Net users are getting the chance to fight back against spam websites

Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail.

Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out.

The net firm estimates that if enough people sign up and download the tool, spammers could end up paying to send out terabytes of data.

By getting thousands of people to download and use the screensaver, Lycos hopes to get spamming websites constantly running at almost full capacity.

Mr Pollmann said there was no intention to stop the spam websites working by subjecting them with too much data to cope with.

He said the screensaver had been carefully written to ensure that the amount of traffic it generated from each user did not overload the web.

“Every single user will contribute three to four megabytes per day,” he said, “about one MP3 file.”

But, he said, if enough people sign up spamming websites could be force to pay for gigabytes of traffic every single day.

The sites being targeted are those mentioned in spam e-mail messages and which sell the goods and services on offer.

The list of sites that the screensaver will target is taken from real-time blacklists generated by organisations such as Spamcop. To limit the chance of mistakes being made, Lycos is using people to ensure that the sites are selling spam goods.

The screensaver is due to be launched across Europe on 1 December and before now has only been trialled in Sweden.

Despite the soft launch, Mr Pollmann said that the screensaver had been downloaded more than 20,000 times in the last four days.

Source: BBC

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are quietly developing new search tools for digital video, foreshadowing a high-stakes technology arms race in the battle for control of consumers’ living rooms.

Google’s effort, until now secret, is arguably the most ambitious of the three. According to sources familiar with the plan, the search giant is courting broadcasters and cable networks with a new technology that would do for television what it has already done for the Internet: sort through and reveal needles of video clips from within the haystack archives of major network TV shows.

The effort comes on top of Google’s plans to create a multimedia search engine for Internet-only video that it will likely introduce next year, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. In recent weeks, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has demonstrated new technology to a handful of major TV broadcasters in an attempt to forge alliances and develop business models for a TV-searchable database on the Web, those sources say.

“Google’s trying to bring TV to the Web the same way they’re bringing books to the Web,” according to a media executive who asked to remain anonymous.

Google declined to comment for this report.

Source: News.com

A vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer has been discovered, which can be exploited by malicious people to trick users into downloading malicious files.

The vulnerability is caused due to Internet Explorer using the file extension from the URL’s filename when saving images with the “Save Picture As” command and also strips the last file extension if multiple file extensions exist. This can be exploited by a malicious web site to cause a valid image with malicious, embedded script code to be saved with an arbitrary file extension.

Successful exploitation may allow a malicious web site to trick users into downloading e.g. a malicious HTML Application (.hta) masqueraded as a valid image. However, exploitation requires that the option “Hide extension for known file types” is enabled (default setting).

The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP2.

Solution:
Disable the “Hide extension for known file types” option.

Toshiba Corp. said on Monday it had won support for the HD DVD optical disc standard from Warner Bros. Studios, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and New Line Cinema, advancing its cause in the battle for the next-generation DVD.

Toshiba, with NEC Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., is promoting a next-generation DVD technology called HD DVD, while Sony Corp. and several other giants of the electronics, computer and movie industries are backing a competing standard dubbed Blu-ray.

Support from U.S. film studios is seen as vital in this format battle, just as it was when the VHS standard prevailed over Sony’s Betamax two decades ago.

“After extensive research and careful consideration … we have determined that HD DVD has the highest quality of performance and offers key advantages in the areas of durability and reliability,” Warner Bros. said in a statement.

They represent about 45 percent of Hollywood’s prepackaged DVD sales in the United States, Toshiba said.

Those studios are expected to release movie titles on the HD DVD format in time for the planned launch of HD DVD players in the last quarter of 2005.

Source: Reuters