A federal grand jury in Seattle indicted a California man on two counts of computer misuse, alleging that he and two youths created an illicit computer network that jeopardized patient care last month at Northwest Hospital.

Christopher Maxwell, 20, of Vacaville, Calif., first compromised computer networks at California State University, the University of Michigan and the University of California-Los Angeles by exploiting their security lapses, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle.

At a news conference Friday morning, that office and the FBI said Maxwell and his unnamed co-conspirators incorporated those systems into a 13,000-computer network known as a botnet. The name refers to the use of penetrated computers as robots under the control of the network’s creator.

Maxwell and the youths are also accused of penetrating the computer network at Northwest Hospital in Seattle, a 187-bed, not-for-profit institution, where the invasion allegedly impaired patient treatment, delayed processing lab tests and surgery scheduling, and shut down computers in intensive-care rooms.

Maxwell allegedly made $100,000 from unnamed companies whose adware he installed.

Source: seattlepi

NBC is significantly expanding its Olympics video offerings for the Internet and cell phones, a sure sign of its increased comfort with technologies that erect geographic boundaries online.

The network’s official Olympics site, NBCOlympics.com, will show for free, on a delayed basis, the complete runs and routines for the top finishers and for all U.S. participants in almost every event, with highlights provided for team sports like hockey, said Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics.

Source: AP

As next week’s RSA Conference approaches, Microsoft unveiled a public beta of its next-generation ISA 2006 firewall as well as early customer betas of business products Microsoft Client Protection and Microsoft Antigen for Exchange.

Also on Thursday, Microsoft said it acquired a Web filtering product from FutureSoft called DynaComm i:filter.

ISA 2006, due to ship in the second half of this year, offers new support for SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services, LDAP-based and smart-card authentication, vendor support for multifactor authentication and Radius servers, Microsoft said.

Microsoft also released an early customer beta of Microsoft Client Protection, a business product that combines antivirus, antispyware and antimalware. The software is easy to manage and offers customers management and reporting capabilities, Microsoft said. The long-awaited business offering, which incorporates the GeCAD antivirus engine, will be available for public beta testing in the third quarter, Microsoft said.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant also announced early customer beta of Antigen for Exchange, another antivirus product. The Microsoft-branded product is due out during the second half of the year. Obtained as part of Microsoft’s Sybari acquisition last fall, the product incorporates multiple antivirus engines and will support the Microsoft Client Protection antivirus engine. It also has been enhanced with clustering and antispam support.

Source: informationweek

Novell has teamed up with Charles Sturt University in Australia to offer what we believe is the first Masters Degree focused on Linux. The university decided to debut the degree because of rapid growth in demand for Linux training and expertise. The degree program includes obtaining Novell’s Certified Linux Engineer certification, including passing of the Novell Practicum exam.

Source: novell

Just as the bragging rights for dual-core chip supremacy are dying down, Intel gave the first glimpse of a quad-core chip coming next year.

Clovertown, a four-core processor, will start shipping to computer manufacturers late this year and hit the market in early 2007. Clovertown will be made for dual-processor servers, which means that these servers will essentially be eight-processor servers (two processors x four cores each).

The company will also come out with a previously announced version called Tigerton around the same time for servers with four or more processors.

Source: News.com

Although the courts shot down the FCC’s attempt to enforce the broadcast flag, the networks are moving full steam ahead on getting the flag written into law one way or another. So far, one bill has been introduced that would plug the so-called “analog hole,” and there have been a number of Congressional hearings on piracy and copyright. No matter what the venue, the mantra of the media industry has been the same: restrictions on what consumers can do with their broadcasts are absolutely necessary in order to stop piracy and keep the networks in business.

HBO has joined the fray with a recent FCC filing in which it argues that its programming—and all “Subscription Video On Demand” services—should fall into the category of “Copy Never.” In a broadcast-flagged world, that translate into consumers not being able to record content broadcast by HBO. No TiVo, no VCR, no video capturing on your PC

Source: arstechnica