Logging The Cyber World

Tags: botnet, botnet masters, mariposa network, ring network, virus infected computers

SAN FRANCISCO – Authorities have smashed one of the world’s biggest networks of virus-infected computers, a data vacuum that stole credit cards and online banking credentials from as many as 12.7 million poisoned PCs.

The “botnet” of infected computers included PCs inside more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 major banks, according to investigators.

Spanish investigators, working with private computer-security firms, have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of the so-called Mariposa botnet, which appeared in December 2008 and grew into one of the biggest weapons of cybercrime. More arrests are expected soon in other countries.

Spanish authorities have planned a news conference for Wednesday in Madrid.

Read more at Yahoo News

Tags: elitebook, intel, laptop, notebook capacity, notebooks, processors

Lest anyone be left out of the tablet/slate wave that’s currently crashing over the laptop and ultraportable industry, HP has announced a new 12.1-inch EliteBook convertible tablet for the business-minded who feel the need for pens and capacitive multitouch displays at the same time.

Equipped with a stainless steel finish and magnesium casing, the EliteBook 2740p tablet PC will be available with either a Core i5 or Core i7 processor, a reinforced glass screen, and a touch interface that will also work with an included pen. The 2740p (and its non-tablet sibling, the 2540p below) also meet military standards for high temperatures, dust, vibration and altitude, like its tablet predecessor the 2730p. Built-in HP DriveGuard technology also builds some impact resistance into the design.

More at CNET…

Tags: hard disks, intel, memory, SSD, X18-M, X25-M

Intel on Monday started shipping a 160-GB, 2.5-inch solid-state drive for laptops and desktops.

In addition to the new X25-M, the chipmaker said it would ship next month a 160-GB, 1.8-inch SSD called the X18-M. Intel shipped 80-GB versions of the same two drives in September.

Computer manufacturers are offering SSDs in ultralight laptops and mini-notebooks, which are used primarily for e-mail and Web browsing. SSDs are particularly useful in these machines because the drives are lighter and use less power than hard disk drives. Major computer makers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo offer SSDs in notebooks.

The X18-M and X25-M are based on Intel’s multilevel cell memory. The technology that differentiates the SSDs from competitors, according to Intel, includes highly parallel 10x NAND flash channels and “native command queuing” that enable up to 32 concurrent operations for faster performance.

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Tags: apple laptops, apple notebooks, cheap laptops, computers, low price laptop

Apple’s reported plans to introduce new laptops next week are seasoned with a particularly titillating rumor that the company will unveil an $800 laptop that would close much of the price gap with low-cost PC laptops.

On Thursday, Apple sent out an announcement stating, “The spotlight turns to notebooks,” and inviting recipients to a launch event on Oct. 14.

An $800 laptop — allegedly crafted from single pieces of aluminum using a laser and water jet process known by the code-name “brick” — would be a dramatic price drop from Apple’s current lowest-price standard laptop, which carries a $1,099 retail price point. That’s a $300 price cut and, while still substantially higher than low-cost PCs, would bring a Mac machine into the affordability price range of a whole new wave of users.

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Tags: battery life, hardware, hewlett-packard, laptops, LED display laptops

Hewlett-Packard says it has achieved a mobile-computing milestone by getting the HP EliteBook 6930p to operate continuously for 24 hours on a single battery charge. The laptop used in the test is, however, rather different from those consumers would pick up at the store, at least for now.

The machine’s equipped with high-end components including Intel solid-state hard drives (SSDs), a mercury-free LED display, and an optional ultra-capacity battery.

The cream-of-the-crop components played a crucial role in making the 24-hour battery life possible. HP says the Illumi-Lite LED display, by itself, boosts battery run time by up to four hours compared with traditional LCD displays, and the Intel SSD provides up to a 7 percent increase in battery life compared with traditional hard drives.

Article from CNET News

Tags: articles, mac os x, market share, operating system, yahoo news

Apple’s share of the global operating system market is climbing steadily, and could top 8% this month, statistics from a Web metrics firm showed Wednesday.

The latest monthly numbers from Net Applications show that Mac OS X had 7.94% of the market in June. Considering that its share has been climbing an average of 0.18% a month over the last 10 months, Mac OS X could top 8% this month. In August 2007, the Apple OS had 6.18% of the market.

During the same period, Linux has also increased market share, rising to 0.8% of the market in June from 0.47% last August, according to Net Applications. Meanwhile, the global market share of Microsoft Windows has declined over the last 10 months. In June, Windows accounted for 90.89% of the market, down from 93.06%.

Complete article from Yahoo! News

Tags: catching hackers, computers, government, hackers, personal data, untraceable

They’re in our computers, reading our files. The Chinese government, that is, according to two U.S. Congressmen who recently accused Beijing of sending hackers to ferret out secret documents stored on Congressional computers. The Chinese deny any involvement, but if they were lying, would we be able to prove it?

The answer, according to computer and security experts, is probably not.

At least, not conclusively enough for a court of law.

“It’s very difficult to track hacker attacks and, even if you can track it, you don’t always know with 100 percent certainty if you’re right,” said James Lewis, director and senior fellow of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

That was the problem faced by the investigators who attempted to figure out who broke into computers used by the staff of Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., and Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va. The Congressmen announced on June 11 that they’d been the targets of several attacks, beginning in 2006.

Both Smith and Wolf are high-profile critics of the Chinese government. They told reporters that, among other things, the hackers stole lists of identities of Chinese dissidents and records from Congressional human-rights hearings.

Read complete article here

Tags: Microsoft, operating system, windows vista, windows XP, xp

The Windows XP era ends June 30 and soon hardware vendors will be shipping you all Vista all the time (in most cases). The save XP effort failed. The whining should cease. And now it’s time for Vista to sink or swim.

Ina Fried has a good overview of where Windows XP will stand with PC manufacturers. And Matt Asay highlights a report from Evans Data noting that 92 percent of developers are ignoring Vista. Coupling these two items together and you come to one conclusion: Folks are skeptical about Vista, but a lot of that skepticism is because XP is still lingering.

“Only eight percent of North American software developers are currently writing applications to run on Microsoft’s Vista operating system, while half are still writing programs for XP, according to Evans Data’s Spring 2008, North American Development Survey. These same developers forecast a fragmented Windows market in 2009 with only 24 percent expecting to target Vista and 29% expecting to continue with XP.”

Complete article here…

Tags: all-purpose laptops, computers, laptops, photos, weird stuff

Learn more on how to use further of your laptop in a weird way.

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Tags: computer hardware, computer proccessor, computers, CPU, turion ultra

Mountain House (CA) – Computex Taipei 2008 is just around the corner and news of what we can expect to see at the conference is already trickling in. Nvidia will release its new GeForce GTX 280 and 260 GPUs, AMD its Radeon 4850 and 4870 as well as its Puma notebook platform.

View Article here.