Tech. Talks

Blackberry Javelin gets release date

Following the high profile launches of the Blackberry Bold and the Blackberry Storm, RIM continues its assault on the smartphone market with Javelin. Carphone Warehouse has said that the Blackberry Javelin will be released exclusively in its stores just in time for Christmas on 20 December 2008, with the moniker ‘Curve 8900’. Carphone Warehouse could not confirm to IT PRO anything regarding pricing or the network carrier, but did say that the Javelin will have the, “sharpest screen, for the brightest, sharpest icons”. At first glance the Javelin looks similar to RIM’s Blackberry Bold, featuring a Qwerty keyboard and a trackball. It also has GPS with Blackberry Maps and a 3.2-megapixel camera on the rear. However, it is intended as an entry-level product and lacks 3G connectivity.

IBM and academia work on human brain simulation

Boffins at IBM have teamed up with five universities to use the human brain as a template to build faster, smaller computer systems that benefit decision making. Working with experts at Columbia University Medical Centre, Cornell University, Stanford University, the University of California-Merced and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, IBM Research plans to design and develop computers that simulate and emulate how the brain acts, interacts, perceives and senses things, in addition to mirroring its cognition, lower power usage and size. In doing so, it is hoped that business and consumer users alike will be able to make decisions much more quickly as well as helping them to deal with the ever-increasing glut of digital data heading their way each year.

 

 Facebook looking to buy Twitter – FT

Social networking company Facebook recently held acquisition talks with Twitter, the micro-blogging company. The negotiations put a valuation of as much as dollar 500 million on Twitter, which has become one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched start-ups. Facebook offered to pay for the acquisition in stock. Putting a value on Twitter’s shares proved controversial. If it used the dollar 15 billion valuation at which Microsoft Corp bought a stake in Facebook last year, it would have valued the Twitter purchase at dollar 500 million, though that investment was seen as a high-water mark for Web 2.0.

TECHNOTALK

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Online fraudsters steal billions

Online fraudsters steal billions

All the criminals are happy to work together to steal money from credit cards and bank accounts. This is because card numbers stolen in one country can only be ‘cashed out’ in their home nation – necessitating contact across borders

 Hi-tech thieves who specialise in card fraud have a credit line in excess of $5bn, research suggests.

Security firm Symantec calculated the figure to quantify the scale of fraud it found during a year-long look at the net’s underground economy.

Credit card numbers are the most popular item on sale and made up 31 percent of all the goods on offer.

Coming in second are bank details which made up 20 percent of the items being offered on criminal chat channels.

The $5.3bn figure was reached by multiplying the average amount of fraud perpetrated on a stolen card, $350 by the many millions Symantec observed being offered for sale.

Similarly, the report said, “if hi-tech thieves plundered all the bank accounts offered for sale they could net up to $1.7bn.”

Symantec said, “these figures are indicative of the value of the underground economy and the potential worth of the market.”

“Credit card numbers have proved so popular among hi-tech thieves because they are easy to obtain and use for fraudulent purposes,” it added.

Many of the methods favoured by cyber criminals, such as database attacks and magnetic strip skimmers, are designed to steal credit card information.

The existence of a ready market for any stolen data and the growing use of credit cards also helped maintain their popularity, it said.

“High frequency use and the range of available methods for capturing credit card data would generate more opportunities for theft and compromise and, thus, lead to an increased supply on underground economy servers,” said the report.

The price card thieves can expect for the numbers they offer for sale also varied by the country of origin. US card numbers are the cheapest because they are so ubiquitous – 74 percent of all cards offered for sale were from the US.

By contrast numbers from cards issued in Europe and the Middle East commanded a premium because they were relatively rare.

The year-long look at the underground economy confirmed to Symantec how serious and organised cyber thieves have become.

Via the covert chat channels and invitation-only discussion forums hi-tech thieves form loose alliances, contact those who specialise in one technique or find individuals who can extract cash from particular credit cards .

Russian and Eastern European gangs seem to be among the most well-organised, said the report. But, it said, all the criminals are happy to work together to steal money from credit cards and bank accounts. This is because card numbers stolen in one country can only be ‘cashed out’ in their home nation – necessitating contact across borders.

“Symantec research indicates that there is a certain amount of collaboration and organisation occurring on these forums, especially at the administrative level,” it said.

“Moreover, considerable evidence exists that organised crime is involved in many cases.”
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How To Verify Unsigned Device Drivers in Windows XP

This step-by-step article describes how you can use the Windows XP Signature Verification tool (Sigverif.exe) to find unsigned drivers and verify device drivers in Windows XP. This information can be helpful for troubleshooting system instability, error messages, boot problems, and so on.

Verify Unsigned Device Drivers

1. Click Start, click Run, type sigverif, and then click OK.
2. Click Advanced.
3. Click Look for other files that are not digitally signed.
4. In the Look in this folder box, type x:\Windows\system32\drivers, where x is the letter of the drive where Windows XP is installed.
5. On the Logging tab, make sure the Save the file signature verification results to a log file check box is selected, and then click OK.
6. Click Start.NOTE: The log file is named Sigverif.txt, and it is saved in the Windows folder. Third-party drivers that are unsigned are displayed as “Not signed.” Use the drivers in this list as your troubleshooting starting point. You can backup your ‘’Not Signed” driver to a different folder and reboot your PC. I’m 99.999% sure it will resolve your issue. If problem still persist try following:

Disable Unsigned Device Drivers

A common problem is power management features, and Microsoft requires power management support to certify drivers. Many third-party unsigned drivers lack this support, resulting in power management problems (such as problems going into or coming out of hibernation and standby).

After you find unsigned drivers, you can disable them by using any of the following methods:

• Disable the device in Device Manager (you may have to click Show hidden devices on the View menu, and then disable the device under the Non-Plug and Play Drivers branch).
• Uninstall the software that installed the third-party driver by using the Add/Remove Programs tool in Control Panel.
• Rename the driver in the Winnt\System32\Drivers folder.

MS KB308514
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