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Results for posts tagged "virus" on Gizmodo Australia.
We've long used various methods, such as cell freezing, to analyse the rise of viruses as they convert happy cells into destruction production facilities. But now, for the first time ever, scientists have found a technique to watch viruses grow in real time. As Rockefeller University virologist explained, "This is the first time anyone has seen a virus particle being born."
Posted by Nick Broughall at 4:29 PM on February 26, 2008
Computer viruses no longer come from the US or Europe; the hottest hotbeds of hackerdom may be in China and Russia now, but even that will shift. Soon, the most dangerous internet criminals might hail from Mexico, India and Africa, says a new study. Shouldn't somebody call Nick Negroponte?
Earlier this week, we shared breaking news about Seagate selling 1,800 Trojan-horse-infected Maxtor hard drives at retail. I checked in with the company to learn the details, and see if they busted the perp. The official word:
The internal investigation by the contract manufacturer determined that the virus was accidentally transferred by one of its employees and not a malicious act.But accident, schmaccident: Seagate is taking some severe prevention measures to keep this from happening again, including extra anti-virus software—and metal detectors. The situation was more widespread than we originally knew, and anyone with a Maxtor Basics drive should probably read on.
Roughly 1,800 external drives manufactured by Seagate were infected with a Trojan horse virus that sent personal information back to China, according to the Taipei Times. The disk drives, sold at retail in Taiwan, were presumably messed with when they were in the possession of one of Seagate's Chinese subcontractors. The situation has been locked down, but it certainly puts a new spin on security fears, and Seagate itself has got to be pretty freaked out. All we have at the moment is a statement: "All products leaving the factory are now cleared of the virus." [Reuters]
The Storm Worm Botnet currently infects between one and ten million computers worldwide, which means that it has access to a huge amount of processing power and somewhere between 1 and 10 petabytes of RAM. This apparently makes it one of the most powerful computers in the world, with more computing power than the ten fastest supercomputers in the world combined.
Scientists, perpetually attempting to get mankind killed, have transformed plant viruses into a storage medium. By attaching viruses to quantum dots (semiconducting material) and sandwiching them between electrodes, the hybrid viruses acted as storage units. Add enough viruses, and you have some seriously high density storage. Sounds good, but why do we need the virus part at all?
From researcher Mihri Ozkan:
Interactions between organic and inorganic particles are quite fascinating...In our case, finding the memory effect was quite unexpected because each nanoparticle does not have any memory characteristics on its own, but only when connected as a hybrid.I find that quote extremely spooky, even if grounded in some sort of simple scientific explanation. [newscientist]
A Gizmodo reader is claiming that his iPhone got what Apple support said "sounds like a virus." Last night he heard a received SMS ring but there was none. Instead, the iPhone's date was replaced by the text "Player Haters (red alert)." Since the first external app was compiled this week, it's hard to believe. There are other explanations.
UPDATE 3:30EST: Actually, there's a very simple explanation: it was a software glitch or a human error. That's a bloody song title, which apparently got stuck on the interface and only was cleared after a power cycle. Bad Apple support bad! for saying silly things like that and bad me bad! for reporting them, no matter how skeptically. Thanks to the readers who pointed this out.
A researcher is claiming that he has created a Mac OS X worm which was able to infect 1,500 systems in his controlled network. The worm, unfortunately named Rape.osx, uses a "vulnerability in mDSNResponder" that will not be undisclosed until they finish their work and they get paid their thirty pieces of silver. [Sunnet Beskerming via Slashdot]
Not sure just how effective this will be, but you've got to admit that a portable anti-virus system can only be A Good Thing. This USB Virus Chaser, courtesy of Korean company Digiworks, is not the first anti-virus-system-in-a-USB, as they've been around for a couple of years (most notably Iocell's VaccineDrive). The Virus Chaser is around from this month in 2GB and 4GB versions.
USB VIrus Chaser by Digiworks [Akihabara News]
