SECURITY...

• Scammers Could Hijack Pop-Ups - Security researchers warned this week of a vulnerability in most Web browsers which could potentially allow scammers to launch phishing attacks from pop-up windows on trusted Web sites. The vulnerability arises when an Internet user opens browser windows for both a legitimate Web site and a malicious site at the same time. Because of an old functionality that exists in most browsers, the malicious site can potentially display information in a pop-up window from the trusted site, according to Secunia Research. Another article can be found here.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer FTP Command Injection Vulnerability - The vulnerability is caused due to insufficient input validation of FTP URIs. This can be exploited by e.g. a malicious website to inject arbitrary FTP commands in a FTP session using a specially crafted pathname containing "%0A" characters.
• Fake Lycos Screensaver Hides a Keylogger - This week, F-Secure warns of emails that seemingly contain the screensaver but instead delivers a dangerous payload that piggybacks on the buzz surrounding Lycos' controversial program. According to the company, the fake emails can be quickly identified via the following attributes: Subject: Be the first to fight spam with Lycos screen saver Attachment: Lycos screensaver to fight spam.zip The malicious code, known as TrojanDropper.FakeSpamFighter, drops Perfect Keylogger components onto a victim's PC. In related news, Lycos Europe has axed the distribution of a controversial screensaver designed to target websites that profit from spam, claiming that the company has made its point. The Make Love Not Spam website no longer offers the screensaver for download, and Lycos Europe said that any attacks on websites will now have stopped.
• Playgirl virus attacks Chechen rebel sites - An email virus that poses as pictures of a nude glamour model actually contains malicious code designed to launch denial-of-service attacks on websites run by Chechen separatists. The Maslan-C worm spreads via email with the subject line '123' and an attached file called 'Playgirls2.exe'. It also spreads across network shares. Running the infected attachment further spreads the email worm as well as turning infected PCs into participants in a distributed denial-of-service attacks.
• NT4 users face upgrade dilemma - Those still running NT4 face the choice of migrating to alternative operating systems or running the server unsupported. Although datacentre and mission-critical systems are likely to have been migrated already, analyst firm Gartner estimates that 35% of users will still have an NT4 server running in their businesses. Gartner research director Ian Brown said many of those users could find themselves running the NT4 server unsupported during 2005 because they have been unable to keep track of the configuration of all the servers they have deployed.
• Password imperfect - For years, Microsoft has hammered away at the security flaws in its desktop operating system. Now the company is looking to plug another security hole: weak passwords. Moving to biometric and smart cards is a wave that is coming, and we see our leading customers doing this," Gates told attendees at the IT Forum in Denmark last month. "In time, we will completely replace passwords."
• Two arrested during modded Xbox raids in Washington area - Federal authorities raided three Washington, D.C.-area video game stores and arrested two people for modifying video game consoles to play pirated video games, a video game industry group said on Wednesday. The Entertainment Software Association said the Dec. 1 raids at three Pandora's Cube stores in Maryland and Virginia were a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice's computer crimes unit, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Maryland and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Cellphone sniffs out dirty bombs - A smart phone that can detect radiation may soon be helping the police to find the raw materials for radioactive "dirty bombs" before they are deployed. The phones will glean data as the officers carrying them go about their daily business, and the information will be used to draw up maps of radiation that will expose illicit stores of nuclear material.
• Amazon launches DVD rental service in the UK - Amazon said its U.K. service will start at about $15.50 a month. Customers also will get 10 percent off DVD purchases. The lowest-price service will let customers keep two DVDs at a time, and rent a total of four DVDs per month. For about $19.30 per month, customers can keep up to three DVDs at a time, and rent six per month.
• Babylon 5 Movie Starts Filming in April - According to comingsoon.net, the first theatrical Babylon 5 movie, "The Memory of the Shadows" starts filming in April. The story was written by series creator J. Michael Straczynski."

TECHNOLOGY...

• Disney Backs Blu-ray Standard - Walt Disney and its Buena Vista Home Entertainment division have thrown their support behind the Blu-ray high-definition disc format, providing another big name for Blu-ray backers to attach to their campaign, Disney announced this week. Blu-ray is a standard for the next generation of optical video discs promoted by Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and others. It is designed to store high-definition video content and can store up to 25GB of data on a single-layer disc and up to 50GB of data on a dual-layer disc.
• 400,000 Additional DSs Available by Year's End  - Nintendo Co. said it is boosting holiday shipments of its new Nintendo DS dual-screen hand-held gaming device to 1.4 million in North America, from the previously announced 1 million, to help alleviate shortages and meet consumer demand for the device. The ability to increase the shipments for the holidays resulted from higher-than-expected volume at production facilities in China, said George Harrison, senior vice president with Redmond-based Nintendo of America.
• David Bienvenu, Thunderbird Developer Interview - Neowin.net has posted an interview with David Bienvenu, one of the developers of Thunderbird. David talks about the challenges of 1.0, and Thunderbird's future in general.
• Nero brings MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 to the masses with latest Nero Digital update - Ahead Software today announced that its brand new MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec is now fully integrated in Nero Recode 2.2, currently part of the Nero 6 digital media suite. With this inclusion, AVC/H.264 becomes a central part of the wider Nero Digital MPEG-4 technology, delivering a new dimension in superior audio and video compression.
• MXM in a Desktop? - NVIDIA are working on a reference design which is low profile, with consumer electronic concept.They are putting the MXM connector on a motherboard, and depending on which GPU they pick it can give low heat and low profile, this could be an ideal Media Centre environment.

HARDWARE...

• NVIDIA to Create SoundStorm 2  - NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang addressed questions about the company's plans for a possible second spin of its popular but ill-fated SoundStorm audio solution. Apparently, a reprise of SoundStorm will happen. Huang told the assembled press types, "We're gonna build SoundStorm 2. It's gonna be awesome." He was less clear on what form the next SoundStorm would take, saying that NVIDIA was still trying to figure out how to deliver SoundStorm as a product. Huang said, cryptically, that the new SoundStorm "will come in a way that you won't expect."
• AMD releases details of 90 nm Opterons, multicore chips - All 90 nm processors reduce thermal design power from 89 Watts to 67 Watts, core voltage drops from 1.5 Volts to 1.4 Volts. The case temperature of the chips drops from 70 to 65 degrees Celsius, support for Socket 940 and integration of 1 MByte L2 cache remains unchanged. The new series includes the single-system Opteron 146 with a clock speed of 2.0 GHz, the dual-system version 246 (2.0 GHz), the dual-system 248 (2.2 GHz) as well as the four and eight-way version 846 (2.0 GHz).
• AMD Semprons to migrate to 754 pins only - Socket 754 boards are really getting very cheap and make a perfect board for Semprons. AMD plans to move Samprons to socket 754 only by the end of 2005. This will really mean the end of Athlon XP marchitecture as current socket 462, Socket A Semprons are nothing much than renamed Athlon XPs.
• Nvidia readies Turbo Cache GeForce 6200 - This, we understand throws data dynamically memory so bungs data where it can deliver the best system performance. So with say 512MB of system memory, and local display memory of 16MB, 32MB and 64MB, you'll get effective frame buffer for apps of 128MB, 128MB and 256MB respectively. All of this isn't for free, but Nvidia figures it will help people out a lot on both price and performance.
• World's first Gigabit gaming router arrives - D-Link today announced what it claims is the world's first Gigabit Ethernet router designed specifically for gaming. The firm's GamerLounge DGL-4300 wireless router features GameFuel technology, an intelligent packet processing engine which gives online games precedence for bandwidth over all other internet applications such as email and FTP transfers. According to D-Link, the offering is the first router with four 1,000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet ports offering up to 108Mbps 802.11g wireless connectivity for Lan party and wireless Lan connections.
• Samsung ships 512 Mbit GDDR3 memory - The transition from 256 Mbit to 512 Mbit as the most advanced type of memory for graphics cards is scheduled with volume shipments of the memory, which is planned "early next year", according to Samsung. The company said that higher density will allow graphics card memory to jump to 512 MByte capacity and result in an increase in performance and the display of richer textures.
• Tapwave Zodiac 2 Mobile Entertainment Console review - Equipped with the powerful Motorola i.MX1 ARM9 processor and integrated ATI graphics acceleration, the Zodiac 1 and Zodiac 2 come with 32MB and 128MB of memory respectively. Each can be expanded by slotting in SD, SDIO or MMC cards into the handhelds two expansion slots, offering up to 2GB of additional storage - enough for a significant number of songs, photos, e-books, audible books, games, videos, and business documents.
• Nokia 6670 smart phone review - The phone itself is a fairly standard tri-band GSM handset. Options such as being able to record ten minutes of video on the megapixel digicam with 4x zoom may be useful, as might the 64MB reduced-size MMC card that comes lodged in the phone's innards for storing extra images, applications and ringtones. It has a poor (these days) 8MB of memory built in. The handset's 900mAh battery offers a reasonable 140 minutes of talk time or 240 hours on stand-by. Its display is 65,535-colour 176 x 208 job of the kind we've already seen on the 6600.
• Creative Zen Portable Media Center - The Creative Zen Portable Media Center puts all your favorite videos, music, and photos at your fingertips wherever you are. Take digital entertainment from your PC with you on the go, including recorded TV shows, downloaded videos, home movies, music, and photos. With Windows Mobile software featuring an easy-to-use, familiar Windows Media Center Edition interface, Portable Media Centers let you enjoy immediate access to all of your favorite entertainment - anytime, anywhere.
• Mushkin 1GByte (2x512MB) Level-II PC3200 RAM - Mushkin has evidently seen the fantastic flexibility of Samsung's latest performance ICs, ranging from ultra-low latencies through to high MHz speeds with relaxed timings, and used them in its latest iteration of high-performance RAM. It's needed to, really, as Corsair and OCZ already have 2-2-2-5 PC3200 modules available right now. Performance-wise, there's not much to say other than it's predictably excellent memory.
• ASUS A8N-SLI - Hot Hardware has snagged an ASUS A8N-SLI nForce4 motherboard for AMD, 2 PCIe GeForce 6800 Ultras and 2 PCIe GeForce 6800 GTs for a round of benching mayhem.
• Seagate ST1 1-Inch Hard Disk Drive review - What actually allowed the 5GB ST1 product to perform so well in our tests? It looks like the drive owes this impressive performance primarily to high data density per platter and large 2MB buffer, which is not typical of a 1-inch HDD. I have to admit that this time we unfortunately didn’t have the chance to take a closer look at the power consumption of the new solution, so we will definitely be posting an update to this article later on, when we get the chance to perform the required measurements.
• Lian Li PC-6077 Mid-tower Case - The Lian Li PC-6077 mid-tower case is a very accomodating case that offers a lot to help its owners maintain its good looks and easily swap hardware in and out of it without much burden. The supplied bezels for a tray-loading optical drive and a floppy drive are great for maintaining the nice silver aluminum appearance of this case.
• Saitek Gamers' Keyboard - The command pad has 9 buttons as well as two separate buttons. These are like shift keys so it gives you a total of 27 programmable buttons. For gamers this is a huge incentive, especially for RPG players and their love for hotkeys. FPS gamers will love to be able to do everything with one hand, instead of reaching all over the keyboard for different keys.

GUIDES...

• Overclocking the AMD ATHLON XP-M CPU - In summary, the AMD Athlon 2500 XP-M chip showed itself to be extremely overclockable. The 40% overclock we accomplished is quite noteworthy, and is significantly better than what most other chips are capable of, save perhaps the older Thoroughbred XP1700, XP1800 and XP2100 models. With the chip’s lower internal resistance translating into cooler operation, this processor can perform wonders in an overclocking environment; with the only side affect being greater power usage.
• Holiday technoshopping? Get your list out - Already out of ideas for holiday shopping? Here are some gifts that may surprise even those technophiles who say they have everything

SOFTWARE...

• mIRC Power Pack 7.10 Beta 5 beta - mIRC Power Pack (MPP) is a powerful script for mIRC designed specifically for gamers. It inlcudes five different game browsers - so you can pick which one you like the best. Its Multi-Server Connection Manager is one of the very best.
• Google Toolbar 2.0.114.9 - A new version of Google Toolbar is available is out.
• DVD Region+CSS Free 5.61 - DVD Region+CSS Free enables you to watch and copy any region code CSS-encrypted DVD movies on any DVD drive! It fully supports region-protected (RPC2) DVD drives, and does not require any firmware modifications.
• Maxthon Standard 1.1.090 - Maxthon (formerly MyIE2) (combo ~ standard) is a powerful web browser with a highly customizable interface. It is based on the Internet Explorer engine which means that what works in IE, works the same in Maxthon but with many additional efficient features like Tabbed Browsing Interface; Mouse Gestures; Super Drag&Drop; Privacy Protection; AD Hunter; Google Bar Support; External Utility Bar; and Skinning.
• Pioneer DVR-108 firmware - Pioneer has released a new firmware for the DVR-108 series. The new firmware release brings the drive up to version 1.18 from the previous 1.14 firmware. This new firmware adds support for 16x writing on New 16x DVD-R/+R Media and more.
• NVIDIA nForce 6.xx - These driver are the mainboard chipset drivers for all nVIDIA nFORCE based mainboards. Consider this release as beta and use at your own risk! This nForce Win2K/XP driver package contains the below components: Audio driver version 4.57 (WHQL), Audio utility version 4.50, Ethernet NRM driver version 4.59 (WHQL) with 4.62 nvtcp.sys, Network management tools version 4.62, SMBus driver version 4.45 (WHQL) with updated uninstaller files, Installer version 4.58, Win2K IDE 2.7 driver version 4.64 (WHQL) with 4.74 raidtool, WinXP IDE 2.7 driver version 4.64 (WHQL) with 4.74 raidtool.