SECURITY...

• SHA-1 Broken - The research team of Xiaoyun Wang, Yiqun Lisa Yin, and Hongbo Yu (mostly from Shandong University in China) have been quietly circulating a paper announcing their results: collisions in the the full SHA-1 in 2**69 hash operations, much less than the brute-force attack of 2**80 operations based on the hash length; collisions in SHA-0 in 2**39 operations; collisions in 58-round SHA-1 in 2**33 operations. This attack builds on previous attacks on SHA-0 and SHA-1, and is a major, major cryptanalytic result. It pretty much puts a bullet into SHA-1 as a hash function for digital signatures (although it doesn't affect applications such as HMAC where collisions aren't important).
• Napster hack leads to free downloads - Blogs were buzzing Tuesday about the resurgence of an old technique for recording music on a computer, reapplied to Napster's all-you-can-eat subscription music plan. Using software freely available from America Online's Winamp division, it's possible to turn Napster's copy-protected downloads into unprotected files that can be burned by the hundreds or even thousands freely to CDs.
• Hacking victims face legal threat - Home computer users could be sued if they allow their computers to be taken over and used by hackers, legal representatives speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco have claimed. A panel looking at the usefulness of insurance against cyber-crime discussed the likelihood of home users being sued if their computers were used to perform distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
• Court: Wife broke law with spyware - A wife who installed spyware on her husband's computer to secretly record evidence of an extramarital affair violated state law, a Florida court ruled Friday. The Florida Appeals Court, Fifth District said that Beverly Ann O'Brien "illegally obtained" records of husband James' online conversations with another woman as the two played Yahoo Dominoes together. "It is illegal and punishable as a crime under (state law) to intercept electronic communications," wrote Judge Donald Grincewicz on behalf of a three-judge panel.
• T-Mobile hacker in guilty plea - Nicholas Lee Jacobsen was arrested in October on suspicion of accessing the personal information of potentially hundreds of T-Mobile customers. Under the initial charges Jacobsen faced two felony charges. That will now be reduced to a single charge of intentional access to a protected computer and recklessly causing damage as part of his guilty plea. The hacker could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
• Microsoft to offer free spyware blocker - Stepping up its fight against computer threats, Microsoft Corp. announced yesterday that it will give away a program to combat PC-clogging spyware and other virtual pests. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates also unveiled plans to release antivirus tools for consumers and make a major security upgrade to its Internet Explorer Web browser. At the same time, he showed off new software for businesses to combat security threats.
• Microsoft to Put Patch Service to the Test - Microsoft Corp. Tuesday confirmed that it will release in March a beta version of what it is calling a unified software update service for consumers and small and midsize businesses.  Called Microsoft Update, the service will provide a single location for users to get security and performance patches for Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Office 2003 and Exchange Server 2003.
• Free Tool Identifies Hidden Data in Office Docs - A company called Workshare Technology now offers a free safety net from the potential embarrassment of a public display of these hidden and forgotten comments and changes. The company's Trace application sends out an alert if hidden information, also known as metadata, is embedded in a Microsoft Office file. When hidden data is identified, a dialogue box pops up from your system tray alerting you. Clicking on the alert message generates a report of all the hidden data inside the file. Workshare Trace, announced early this month, is available for download now.
• Quake 3 Infostring DoS - The Quake 3 engine has problems to handle big queries allowing an attacker to shutdown any game server based on this engine: ERROR: Info_SetValueForKey: oversize infostring; In some of the vulnerable games is also possible to crash the server.

OFF-TOPIC...

• Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Trailer - The new trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is now online.
• Straczynski Offers To Re-Boot Star Trek - J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5 and Jeremiah) made a post on usenet where he talks about the cancellation of Enterprise. It seems he and a collaborator have already written a series bible and treatment for a new version of Star Trek - but it's not been pitched to Paramount out of 'political considerations' (Berman refusing to give up his dead horse?). JMS calls for everyone who thinks a JMS-run Star Trek series would be a good idea to write Paramount and let them know (thanks Slashdot.org)
• Brainpower as easy as X and Y - Michael Gurian, psychologist and author of "What Could He Be Thinking?", believes there are about a hundred structural differences that have been identified between the male and female brain. To find out why these differences exist, scientists have taken voyages deep inside the gray matter using MRI scans. The scans show that in most women, the corpus callosum area, which handles communication between the brain's two "hemispheres", is larger.

TECHNOLOGY...

• New copy-proof DVDs on the way? - Macrovision on Tuesday released a new DVD copy-protection technology in hopes of substantially broadening its role in Hollywood's antipiracy effort. Macrovision executives said that even if it's not perfect, the new RipGuard DVD technology can prevent much of the copying done with such tools and can help bolster studios' DVD sales.
• IE 7.0 Leaves Windows 2000 Users Out in the Cold? - As I mentioned yesterday, Microsoft is planning a new version of Internet Explorer for Windows XP SP2. However, it seems that IE 7.0 will be available only to Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2) customers. Asked to explain the rationale for limiting IE 7.0 to XP SP2 users when the majority of businesses are still running Windows 2000, Barzdukas (director of product management in Microsoft's security business technology unit) left the door open slightly. "Windows XP SP2 is the scope of the project at the moment. That's what we feel comfortable committing to. We haven't closed the door on potentially providing it to other platforms," he said.
• Novell Releasing Hula and 200,000+ Lines of Code - The project is derived from the Novell NetMail product and provides web-based email and calendaring.
• Ballmer *hearts* the new Xbox (Xbox 2) - In typically exuberant form, Steve Ballmer talked about the new Xbox yesterday at Microsoft's Redmond campus, telling tales of its 'unbelievable' graphics and stating that it was 'an amazing, amazing innovation.'
• Nvidia launches new wireless multimedia processor - Nvidia released a new wireless multimedia processor  - the GoForce 3D 4800, for mobile devices. The processor boasts pixel-shading and support for up to six simultaneous textures, which can improve the look of mobile games. It also handles 3D graphics better than its predecessors and includes a codec-supporting, VGA-resolution video of up to 30 frames per second. The GoForce 3D 4800 is expected to be less power-hungry than other chips, prolonging battery life. Phones based on the processor are expected at the end of 2005.
• SiS signs 1066MHz-FSB licensing agreement with Intel - Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) has signed a licensing agreement with Intel that will allow SiS to produce chipsets supporting front-side bus (FSB) speeds up to 1066MHz, according to a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE).

HARDWARE... 

• Dell announces 24" widescreen LCD - The UltraSharpTM 2405FPW will be on sale for $1,199 in the Americas and Europe on March 1, 2005. The wide-screen monitor is ideal for graphics professionals, computing enthusiasts and gamers. The native resolution of 1920x12002 helps ensure detailed images are crisp and clear and typical response times of 12ms3 mean fast-moving content is displayed with minimal distortion.
• Sapphire Radeon X850 XT - The GPU of this card is the R480 - yeah we know it's listed as a completely different model than the R420 predecessor, however, it's functionally the exact same chip. The primary difference is that it's built using an advanced .11-micron process which allows for an overall smaller chip that can run at faster clock rates. It still has 16 pixel pipelines, six vertex shaders and a 256bit memory interface.
• Prolink GeForce 6600 GT AGP - When we tweak the product we see some nice overclocking potential, the 562 MHz core is good and boosting another 200 MHz out of its memory again will bring you an extra overall ~10% performance increase. So here you have this AGP 8x product with great performance, is 100% stable in an AGP 8x configuration (we did not have one crash), offers dualview, the latest 3D feature set including Shader Model 3.0, offers HDTV output and in general offers anything you expect from a good graphics cards these days
• Foxconn's WinFast NF4UK8AA motherboard - Foxconn's WinFast NF4UK8AA is the least expensive nForce4 Ultra motherboard on the market. With a street price hovering under $110, the board costs $30-40 less than most other nForce4 Ultras. That's quite a savings when you consider that the $110 price point is largely occupied by nForce4 "4x" motherboards that don't officially support a 1GHz HyperTransport link.
• 8ms 19" LCDs: Speed for Gaming, but at What Cost? - THG tested three 8ms 19" LCD monitors: the BenQ FP937s+, the Hyundai L90D+, and the much-awaited Samsung 913N.
• ViewSonic VP171b 8ms LCD monitor - Right now there are still plenty of 16ms monitors available in stores, so be sure to verify with the vendor that you want in the 8ms version. If the seller isn't sure, there are a number of ways to determine this. I'd ask them to confirm the model number, which can be found on the box. If the last two characters are either '4W' or '5W' then it's the 8ms display. If they are '2W' or '3W', it's the 16ms display. For those who have already bought one, you can always check out the model number by navigating your way to the 'Information' menu in the on-screen display (OSD).
• Canon's $250 Pixma IP90 portable photo printer - Canon's $250 Pixma IP90 portable photo printer offers good prints for mobile users. The 4-pound unit prints better and faster than its predecessor, the Canon I80, and even competes with full-size rivals. The PC World Test Center clocked the IP90 printing text at 6.3 pages per minute--faster than many desktop inkjet printers and 10 percent quicker than the I80. Color graphics came at a relatively slow 1.4 ppm, but our test photo printed in a reasonable 2 minutes, 33 seconds, nearly a minute faster than the I80.

GUIDES... 

• NVIDIA ForceWare tweak guide - This guide refers to the latest Official Nvidia Forceware drivers Version 66.93.
• Forceware 74.11 Benchmarks - OnlyNewZ informed us they have got their hands on the Forceware 74.11 beta drivers and took some benchmarks with it. Benchmark results for Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and 3DMark05.

SOFTWARE...

• Excel 2003 Add-in: XML Tools Add-in - Learn how to use the Microsoft Office Excel 2003 XML Tools Add-in Version 1.1. With it, you can provide information about a selected cell's XML properties, create XSD files for XML maps, rename the Root and Row elements, or refresh all of the XML maps in a workbook at once.
• Windows Media Player 10 Build 10.00.00.3802 - MicroSoft has released an updated build (non-english) of its Windows Media Player 10 bringing it to version 10.00.00.3802
• FastStone Screen Capture 1.5 - FastStone Screen Capture is a screen capture utility with integrated image viewer. It enables you to capture Windows, objects, selections or the entire desktop, and apply additional editing tools like resizing, sharpening, and more.
• SpamExtract 2.10 - SpamExtract (download) is built to understand that what may be considered spam to you, may not be considered spam to someone else. SpamExtract is effective because it uses complex algorithms to sort between what is spam and what is not spam.
• ActiveLaunch v 1.71 (shw) - ActiveLaunch (download trial version) gives you the ability to open frequently used applications and documents from the keyboard, without having to memorize a multitude of hotkeys.
• ASUS Ai Booster 1.01.14 - The ASUS Ai Booster (info ~ PDF)is an innovative application that allows overclocking of system components in Windows environment. This utility lets you overclock the CPU either manually or automatically without the hassle of entering the BIOS Setup.
• NVIDIA Forceware 71.81 - This one is version 71.81, works for Windows 2000/XP and is Microsoft WHQL certified. The driver is dated January 28 2005.