Trojan swaps porn for Koran

A new Trojan horse appears to be on a moral mission to stamp out adult Web sites, says anti-virus firm Sophos.

Instead of snooping for sensitive financial information or secretly taking control of an infected computer, the Trojan horse, called Yusufali-A, monitors Web surfing habits, PCWorld.com reports.

When it spots an objectionable term such as "sex" or "exhibition" in the browser`s title bar, it hides the Web site and instead pops up a message taken from the Koran, says Gregg Mastoras, a senior security analyst with Sophos.

"Allah knows how ye move about and how ye dwell in your homes," reads part of the message, says Gregg Mastoras, senior security analyst at Sophos.

A Hurricane Katrina Missing Persons Web site and hotline is serving as an online album to help reunite children with their families after the disaster.

Provided by the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the Web site posts photos, names and descriptions of rescued children.

Many of the children who have been found alone are too young or scared to give full information to the authorities, so some descriptions are brief, bbc.co.uk reports.

The NCMEC has also sent out network volunteers to affected states to help families with the technicalities of filing their missing persons alerts.

Years of under-investment have left banks with a complex tangle of ageing core IT systems that are increasingly costly to maintain, according to a new study.

Nearly three-quarters (70%) of the 1 500 worldwide bank executives questioned for the study said inflexible IT systems are impeding their ability to be competitive, Silicon.com reports.

Stuart Taylor, partner in UK banking at Accenture, says a lack of resources and fears about undertaking such a huge task has left many banks with problems after trying to upgrade their IT systems in a piecemeal fashion.

"The changes banks have been making have been somewhat fragmented and as a result they have all these point solutions with multiple applications from multiple vendors," he says.

A 20-year-old Singaporean soldier has been granted a deferment from military service so he can take part in an international computer games competition.

This is the first case for the country, where military service is compulsory and lasts two years, Reuters reports.

Stanley Aw was allowed to postpone national service by nearly two months so he could compete in the World Cyber Games.

"In line with the government`s support for sports, culture and the arts, the Ministry of Defence will consider granting one-time deferments for pre-enlistees who are selected to represent Singapore at prestigious international sports and cultural events," says a spokesman as quoted by the Straits Times.

HP has announced another range of storage products focusing on data protection and archiving, Techworld.com reports.

The products include ProLiant Data Protection Storage Servers which use Microsoft`s DPM to provide near-continuous disk-to-disk backup.

There is also an electronic vaulting service that will have customers` data sent over WAN links to be stored in an HP data centre. No agent software is needed on client servers.

"HP has been a sleeping giant for a while but quietly they have been assembling ingredients for some powerful solutions in the data protection and information lifecycle management space," says Arun Taneja, president and consulting analyst for the Taneja Group.