Windows Trojans hit P2P

Madrid-based anti-virus firm Panda Software reports the circulation on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks of Trojans that are spread by exploiting digital rights management features in Windows media player, reports The Register.

If a user runs licence-protected movie (.wmv) files infected with the WmvDownloader-A or WmvDownloader-B Trojans, they appear to download the corresponding licence from the Net, but instead redirect users to sites that take advantage of Windows vulnerabilities to download spyware, adware and other viruses.

Google has fixed a bug in its Web-based e-mail service, Gmail, that allowed users to read the contents of other people`s messages, reports Computerworld.

The report says that while it is technically still in beta testing, Gmail has become one of the most popular Web-based e-mail services since its launch in April.

Security problems are nothing new to Web e-mail, with Hotmail and Yahoo`s Web e-mail needing revisions after security firms demonstrated that scripting restrictions could be by-passed.

Security information company, Secunia, has listed as "highly critical" five patches released by Linux vendors Red Hat, Novell and Mandrakesoft for several vulnerabilities.

CNet reports Novell`s SuSE issued updates to resolve flaws including a vulnerability that could allow malicious code to cause a local denial-of-service attack using a specially created Acrobat document. Red Hat issued a package of updates for its desktop, enterprise and advanced-workstation software, an updated libtiff package to address vulnerabilities involving various integer overflows, and updates for Xpdf packages to address a vulnerability to a potential buffer overflow.

Mandrakesoft also released an update for Imlib, a standard set of code used by older versions of the Gnome desktop to process graphics.

German researchers have moved another step towards inexpensive plastic radio frequency identification (RFID) chips by pioneering a technique for printing circuits directly onto foils, reports Computerworld.

The report says although PolyIC is not claiming to have developed the first integrated circuit made of polymer, it is taking credit for having created the world`s fastest plastic chip to date at 600KHz.

PolyIC plans to start with production of a plastic 4-bit chip that could be used for applications such as forgery-proof labelling. The next step will be a 32-bit chip aimed at applications in the logistics sector.

By 2008, PolyIC hopes to have a chip with a storage capacity of 128-bits and a processing speed of 13.56MHz to comply with RFID standards.