Monday, December 25, 2000		Latest in IT world

‘Worming up’ for New Year

Christmas and the New Year eve are the time for fun. On this occasion of festivity, it is likely that some negative thinkers may try to block upbeat mood of fun and frolic by playing mischief and releasing virus in the world of computers. The anti-virus companies have sounded red alert for this time and have advised users to be watchful for virus attacks. However, during the last week a new Internet Worm! - Worm XTC has been discovered by central commands, a leading provider of PC anti-virus software and computer security services, and it targets New Years' days. It may effects Windows 95/98Me/NT. This worm uses a new technique for replication and can be remotely controlled through the Internet. Unlike the viruses, which have been discovered in the past few months, this virus does not attack the address book of the infected computer to send e-mails. But it uses the temporary Internet files folders to search through HTML and HTML files for e-mail addresses. Thus the impact of this virus could be deadlier as many anti-virus software warn of virus activity in the computer, when the address book of the computer receives a virus as an attachment. Since this virus uses the cache stored in the browser for e-mail addresses, many virus alert software may not be able to detect it. This worm can also travel through an Internet relay chat channel also and may thus be controlled by the relay chat operator through the Internet. If this virus comes through an e-mail, then it comes with the subject: "AVX update notification". Once it starts operations in a computer, it will first affect the Internet browser and will change the default Web page to http://www.therainforest.com. Experts have suggested against opening any e-mail with this attachment.

World's one of the most popular free Web-based e-mail service provider, Hotmail.com, was in the news recently. This time it was in news because it's e-mail services were affected, which left quite a number of persons in lurch. Microsoft Corporation's Hotmail.com has over 84 million e-mail subscriber, some of them faced difficulty during the past few days as their account remained inoperable due to systems upgrade at Hotmail.com. However, officials at Microsoft say that these upgrades are aimed at providing better services to the customers. But break in the service has affected many customers instead. It is not for the first time that the services of the Microsoft Corporation were affected. Last year too the surfers suffered a similar outrage when the company failed to pay a $ 35 registration fee for the domain name Passport.com. However, the services were restored by payment of registration amount by a Linux programmer, who was being reimbursed eventually. Though other free Web-based services also get off the track due to problems and up gradation of systems, the break in services of hotmail have been more in the last few years.