Kneber attack resurrects notorious Zeus Trojan, say experts
There's been a lot of noise online about the so-called "Kneber" botnet, which has compromised more than 70,000 computers and stolen thousands of pieces of data. According to reports, around 2,500 companies were hit over the last 18 months as part of a botnet first spotted by NetWitness in January. The subject - cybercrime attacks undertaken by organised gangs of hackers - has become a hot topic in recent months, not least after Google accused Chinese hackers of trying to steal information from it and a string of other companies . In fact, however, is not a brand new attack. According to Symantec, the so-called "Kneber" strike is merely the resurrection of an existing Trojan that has been known about for some time. "Kneber, in reality, is not a new threat at all, but is simply a pseudonym for the infamous and well-known Zeus Trojan," said the company. "The name Kneber simply refers to a particular group, or herd, of zombie computers, a.k.a. bots, being controlled by one owner. The actual Trojan itself is the same Trojan.Zbot, which also goes by the name Zeus, which has been being observed, analyzed and protected against for some time now." "Since Zeus/Zbot toolkits are widely available on the underground economy, it is not uncommon for attackers to create new strings, such as Kneber, of the overall Zeus botnet." We have written about Zeus before - last November two people were arrested in Manchester on suspicion of using Zeus to steal people's bank details , part of a series of systematic strikes that had led experts to claim it was "one of the most notorious pieces of malware to have been seen recently" . To be fair, NetWitness was not claiming that the Kneber attack was a new method. Indeed, in the company's white paper on the strikes (registration required) says prominently that "the format and structure of the logged data indicate a Zeus Trojan botnet". What does this mean
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Kneber attack resurrects notorious Zeus Trojan, say experts
Microsoft Office 2010 programs available separately
Microsoft has announced estimated retail pricing for Microsoft Office 2010 in the UK, but Cyteck only wants one application…. In response to your story about Microsoft Office 2010 priced from free , will it be possible in future to purchase Office 2010 applications as separate programs? I'm interested in Outlook, and I wonder if Ask Jack might be able to enlighten me on that. Cyteck Microsoft UK has just released estimated retail prices for separate applications, so you can assume that all of these will be available separately. Basically they all cost £119.99 each -- that's Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher and Access -- except for OneNote, which costs £69.99. Microsoft Software Computing Jack Schofield guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Microsoft Office 2010 programs available separately
Microsoft is cutting the cost of Office, but will more people buy it?
Office 2010 will be cheaper, which could reflect its reduced value in an era where online apps are free, or Microsoft's attempt to expand its paying customer base, or both of these and more…. Microsoft announced the UK prices for Microsoft Office 2010 this morning and, like the US prices unveiled last month, they're down. (For details, see: Microsoft Office 2010 priced from free .) There are plenty of reasons for this, though it's hard to know which have been most influential. The main ones may be the arrival of online office suites and competition from Open Office, both of which are free. Limited as they are, they must reduce the perceived value of Office, to some extent. But there has also been the huge success of the cheap Home and Student version, which you can install on three PCs. At Christmas, this was one of Amazon.com's top three best-sellers. Indeed, Microsoft says Office has been the top selling PC software product, including games, at US retail for the past seven years. That success has led to the launch of the Office Home and Business version at £239.99, which might have the same effect. That is, it could encourage more Office users to pay a reasonable price for a proper copy, rather than use a pirate version. And, to be frank, if you reckon you can't afford to pay roughly £1 a week (assuming the usual Amazon discount) for five top class programs then you're not being entirely honest with yourself. Another factor is the prospect of a reduction in the cost of packaging and distribution
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Microsoft is cutting the cost of Office, but will more people buy it?
Converting data from PDF files to Excel spreadsheets
John Haworth wants to reliably convert a lot of data from PDF files to Excel for spreadsheet analysis. I receive a lot of data in PDF format and it would be very useful to reliably convert it for spreadsheet analysis. Currently I print files then OCR scan and save them in Excel. It needs time-consuming scrutiny to ensure reliability. John Haworth There are lots of ways to get data from Adobe PDF files into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and several of them should work better than the one you are using. However, I'm not sure any of them will avoid the need for "time-consuming scrutiny to ensure reliability". The best way to do that is to get whoever publishes the data in PDF to send it to you in Excel format, or in another common format such as csv (comma-separated values). Any process that involves a conversion will generally involve some level of checking, though you should be able to decrease the level as the system proves itself. Since PDF-to-Excel conversions are economically significant (possibly saving hours of re-keying and checking), there are commercial solutions such as Cogniview's PDF2XL -- which might be your best bet -- and Blue Label Soft's PDF to Excel Converter 2.4 . A search will find more. However, before buying anything, you should try some of the free online solutions, such as Nitro's PDF to Excel Online . Zamzar, a site that offers a very wide range of conversions , has recently added PDF to Excel. Before that, you could have used it to convert PDF to text and then loaded it into Excel using the Text Import Wizard -- a process that could well be more accurate than your OCR. Incidentally, if the files are commercially sensitive, you should consult your IT department first
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Converting data from PDF files to Excel spreadsheets
Microsoft’s Office 2010 review | Technophile
The latest version of Office has lots of new bells and whistles – none of which will make either Adobe or Google happy I'm writing this using the beta of Microsoft Word 2010, part of the Office 2010 suite due to hit the shelves later this year.
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Microsoft's Office 2010 review | Technophile
We have the internet: now we need the intercloud, says Vint Cerf
With "cloud computing" growing in importance, Google's Vint Cerf thinks it's time to start working on "intercloud" standards and protocols so your data doesn't get trapped in one One of the problems with "cloud computing" is that it can work a bit like the Hotel California: you can check your data in OK, but will you ever get it out? Google is very well aware of the problem and with its Data Liberation commitment, wants to make sure people can retrieve their data. Ideally, of course, users should be able to move stuff from one cloud to another -- from Google to Amazon or Microsoft or any similar service -- but that's not possible at the moment. Vint Cerf, often known as the Father of the Internet, raised this point in an impressively coherent answer to a question at a Churchill Club meeting at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) last month, recorded by Fora.tv . Cerf says it's the same as the problem networks faced when they couldn't talk to one another: "We're at the same point now in 2010 as we were in '73 with internet." Cerf says we now need protocols and standards that will "allow people to manage assets in multiple clouds, and for clouds to interact with each other," and that mobiles could be part of that. It took five years to develop the internet protocols (and another five years to implement them for various operating systems), says Cerf. "So if we could rely on that as an indicator, maybe the intercloud problem could be solved in five years' time." Hat-tip: Fanboy Google Cloud computing Computing Web 2.0 Jack Schofield guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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We have the internet: now we need the intercloud, says Vint Cerf
Microsoft: Cool ideas are not enough for us
Software giant says innovative ideas are not enough, after stinging attack by former executive Microsoft has said it cannot survive on "cool ideas", just hours after a former executive accused the company of being a "clumsy" and "uncompetitive innovator". Dick Brass, who served for as a vice president at the company from 1997 to 2004, launched a broadside in Thursday's New York Times that accused the company of falling victim to in-fighting and petty political squabbles. In his attack, Brass detailed how innovative projects had been stifled and killed off at the company, handing an advantage to rivals like Apple and Google. "Microsoft, America's most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future," he wrote. "Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers." Responding to his accusations on Thursday evening, however, Microsoft's head of corporate communications suggested that Brass's claims were off target. "At the highest level, we think about innovation in relation to its ability to have a positive impact on the world," wrote Frank Shaw. In a dig apparently aimed at Apple, which last week unveiled its iPad touchscreen computer for the first time , Shaw said that Microsoft did not quantify success simply by the number of exciting concepts that it developed. "For Microsoft, it is not sufficient to simply have a good idea, or a great idea, or even a cool idea. We measure our work by its broad impact," he wrote. Shaw's post admitted that the criticisms made by Brass stung, but said that some of the technologies that Brass had used as examples of failure - such as the ClearType display system - had, in fact, become important products for Microsoft. "For the record, ClearType now ships with every copy of Windows we make and is installed on around a billion PCs around the world," wrote Shaw.
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Microsoft: Cool ideas are not enough for us
BETT 2010: Trend spotting products at Olympia
Visiting BETT is one way to find out which way the education market is heading, though it might not be moving all that quickly… It would be a mistake to assume that what's on show at BETT represents what's actually in schools, but it certainly shows what the ICT industry is currently trying sell. And that is, most obviously, Microsoft Windows 7 on both desktops and netbooks. I might well have missed a few smartbooks running Google Android or some other version of Linux, but I only found one prototype smartbook. My assumption that CES would herald a flood of the things was wrong. Actually, there were two prototype smartbooks on the Vye PC stand: one running Android on a Tegra (ARM-based) chip and the other running Microsoft Windows CE. People with long memories will know this was Microsoft's cloud-based computing solution a decade ago, and that it was used in later versions of Psion's NetBook, aka Series 7. It also appeared in numerous pen-based tablets, and versions include Windows Mobile, used on some smartphones, and the automotive version in Ford and other cars. There was also a shortage of tablet or slate computers exploiting Windows 7's multi-touch functionality -- at least, I didn't see any -- though there were plenty of convertible PCs, including Intel Classmate designs. In fact, I only saw two Windows 7-based notebook PCs with multi-touch screens: a Dell Latitude XT2 convertible, and a Toshiba Satellite U500. The latter was preloaded with some Microsoft Surface-type demo-ware, including Virtual Earth, the fishy screen saver and three games. Dell also offers a 21.5 inch SX2210T multi-touch monitor with webcam , which I saw on Microsoft's stand. However, I suspect multi-touch screens will be more popular on all-in-one PCs like the HP TouchSmart, Sony and Medion models. Another trend I expected to see is the use of Intel Atom chips in desktops, especially as dual-core Atom chips become more common
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BETT 2010: Trend spotting products at Olympia
BETT 2010: It’s not just about computing
The British Education and Training Technology exhibition has been helping to computerise schools since 1985, but it now goes a lot further than putting computers on desks -- into cashless payment systems, biometric tracking, and CCTV The annual BETT educational trade exhibition has moved on a long way from the days when it seemed mostly about picking computers and cheap software for the Acorn BBC B or Archimedes. The current show, which closes today (Saturday), has products that few people would have considered way back then.
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BETT 2010: It's not just about computing
Intel unveils blockbuster financial results as PC market turns
Intel's fourth quarter net profits increased by 875% even after its settlement with AMD as the PC market showed good growth in the Christmas quarter, compared with a depressed 2008 Intel has unveiled blockbuster results for the financial quarter to December 26, about a third ahead of Wall Street estimates. Net profits increased by 875% to $2.3bn on revenues that climbed 28% to $10.6 billion ( PDF ). That looks like a return to normal: Intel made profits of $2.3bn in the same quarter in 2007, before a 90% plunge to $234m in 2008. However, the latest figures include a $1.25bn litigation settlement with chip rival AMD. Without that, operating income reached $3.75bn, a 45% increase on the year's third quarter. Intel's chief financial officer Stacy Smith said in a statement: "We have seen a return of consumer demand and replenishment to normal inventory levels after the precipitous demand drop at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009. Operationally, the fourth quarter of 2009 was one of our most profitable quarters ever." ( PDF ) Revenues for the full year dipped by 7% to $35.1bn, with net income down by 17% to $4.4bn. The full year figures include a $1.45bn fine paid to the EU. Intel's fourth-quarter results reflect a resurgence in the PC market following the economic recovery, and other factors, such as launch of Microsoft Windows 7. Research firm IDC said PC sales in the US increased by 24% to 20.7m units in the quarter, while worldwide PC sales grew by 15.2% to 85.8m units.
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Intel unveils blockbuster financial results as PC market turns