub Kaminski, a senior anti-virus researcher at Computer Associate's labs in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, said the description provided by IMLogic indicated that the worm may actually be a bot.

"A bot would connect to a chat channel and then listen for orders," Mr Kaminski said.

According to the IMLogic advisory, the worm, which it has christened IM.GiftCom.All, broadcasts a URL over instant messaging clients such as AOL's AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN and Windows Messenger.

An executable file, often named gift.com, is then downloaded and components of this file try to shut down anti-virus software and communicate with outside sources.

According to IMLogic, other components also try to log keystrokes and may attempt to propagate over IM clients.

Mr Kaminski said CA's labs had not received any samples of this malware yet but similar behaviour had been seen before.

Oracle lowers price for some multicore chips

update Oracle has changed its database-licensing structure, giving customers a price break on servers that use new multicore chips from Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and Sun Microsystems.

The database heavyweight updated its licensing terms on Monday to reflect the changes. The shift was made because of the emergence of high-volume servers with multicore processors, according to Oracle.

"As technology evolves, we have adapted our licensing models to accommodate these changes," Oracle's vice president of pricing and licensing, Jacqueline Woods, said in a statement.

Multicore processors pack two or more "cores," or processing units, onto a single piece of silicon. Intel, AMD and Sun have each released dual and multicore chips this year.

Databases are often priced based on the number of processors on a server. Until July, Oracle designated each core as a single processor. In July, t changed its policy so that each core would be treated as three fourths of a processor when calculating database costs.

On Monday, the company scaled back the pricing again. Its new policy states that each core on an AMD or Intel chip will be considered half of a processor. Each core on a Sun UltraSparc T1 processor, which is used in the company's recently released servers, is considered a quarter of a processor.

The reduced prices at Oracle follow similar moves made by its primary database competitors, IBM and Microsoft.

In April, IBM shifted its policyand now treats dual-core chips from AMD and Intel as a single processor. But it continues to treat each core as a processor for IBM's own Power chips.

Carphone Warehouse to Buy Centrica's Onetel for 132 Mln Pounds

Carphone Warehouse Group Plc, Europe's largest mobile phone retailer, agreed to buy Centrica Plc's Onetel telecommunications unit for 132 million pounds ($234 million) in cash to add about 1.5 million U.K. customers.

London-based Carphone Warehouse plans to fund the transaction from bank lending and will pay an additional 22.2 million pounds over three years if customer-recruitment targets from Centrica's British Gas unit exceed forecasts, according to a Regulatory News Service statement released today.

Centrica, the U.K.'s biggest energy supplier, has been seeking a buyer for Onetel since September as it seeks to focus on its energy and related home services operations.

HUMAN EXPRESSIONS SOFTWARE

According to research published in New Scientist the Mona Lisa is "mainly happy". This gem comes to us from boffins in Illinois, who used a computer developed at the University of Amsterdam (how embarrassing - two sets of noddies, some of them the otherwise sensible and cultured Dutch) to conclude that Leonardo's most famous sitter is 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry. (Good to be precise. Stops us thinking.)

The abstract says the software looks at "key facial features such as the curvature of the lips and crinkles around the eyes, then scores each face with respect to six basic emotions." Six - so many!

The point of doing all this - it isn't just a stunted effort at art criticism, disappointingly - is to develop smarter software that can understand human expressions. Given that this seems most likely to apply to issues of identification, it's a shame more of us don't have the luck to have our passport photos done by a quattrocento master. It might take the indignity out of being forced to acquire an ID card.

You wonder why they have to stop there, of course, although fortunately specially created GU software enables us to carry this bold new research much further. Munch's Scream? 89% angst, 7% terror and 4% sheer boredom, the system says. Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergere? 60% ennui, 23% aggression and 17% embarrassment at being made to stand in front of a weird bloke with a moustache. I'm sure you can come up with others.

Stem cell research

South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University is under intense scrutiny over his pioneering work on stem cell research. His team published a study on tailored human stem cells in May in Science, a leading U.S. academic journal. The discovery was vital as it could one day lead to treatment for spinal injuries, for example. Hwang said on Friday he was retracting the paper from Science because of a row over its authenticity, even though he did not doubt his findings. He said a follow-up paper sent to another journal would restore faith. Donated human eggs were hollowed out and skin cells from patients injected into it and then fused. The eggs begin dividing and sometimes become embryos.

Following is some of Hwang's recent work:

THERAPEUTIC CLONING Hwang has said his team cloned the first human embryo for research and developed the first tailored embryonic stem cells. Such advances could eventually lead to cures for such debilitating and deadly diseases as Parkinson's and severe spinal cord injury, by taking skin from a patient to grow custom-made stem cells with that patient's specific genetic material. The process was published in Science earlier this year. It is now under scrutiny.

WORLD STEM CELL BANK South Korea established the bank in October with the aim of keeping the country at the forefront in the field. Stem cells are stored at Seoul National University and made available to international researchers. Hwang resigned his chairmanship from the bank after apologising last month for ethical lapses in his work. Two junior women researchers donated their eggs for the team's work, a practice which has been seen as an ethical violation because research associates could feel they were coerced into making such donations.

HUMAN EMBRYOS Hwang has said he is not intending to clone humans. The early-2004 study could pave the way for the start of therapeutic cloning. Hwang and his team have said they removed the nucleus from a human egg and replaced it with the core of another cell taken from the female donor.

FIGHTING MAD COW DISEASE Hwang said in 2003 that his team had cloned cows with high levels of a protein structure that makes them resistant to mad cow disease. Cow's eggs were injected with somatic cells with a high-level of a protein structure, and cultivated them in surrogate cows. The animals are under a long-term study on effectiveness.