SECURITY...

• Denial-of-Service Flaw Found in DNS Protocol - A high-profile security research outfit on Tuesday warned that a newly discovered flaw in the Domain Name System protocol could be exploited remotely to crash vulnerable servers. In a public advisory, the NISCC said the flaw exists in the recursion process used by some DNS implementations to decompress compressed DNS messages. "Under certain circumstances, it is possible to cause the DNS server to terminate abnormally," the Center said.
• Miscreants encrypt files, hold them for ransom -  Researchers at Symantec have seen the malicious program used in the ransom attack. The "Trojan.Pgpcoder" searches a victim's hard disk drive for 15 common file types, including images and Microsoft Office file types. It then encrypts the files, removes the originals and drops a note asking $200 for the encryption key, Friedrichs said. If the Trojan successfully completes its encoding routine on all files, it will delete itself through the creation of the file c:tmp.bat. This .bat file will also delete itself.
• Worm, phishing scam hit IM services - Piggybacking on the popularity of the new "Star Wars" movie, a new worm and a phishing scam target AOL and Yahoo IM users.
• MS SQL Server Passwords Bruteforce via SQL Injection (PoC) - The following tool will utilize SQL injection vulnerabilities to brute force MS SQL's sa password.
• Attack on the zombie spammers - The Federal Trade Commission yesterday stepped up its campaign against spammers by asking Internet service providers to better monitor "zombies," or computers infected with programs that send out millions of e-mail messages without the owner's knowledge. The commission is enlisting the help of agencies from about two dozen countries to send letters to more than 3,000 ISPs, detailing ways they can help customers keep their computers secure and identify the zombie machines.
• Microsoft: SP2 makes Windows 15 times safer - Computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2 are 15 times less likely than those running XP or XP SP1 to be infected by some of the most dangerous forms of malware, according to a Microsoft security guru.
• Microsoft seeks protection from spyware firms - Microsoft wants the Senate to rewrite anti-spyware legislation (statement) in order to protect companies that provide spyware removal utilities. The software maker warned Tuesday that two bills approved by the House of Representatives this week fail to prevent "frivolous lawsuits" filed by adware and spyware companies that are upset when their code is removed. Microsoft's fears are hardly theoretical. Gator, now known as Claria, sued anti-spyware company PC Pitstop on grounds that included trade libel, false advertising and tortious interference. Claria distributes pop-up ad software, often bundled with free applications, that some surveys say is installed without a person's direct knowledge and consent.
• Decriminalizing File Sharing in France - Record labels and movie studios are counting on the courts to help wage their war against global online piracy. But in France, some courts are refusing to go along. Judicial activism is roiling the entertainment industry here, as judges release convicted fileswappers with suspended sentences associated with otherwise draconian penalties stipulated by copyright law.

OFFTOPIC...

• In-car DVD is legal - A car with a built-in DVD system can't be impounded, say KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) traffic authorities. However, the system should be installed in the driver's seat headrest, for safety reasons. This follows a recent article in a Durban newspaper, stating that motorists face a risk of having their cars impounded if they have in-car DVD systems.
• The 2020 vision of robotic assistants unveiled - Several utility robots, including autonomous garbage collectors, vacuum cleaners and security guards, are already patrolling the wider Expo. But the Prototype Robot Exhibition gives academics and commercial researchers a chance to showcase a more distant vision of robot utopia. The exhibition features a mock-ups of homes, streets and workplaces from the year 2020 and more than sixty different types of robot will be exhibited
• Light gun fires photons one by one - The first photon gun capable of firing single particles of light over optical fibres was unveiled on Tuesday. The breakthrough may remove one of the final obstacles keeping perfectly secure messages from being sent over standard telephone fibres.

TECHNOLOGY...

• IBM will unlock door to Cell - The three developers of the Cell processor are preparing to release full chip specifications and software libraries in an effort to rally the open-source community around the device that powers the Sony Playstation 3. With the outlook for the multicore chip's use beyond Sony's internal systems cloudy at best, the partners are hoping to spark its uptake in applications ranging from HDTVs to supercomputers.
• Virtual Earth Video - This is MSN's answer to Google Maps, coming in July 2005. As you see in the video MSN Virtual Earth goes noticeably further than Google Maps or other mapping services. In addition to complementing MSN's local search index, MSN Virtual Earth will let users overlay maps and satellite photos in order to create hybrid images that combine the best of both mediums, says Stephen Lawler, general manager of Microsoft's MapPoint unit. Microsoft officials said it will become available sometime between June 21 and September 22.
• Prodisc Boosts DVD-R Capacity - Prodisc Technology has developed a DVD-R disc that can hold 200MB more data than current discs and plans to unveil it at next week's Computex show in Taiwan. The disc has a capacity of 4.9GB, versus 4.7GB for a conventional DVD-R. The extra capacity was realized by reducing the gap between the successive turns of the disc's spiral recording track. By reducing the gap, also called the track pitch, a longer track can be fitted onto the disc and so more data can be stored.
• IBM starts 45 nanometre chip development - Big Blue has inked a $200 million deal with the Tokyo-based Toppan Printing to jointly build a 45 nanometre chip making process that may be ready for production by mid-2007

HARDWARE... 

• Unreal creator believes G70 beats R520 - Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games, maker of the Unreal and Unreal Tournament games confessed that he believes that G70 Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX is actually going to end up better than ATI's upcoming R520. In a video interview, a chap asked Tim "I have to ask you: R520 or G70?"  Tim smiled and said, "Oh, G70 for sure." You can download his video confession here  I have to advise you to be careful about your thoughts, as Tim and Epic are in bed with Nvidia with it's "TWIMTBP" (The way its mean to be played) marketing program. Epic also happened to be was showing its Unreal 3 engine at Nvidia's booth.
• Intel Pentium D 820 May Be Incompatible with Third Party Chipsets - Intel Pentium D processor model 820 may not be compatible with at least some of the chipsets by third party designers, according to ASUS, NVIDIA and X-bit labs performance testing experience. The lowest-speed grade dual-core processor from Intel does not work properly on some of NVIDIA nForce4 Intel Edition-based mainboards, it emerged. NVIDIA's spokesperson confirmed that the company had scrapped support for Intel Pentium D processor 820, which works at 2.80GHz, on its chipsets citing low demand for such chip from enthusiasts. NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipsets will only support Intel dual-core processors at 3.0GHz and above, including Intel Pentium D and Intel Pentium Extreme Edition products.
• Elonex Lumina 40in Media Center PC - The most obvious improvement with this latest itteration of the Lumina is the 40in LCD panel that makes up the basis of the machine. Elonex has used a Samsung TFT panel with a native resolution of 1,366 x 768, which of course equates to a true 16:9 aspect ratio. Specification wise, the panel offers an 800:1 contrast ratio, which isn’t bad for an LCD, along with a commendable 16ms typical response time.
• Athlon 64 3800+ 90nm Venice - The gaming performance side was hardly a surprise, as the Athlon 64 3800+ Venice managed to show a noticeable improvement compared to its 130nm counterpart, and never once fell behind the older Newcastle core. Compared to the Athlon 64 4000+, with its monstrous 1-MB L2 cache, the Venice simply couldn't keep up in the gaming arena. Even given the debut of the San Diego 1-MB 90nm core, this is very understandable due to AMD's current model number and pricing structure. The only area we got a few surprises in was the sub-system and media encoding areas, where the Athlon 64 3800+ Venice proved to be a serious contender to the Athlon 64 4000+ and even outperformed it in three out of the four benchmarks.
• GSkill 2-3-3-6 PC3200 Memory (F1-3200PHU2-1GBLA) - This may look like your average "value" RAM, but GSkill makes some pretty big claims, saying "It is capable of achieving outrageous speeds of up to 433MHZ [at 2-3-3-6] OR DDR480 above at CL 2.5-4-4-8". DDR480 from a low priced set of PC3200 memory is nothing to turn your nose up at.
• DDR2 memory group test - Developed by JEDEC and championed by Intel, DDR2 isn't just DDR running at higher speeds with the number "2" tagged on the end. Yes it runs faster, starting at the 400MHz threshold where DDR currently ends, but  there are other important technologies implemented into its design.
• Hitachi's Deskstar T7K250 hard drive - Regardless, the T7K250 held its own against the competition. With a strong WorldBench performance, quick load and boot times, and the lowest noise levels of the pack, the Deskstar seems best suited for desktop and perhaps media center applications. Unfortunately, our IOMeter results suggest that the T7K250 isn't as well-suited for database, workstation, or file server use, although its performance with the web server test pattern is quite impressive.
• Mouse round-up - Nevertheless, Logitech expects to grab hardcore gamers' attention with the MX1000 and from what we have seen, they haven't done bad at all. People more sensitive to high prices will want to know the MX1000 can now be bought for slightly more than $50 which is way better than the introductory price of ~$80.
• Samsung SyncMaster 243T - PyroPort take a brief look at Samsung SyncMaster 243T.
• Samsung 910MP & 730B -  The 730B was a great monitor. I found the smaller screen more favourable when I was playing SWAT 4, but your preferences may be different. This doesn't mean I didn't like the 930MP for gaming as it will give CRTs a good run for their money. Given the size advantage these LCDs have over CRTs and the advancing of various display technologies, the CRT days are numbered.

GUIDES... 

• GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB PCI-E Voltage Mods - The 512Mb 6800 Ultra PCI Express cards have a different layout compared to the 6800 ultra 256Mb. As such, voltage modding them are a bit different.
• Microsoft's Windows XP Professional x64 Edition - If you are a casual desktop user or gamer, we would recommend sticking with Windows XP Professional (32-bit) for the time being. Migrating to a 64-bit OS at this time will present more headaches and you will not see a huge (if any) performance benefit. In addition, a lot of consumer-level hardware won't have 64-bit drivers and consumer-level software is likely to be more problematic with the 64-bit environment, so it's really not worth the hassle at this time. The situation may change in the coming months, but it looks doubtful.
• Inside the Xbox 360, part I: procedural synthesis and dynamic worlds - In all, the Xbox 360's procedural synthesis capabilities show great promise. Of course, the big question is going to be how many polygons per second can it produce in real-time. It's way too early to tell what percentage of the polygons in the average scene will be procedurally rendered, or what kind of impact this technique is going to have on the first generation of games. But perhaps we'll get some hard data once the first generation of games are out and developers can talk in more detail about the hardware and what it can do. Part II of this series will take a closer look at the actual microarchitecture of the Xenon.
• SLI & Forcewares - 3D-Chip.de investigates single card and SLI performance of MSI GeForce 6800 GTs and MSI GeForce 6800s cards with 71.89, 76.44 Beta and 76.50 Forceware drivers.
• How To Samba With Suse 9.3 And Windows XP - This guide is intended for those using Suse 9.3 and Samba with the firewall (SuSEfirewall2) enabled. Samba works great out of the box with Suse 9.3 however the firewall adds some complexity to the issue.
• Photoshop CS2 review - TCMagazine just posted a more in-depth look at Photoshop CS2 and its new features, with an eye as to whether the upgrade from CS1 is worth the cost and hassle.

SOFTWARE...

• Error Messages For Windows 2.9 - MS Windows Error Messages is a small utility that will allow you to look up MS Windows error code numbers and display a descriptive message explaining what the numeric code actually means. If you have software programs that produce numeric error codes now you can find out what they really mean.
• Exe2VBA - Tool for Converting Backdoors to VBA Macros - download
• Network Installation Wizard, v2.1 - Network Installation Wizard, Version 2.1 for use with network installation of Office 97
• CacheDump - Recovering Windows Password Cache Entries - CacheDump will create a CacheDump NT Service to get SYSTEM right and make his stuff on the registry. Then, it will retrieve the LSA Cipher Key to decrypt (rc4/hmac_md5 GloubiBoulga) cache entries values.
• CWShredder 2.15 - A small utility for removing CoolWebSearch (aka CoolWwwSearch, YouFindAll, White-Pages.ws and a dozen other names). Spybot S&D tends to forget essential parts of the hijack, so until it updates, you can just this to completely remove the hijack. Updated to remove the new variants once they come out. ~ download
• Firefox 1.0.4 Release Optimized Build - s8v3 - The s8v3 optimized build of the Firefox 1.0.4 Release is out. It was built using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003. (ed.note. this build is much faster than the original rls!)
• Messenger Plus! Extension 3.54.132 -  A small update for Messenger Plus! (download) is now available. Version 3.54 only fixes a couple of small bugs found in version 3.52 in addition to restoring proper Unicode compatibility in every area of the software.
• News Interceptor 3 Public Beta Test - This is a total re-write using a new technology powered by RSScache.com services. This allows saving bandwidth and getting more great features.
• MetaProducts Download Express 1.8.327 Beta 1 - MetaProducts Download Express (download) is a file download replacement for Internet Explorer. Now you can control your download speeds and resume downloads without ever leaving Internet Explorer.
• BitTorrent Beta 4.1.1 with trackerless support  - Another original BT release (download).
• CoolMon 1.0 Final -
• DVD Region+CSS Free 5.88 - 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.