News written by James Delahunty (April, 2010)

An official report in China has shown the reach of a widespread variant of Conficker B in the country as of late last year. The report from the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT) reported 7 million Internet-connected machines in the country infected with the Conficker B in the first half of 2009.

In the second half of the year, the number of Conficker infections in the country varied but only spent one week under 5 million PCs. From the figures, China had up to 28 percent of the worldwide Conficker reach within its borders, depending on the week.

Chinese users are found to be hit more easily by worms that in other areas of the world. About 4 percent of the country's 380 million Internet users run no security software at all, and the higher rates of pirate software also has an impact with services such as Automatic Updates being disabled.

China also had anywhere from 125,000 to over 300,000 IPs infected with Conficker C during the second half of last year, giving it up to 20 percent of the world's infections for that variant.

A ruling by the High Court in Ireland has paved way for subscribers of Eircom's Internet services to have their service suspended for repeatedly sharing music illegally despite warnings. Eircom is the country's largest ISP, but the ruling is expected to have an effect on other ISPs in Ireland.

In a settlement deal last year, Eircom agreed to implement measures aimed at stopping illegal downloading, including handing over subscribers' identities when they are caught sharing files illegally. The Data Protection Commissioner had concerns about the settlement, questioning whether the measures violated rights of access to the Internet.

Mr Justice Peter Charleton rejected the concerns, ruling that the anti-piracy measures were lawful and compatible with the data protection legislation. He said that young people are now in the habit of file sharing that they appear to believe they have an entitlement to take what is not theirs.

"The right to be identified with and to reasonably exploit one's own original creative endeavour I regard as a human right," he commented, referring to what he said was a fundamental right to copyright in Irish law.

Samsung has offered some guidelines for 3D television viewing and possible associated health risks and side effects. While most likely being the result of pressure from lawyers, the health warnings would probably take a bit of enthusiasm about 3D away from anybody who reads them.

"Some viewers may experience an epileptic seizure or stroke when exposed to certain flashing images or lights contained in certain television pictures or video games. If you suffer from, or have a family history of epilepsy or strokes, please consult with a medical specialist before using the 3D function," the warnings read.

"Even those without a personal or family history of epilepsy or stroke may have an undiagnosed condition that can cause photosensitive epileptic seizures. Pregnant women, the elderly, sufferers of serious medical conditions, those who are sleep deprived or under the influence of alcohol should avoid utilising the unit’s 3D functionality."

"Viewing 3D television may also cause motion sickness, perceptual after effects, disorientation, eye strain and decreased postural stability. It is recommended that users take frequent breaks to lessen the potential of these effects. If your eyes show signs of fatigue or dryness or if you have any of the above symptoms, immediately discontinue use of this device and do not resume using it for at least thirty minutes after the symptoms have subsided."

Intel's lack of a USB 3.0 chipset has signaled to observers that the company may be bypassing USB 3.0 in favor of optical technology. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, but Intel has been promoting its Light Peak technology which promises transmission speeds of between 10Gbps and 100Gbps.

Light Peak technology was unveiled in 2009 and is expected to become available for manufacturers later in 2010. Devices containing the technology are expected to reach the market by early 2011.

Intel fellow Kevin Kahn discussed the technology at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing on Wednesday, showing off a laptop with a thin Light Peak cable. Kahn's prototype had the cable running through a modified USB 3.0 port adapter. He said that the size of the port could be reduced significantly with Light Peak technology which is good news for mobile gadgets in particular.

Kahn said that Light Peak is not necessarily competitive with USB, but instead the two technologies could be complementary. USB protocols could run over a Light Peak cable.

Kahn told the crowd in attendance that Intel would like to build the "last cable you'll ever need."

Security researchers have put attention on archive file formats such as RAR and ZIP files because of their potential security vulnerabilities. Up until recently many antivirus programs weren't capable of detecting malicious software in commonly used archival formats, but most antivirus vendors patched their products for better detection.

Tomislav Pericin, founder of RLPack, Mario Vuksan, an independent security researcher and Brian Karney, COO of Access Data, gave a presentation at the Black Hat security conference where they demonstrated how it is possible to tamper with popular archive formats to insert malicious code such as the Conficker worm.

Malware authors had been taking advantage of how packing malicious software in compressed archive files could trick security software, but antivirus companies stepped up efforts in detection of malware hidden in such files. However, the three researchers showed that it is still possible to evade gateway products that analyze file attachments.

"The problem is the AV vendors and the archive vendors have two different solutions. If they don't work in sync, the user can extract an archive on their PC, but the AV won't be able to, and that's a problem," Pericin said.

Google Inc, YouTube and Yahoo! have filed counterclaims against Xerox Corp in response to a lawsuit accusing the companies of patent infringement. Xerox claims that the accused infringed several of its patents relating to Internet search functions.

The defendants are now seeking declarations that they did not infringe on the patents at issue or that the patents are invalid. The counterclaims were filed in a Delaware federal court on Thursday. Xerox claims that Google services such as Google Maps and YouTube, and also Yahoo Shopping, infringed patents it has held.

The patents date back as far as 2001. Xerox contends that the patents cover technology such as a system for generating queries for information relating to a document. It is seeking compensations for all past infringements and a ban on the use of the technology by the defendants.

The video game industry has experienced a small sales jump in March after declining for two straight months. Industry tracker NPD said that sales of video game products in the U.S. jumped 6 percent, to $1.52 billion, in March, even though hardware sales did still decline.

Hardware sales during the month were down 4 percent, to $440.5 million. Nintendo's Wii console topped the monthly charts (home consoles) with 557,500 units sold. Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 console came in second place with a sales tally of 338,400 units, just pushing Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) console to third place with 313,900 units sold. The older PS2 title reached 118,300 sales.

In sales of handheld consoles, Nintendo's DS handhelds sold 700,800 units, following by Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) with a total of 119,900 units.

Software sales were up 10 percent to $795 million, with God of War III for PS3 topping the charts with 1.1 million units sold. If you combine the sales of titles across platforms, then you would out Final Fantasy XIII at #1 with 1.322 million units sold, 828,200 copies on the PS3 and 493,900 on the Xbox 360.

Opera has a right to be very happy with the immediate results of its browser software for the iPhone becoming available. After being approved by Apple Inc. for the iPhone, the Opera browser went on to be downloaded over one million times by iPhone users on its first day of availability.

Apple's approval of the Opera browser for iPhone on April 13 opened a new market that Apple had safely guarded up until this point. "Apple said 'Yes', and iPhone users around the world said, 'Yes, please'," the Norwegian firm said in a statement.

Opera's browsers claims to have some advantages over Apple's own loaded browser. For one thing, it claims it can deliver downloads six time faster than Apple's own browser, and that it could cut data traffic by up to 90 percent, an area where the iPhone has come to attention.

Some mobile phone networks have experienced problems from the heavy data traffic demands from iPhone users.

Ahead of the May 21 release of "Shrek Forever After", Dreamworks Animation has confirmed that it is planning to convert the older Shrek titles to 3D for release on Blu-ray. "Our movies exist in digital files to begin with. To go back and rebuild to a quality 3D experience is not inexpensive, but we are about to achieve a pretty high quality result," company CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said Wednesday.

Speaking at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, he was optimistic about the rate of innovation in 3D filmmaking. "We are just beginning to see big capital investments made into the area of post 2D-to-3D conversion. Right now it's at the most rudimentary," he said.

The recent release of "Clash of the Titans" has received much scrutiny, prompting some concerns within the industry that poor 3D releases will threaten the rollout of the "format". Concerns aside, Katzenberg feels comfortable enough with 3D to be optimistic about its potential with older titles.

DigiProtect, which works with ACS:Law in the UK to send thousands of threatening letters to alleged Internet pirates, has defended its work from growing criticism. UK consumer magazine Which? received complaints from people saying they were wrongly accused of copyright infringement crimes.

The letters sent to Internet users orders them to either pay a fine or face going to court. However, the firm told the BBC that it is just acting to protect its rights-holders, whom it declined to mention by name but described as "musicians or producers."

DigiProtect identifies when a client's content is being shared illegally on a network and attempts to acquire the IP address of the sharer. With this information, its lawyers can get a court order enabling the retrieval of the physical address of the user associated with the Internet connection account.

Users receive letters telling them to pay around £700 per infringement or face court action. Service provider O2 has not been impressed with the targeting of its customers, condemning attempts to "bully or threaten" them.

ACS:Law and DigiProtect deny that they bully O2 customers. "The approach we use is the only proven effective proceeding," DigiProtect told the BBC. "With the infinite number of products offered on file-sharing networks, no other process would even be possible, this is just another example of the astronomical dimensions that file-sharing has taken on."

Toshiba Corp. got a boost from surging PC sales in the United States in the first quarter of the year, jumping 50 percent compared to the same period of 2009. Jeff Barney, general manager of digital products for Toshiba America, said the company sold 1.5 million PC units in the January - March period in the United States thanks to growing consumer demand.

Barney revealed that average selling prices leveled during the quarter after falling for some time. He said he expected 35 percent growth in the U.S. consumer PC market in the coming six months along with single-digit growth from enterprise customers. Toshiba is the fourth largest PC vendor in the United States and the fifth largest globally.

The company is also planning to roll out tablet-style computing devices similar to the iPad later in the year. Barney said the plan was to launch "slate" PCs this year running either Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, or Google's mobile Android OS.

"We definitely see a place for the slate, we see there's a market there. It'll be expansive like netbooks, it won't be cannibalistic," he said. He added that a Windows version of the tablet would be priced higher than Android, but that Android users could tap thousands of programs available in the Android Market.

New attention has been given to a BitTorrent exploit that surfaced in November last year following the passing of the Digital Economy Bill in the UK. The widespread belief - or hope - appears to be that this 86 lines of C# can actually make BitTorrent downloading untraceable.

The code, named SeedFuc*er (though not censored), can be used by a BitTorrent user to fake the IP address of a source where a file could be downloaded, or it could be used to flood a BitTorrent with dozens of fake peers.

The truth is this probably wouldn't help a user to escape identification at all, although it could be used as an annoyance for investigators by flooding them with fake peers and fake data. Tracking companies confirm what material is being shared and from where, so there is no reason to believe the 86 lines of code will make the slightest bit of a difference to a user.

However, changes in legislation or the outcomes of civil cases have had an effect on how some users share files. Napster's downfall was largely the centralized nature of its network and was then replaced with decentralized networks. Warnings and other threats prompted users to stop using public BitTorrent trackers and opt for private trackers instead.

Microsoft Corp. revealed on Wednesday that it is investigating reports of harsh working conditions at a Chinese factory that products products for the Redmond-based software giant. The National Labor Committee released a report on Tuesday about harsh treatment of workers at a KYE Systems Corp. factory in the city of Dongguan in Guangdong province.

It accuses KYE of recruiting hundreds of 16 and 17 year olds who work 15 hour shifts, six and seven days a week. The report said that in 2007 and 2008 before the economic downturn hit badly, workers were at the factory as many as 97 hours per week, whilst working for over 80 of those hours.

In 2009, workers were at the facility 83 hours a week and working 68 hours. In addition to the long working hours - for which workers were paid just 65 cents an hour of which only 52 cents is "take-home pay" after deductions are made for factory food expenses - workers were not allowed to talk, listen to any music or even use the bathroom during working hours.

Workers who broke the "rules" were forced to clean the factory's bathrooms as punishment. "The workers have no rights, as every single labor law in China is violated," the report alleged. "Microsoft's and other companies' codes of conduct have zero impact."

Japanese adult entertainment firms are threatening lawsuits against companies located in Taiwan for copyright infringement. Among those threatened parties are Internet and mobile phones operators and cable channels. A lawyer for eight separate Japanese adult entertainment firms said they have lost millions of dollars in potential revenue over the illegal activity.

"My clients suffered huge losses because they cannot collect royalties for the adult videos," said lawyer Michael Chien, estimating it to be around 1 billion Taiwan dollars, or roughly US$33 Million, every year. "Screening and selling the videos without authorisation is unacceptable. Taiwan should do more to protect intellectual property rights."

Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwan Mobile, the largest mobile phone operators in the country, have been identified by the eight adult entertainment producers as violators of the their copyright.

The companies, which account for about a third of all Japanese pornography content, have demanded that the firms pay royalties and remove unlicensed videos from their services within a month.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone revealed on Wednesday that the popular micro-blogging source has over 105 million registered users. The site is now adding 300,000 new users a day to its service, which launched back in 2006. The site receives about 180 million unique visitors a month, Stone revealed to software developers at the "Chirp" development conference.

Speaking to over 1,000 software developers in attendance, he revealed the figures of registered users and traffic for the first time. The company told of how many Twitter users access the service through software applications created by third-party developers. Twitter has started to create its own similar software solutions as well as buying up some, which might not be good news for many of the developers.

"It is clearly a tension and it is why we are trying to show where we are going," Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said, adding that it was natural for Internet services to have both complementary and competitive relationships with third parties that develop software building on its technology platforms.

"There are thousands of ways to use Twitter that haven't even been imagined yet. There is so much left to invent. It is really early and we can do it together," Evans told the crowd.