Bagle attacks via spam

Two waves of spam were launched this week to send out new variants of the Bagle Trojan horse, anti-virus company Sophos said, reports CNET.

All versions of the Bagle DI-U Trojan try to turn off anti-virus and security software, and to block access to security Web sites, in an attempt to strip away a PC`s immune system, enabling hackers to gain access, Sophos said in a statement.

There are strong similarities between the two waves of spammed messages bearing the Trojan. In both the subject line is blank, the body message text is 'new price`, and the malicious file attached could be identified with names such as "09_price.zip", "price_new.zip" and "price2.zip".

Bagle has spawned at least 70 variants since the virus emerged in January 2004.

A day after Symantec`s newest Internet Security Threat Report claimed that Firefox has twice the number of vulnerabilities as Internet Explorer, Mozilla released a security update of its popular open source Web browser, reports LinuxInsider.

Firefox 1.0.7 is billed as a security and stability update in response to a flaw that was announced yesterday.

The patches fix what was described as an international domain name buffer overflow vulnerability and Linux command line URL parsing flaw.

If the supplied URL contains any Linux commands enclosed in backtics, these will be executed before Firefox or the Mozilla Application Suite tries to open the URL. Variables such as $HOME will also be expanded.

America Online (AOL) has announced AOL Spyware Protection (ASP) 2.0, which uses Computer Associates (CA) eTrust Pest Patrol Anti-Spyware technology to scan AOL users` systems for 28 000 different kinds of spyware, reports eWeek.

Pest Patrol will allow AOL to scan its customers` systems more frequently for spyware, as much as once a minute, and gives CA a new base of 20 million AOL users, the companies said.

AOL members who use AOL 9.0 and AOL 8.0 and above who downloaded the ASP software will automatically receive the update when they sign in.

Americans are putting the brakes on broadband adoption growth, according to a new study, reports CNET.

The survey, published by independent think tank Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that high-speed Internet adoption, after growing quickly in the past several years, has been losing steam and is poised to slow even further.

During the first six months of 2005, 53% of home Internet users said they use a broadband connection, up from only 50% during the previous six months.

This is a much slower growth rate than reported for the same periods a year earlier. From November 2003 to May 2004, high-speed Internet penetration grew by 20%, from 35% of home users in December 2003 to 42% in May 2004, according to Pew data.

Pew attributed the slowdown in broadband penetration to a maturing of the market.