Kaspersky Lab blasts McAfee

Kaspersky Lab founder Eugene Kaspersky has taken to the Web to have a pop at rival McAfee's recent Operation Shady RAT revelations, claiming many of the report's conclusions are unfounded and the firm is being deliberately alarmist, reports V3.co.uk.

The report detailed a large-scale and long-term hacking attack spanning 14 countries and compromising 72 organisations, including the United Nations, defence contractors and even Olympic committees, over a five-year period.

However, in a strongly-worded blog post, Kaspersky argues that most commercially available anti-virus software can block the malware involved in the Shady RAT attacks.

Xhead = TalkTalk slapped with £3m fine

TalkTalk and its Tiscali UK subsidiary have been fined £3 million for incorrectly billing more than 65 000 customers for services they had not received, according to the BBC.

The largest fine regulator Ofcom has given to a telecoms firm follows an investigation into the two businesses that started in July 2010 as a result of more than 1 000 complaints.

Ofcom says the fine reflected “the seriousness” of their actions. TalkTalk says it was “disappointed at the scale of the fine”.

Researchers in the US and around the world have found the radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR) emitted by cellphones may decrease sperm count and damage sperm quality, according to an Italian report published in the Journal of Andrology, writes Cnet.

Though still inconclusive, the research focuses on several studies on both human and animal sperm. For humans, some of the studies exposed sperm from healthy non-smoker volunteers to RF-EMR in a laboratory setting, while others compared the sperm health of subjects who regularly carried their cellphone in their front pants pocket with those who did not.

On the whole, sperm that were exposed to RF-EMR showed decreased sperm concentration; motility (the ability of a sperm to move toward an egg); morphology (the size and shape of sperm); and viability. Similarly, subjects who carried their phone in their pockets had a lower sperm concentration.

Consumers are increasingly wary of shopping online, with only a third now believing that most shopping Web sites can be trusted, says Computing.co.uk.

A survey conducted on behalf of security firm McAfee showed that consumer concerns over online shopping have risen sharply in the past two years, in the face of online scams and security breaches.

According to the survey, 84% of consumers have some qualms about providing sites with personal information. Only a third said they thought they could trust the majority of Web stores.