SECURITY... 

• Rootkit Takes Aim at AOL - Security experts have spotted a rootkit spreading through AOL's instant messaging client, marking the first instance of a rootkit file coming through the IM vector. In addition to the "lockx.exe" rootkit file, the new worm delivers a version of the Sdbot Trojan horse, said FaceTime, which sells products to protect instant-messaging traffic. Sdbot opens a backdoor on the infected PC.
• Mirabilis ICQ 2003a Buffer Overflow Download Shellcoded Exploit - This exploit requires social engineering skills to use it. For example you should tell your friend that you've found a easter-egg and if he wants to see it he has to  type your vuln. string to first and last name fields in icq then press find button etc...
• Online banking faces security upgrades - Many banks overseas, where data-privacy laws are stronger, already have deployed a second level of authentication. They give customers specialized hardware, such as a "smart card" or an electronic token that displays a changing series of passcodes.
• How The NSA Secures Computers - NSA site covering secure configuration guidelines for a number of operating systems.

CRIME/LAW...

• Microsoft Takes On Spamming Botnets - Microsoft has filed lawsuits against 13 unnamed senders of spam e-mail who used botnets to distribute their messages. The actual charges were filed in August, but Microsoft only now unveiled details about the case.
• £300k eBay Fraudsters Sentenced - A cell of three Romanian fraudsters have been sentenced to jail after pleading guilty to conspiracy to obtain fraud by deception and money laundering. The goods offered ranged from cars to concert tickets.
• Sex.com domain hijacker captured - Mexican police has arrested Stephen Cohen, a convicted con man who in 1995 defrauded authorities to take over ownership of the Sex.com internet domain.

OFF-TOPIC

• Start of Life Gene Discovered - The BBC reports that scientists from the UK and France have may found a gene responsible for controlling the fertilization of a new egg. Faults in this gene might explain why some couples struggle to get pregnant despite having healthy sperm, say the researchers from the UK and France.
• Russian Military Satellite Fails to Separate From Booster Rocket - The Russian military satellite Mozhayets-5 that was launched on Thursday failed to separate from its booster rocket Kosmos-3M. The satellite is currently rotating in a near-earth orbit with the booster’s third stage and is sending no signals to Earth.

TECHNOLOGY...

• Software Converts iTunes Songs... But Is It Legal? -  HotRecorder for Media converts songs from iTunes and Yahoo Inc.'s music service into standard MP3 files that can play on any MP3 device. The resulting files can then be played on devices that do not support copy-protection.
• Futuremark Unveils 3DMarkMobile06 - Futuremark announced 3DMarkMobile06.
• Coming Soon to a Kernel Near You: GPL 3 - After 15 years, the Free Software Foundation is just weeks away from announcing the roadmap for a rewritten GNU General Public License.
• Level 3, Cogent Agree on Traffic Deal - Avoiding Congressional intervention, Level 3 and Cogent announced on Friday that they have reached an agreement that will keep internet traffic flowing smoothly between their customers. Earlier this month Level 3 disrupted service to Cogent accusing them of overloading it's servers. The interruption of service led to problems for thousands of internet users and prompted Congress to threaten intervention. (Ed.note: Gameguru utilizes Cogent backbone...)
• Stanford engineers could hold the key to faster chips - W.M. Keck Foundation Professor of Electrical Engineering, David A.B. Miller and fellow researcher James Harris estimate that the device, a modulator, could be as small as a millionth of a meter tall and about as long. They estimate that it could operate at rates greater than 100 billion times a second, or 50 times faster than the rate of data transmissions in the computer hardware of today

HARDWARE... 

• CPU - Intel's 65nm Processors: Overclocking (preview)
• Motherboard  - Asus P5N32-SLI: Dual x16 / DFI Lanparty UT RDX200 CF-DR / Gigabyte GA-8I955X Royal / Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 (GeForce 6100/nForce 430) / Supermicro PDSGE
• Complete / SFF Systems - Acer Aspire E300-7NB73 / AOpen XC Cube MZ915-M / Falcon Northwest FragBox 2 Evaluation / Shuttle XPC SD11G5 SFF
• Memory - Corsair 2GB TWINX PC4400 DDR550 Pro Series Memory / OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 2GB Gold Edition Dual Channel / OCZ PC4000 2GB EB Platinum Ed.
• Storage - Seagate 7200.9 500GB: Mouthwatering Benchmarks / Silentmaxx HD-Silencer || 3Ware 9550SX Serial ATA-II/300 RAID Controller Lineup || OCZ Technology Rally USB 2.0 Flash Drive / SanDisk 1GB Memory Stick PRO Duo Card || Plasmon UDO30D-SE (30GB Blueray drive)
• Video - ATI's Radeon X1000 series / ATI All-In-Wonder X800XL / HIS X800 GTO IceQII iTurbo / HiS Radeon x800 GT & GTO 256MB / NVIDIA GeForce 6150 and GeForce 6100 / Powercolor X800GT / PowerColor X800 GT Xtreme Edition / Sapphire Radeon X1800 XL vs. XFX GeForce 7800 GT / Sapphire X800 GTO2 / X800 GTO - Sapphire and HIS / Watch Out For GeCube / XFX GeForce 7800 GT 256MB
• Monitor/TV - Dell 2405 fpw LCD Monitor / Samsung Syncmaster 173P+ 17" LCD
• Cooling - Evercool FOX-3 System Blower / PowerColor Heat Buster PCI slot cooler / Thermaltake Blue Orb II / Vapochill Micro CPU Cooler / Zalman Reserator 1 Plus / Zalman CNPS9500 LED Heatsink
• WaterCooling - Gigabyte 3D Aurora & 3D Galaxy Liquid Cooling / Innovatek Premium XXS watercooling kit / Swiftech H2O-Apex + MCW55 Water Cooling
• Case - Aspire X-CRUISER-RD Case / SilverStone SG01B / SilverStone LC16M HTPC Case (video-review) /  XG Ninja 2 Case
• Modding - Sunbeamtech Theta TP-101 Fan Controller
• PSU - PSU roundup / Sansun Arctic 550W PSU / Super Flower 480W Plug N Power PSU
• Sound - Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic Sound Card / SteelSound 5H-USB Professional Gaming Headset
• Peripheral - Ergonomic Mouse Roundup / Canon PowerShot SD450 / Logitech G5 Laser Gaming Mouse / Razer Copperhead Gaming Mouse || Clark's Precision Machine & Tool's F-A-18E Cockpit || EYEpad Gaming Mouse Pad
• Networking - BYTECC LanDisk
• Printer/Scanner - HP LaserJet 2420d
• Misc - StarTech 2 Port USB Mini KVM Switch / RoadWired Podzilla SLR Camera Bag
• Notebook - Fujitsu LifeBook P1510D
• Cameras, MP3/DVD players/recorders - JVC Everio MG50 Camcorder / Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30 Digital Camera || Swissbit SWISSMEMORY s.beat / X-micro Video MP3 400 Media Player
• Phones/PDAs - Dell Axim X50v / NEC N411i - i-mode Phone / palm T|X, Samsung SGH-E760 Motion Recognition Camera Phone

GUIDES...

• Interactive AMD Athlon 64 Product ID Guide - There's a so called product ID (OPN) on each AMD Athlon 64 CPU, which is necessary to indicate for example the right Vcore or the maximum allowed CPU temperature, but this product ID wasn't really easy to understand without studying several AMD datasheets.
• Contemporary Graphics Card Naming Guide - This guide will give you very clear idea of the major technical differences between the cards and will lead you through all the tricky names and markings that are currently circulating in the market
• The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide Revision 8.5.2 - Adrian has updated his premier BIOS optimization guide.
• High End Audio Cable Design - Have you ever wondered what goes into the making of a $1,500 audio cable? Audio engineer Adam Blake will takes you through the process.
• Flat Panel Furniture Buying Guide - Does your old, pressboard IKEA TV stand from grad school look out of place with your new plasma screen? If so, check out the following suggestions to help you organize and jazz up your home entertainment theatre quicker than you can find something decent to watch on TV.
• Quake 4 Guide - UpsetChaps has posted their Quake 4 tweaking guide
• Half-Life 2 Lost Coast HDR Performance (Updated) - So what we have here is a poor Crossfire showing far worse than we saw with Quake 4. Perhaps this is the killer application for SLI, or ATI may have some driver issues with their Shader 2.0 implementation. With the single X850 fairing better in all but one setting we believe the drivers are at issue. We would fully expect driver updates for Lost Coast now that it has finally been released publicly, and the story could then change. We also need to see other platforms benchmarked. Radeons may even prove to perform better on a nForce 4 board than Xpress 200 based rig.
• Forceware 81.87 Official Beta comparison - check it out (in German)
• How to speed up Open Office - Both changes involve going into the Tools and then options management sections. In the memory dialogue box, increase graphics cache to 64MB and memory per object to 8MB. It will take Open Office a few openings before this helps.
• Aaron Spuler's Tips for Updating Mozilla Firefox Themes - Aaron Spuler has posted a very nice technique to make sure that Firefox themes get properly updated for the upcoming 1.5 full release. In case you don't know who Aaron is, he maintains several incredible themes and also wrote the chapter on Themes in my Hacking Firefox book.

SOFTWARE...

• AVG Anti-Virus Free 7.1.362 Build 652 - AVG Free Edition (download) is the well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product.
• Unlocker 1.7.4 - This application unlocks in-use files, allowing functions to be performed on theme
• Kernel 2.6.14 - Linux Kernel (download) has been updated again
• CCleaner 1.25.201 - CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.
• PowerArchiver 2006 9.50.28 (shw) - PowerArchiver (download) is an award-winning archive utility for the Windows family of products that provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools though an easy to use interface that seamlessly integrates with Windows Explorer.
• Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5 Release Candidate 1 Test Builds - The Mozilla Quality weblog has details of test builds of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 Release Candidate 1.
• MozBackup 1.4.3 - MozBackup (download) is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Suite and Netscape profiles. It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc.
• AIM Ad Hack 5.0 Beta 10 for Aim Triton - With this small file (download) you can effectively remove all the ads from AIM you must be using
• Avi2Dvd 0.4.1 Beta - Avi2Dvd is an all-in-one tool that converts avi/mkv/ogm with few clicks in a vcd/svcd/dvd. It uses only freeware tools and can handle varius freeware enconders (QuEnc/FreeEnc/NuEnc).
• WinAmp 5.1.1.143 final - Nullsoft Winamp (download full / lite) is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity media player for Windows. Winamp supports playback of many audio (MP3, OGG, AAC, WAV, MOD, XM, S3M, IT, MIDI, etc) and video types (AVI,ASF,MPEG,NSV), etc.
• DNA-ATi 4.4.5.10a (x32 & x64) - These are modified/hacked ATI Catalyst drivers, use them at your own risk. The drivers have been optimized with two things in mind, better Image Quality and more/stable frames per second when compared to the Beta Catalyst drivers from ATI.
• NVIDIA nForce 4 Drivers 6.70 & 6.82 - NVIDIA has released new nForce 4 Drivers for the new SLI x16 and SLI. Download: Download: nForce 4 SLI Drivers 6.70 w2k-XP / nForce 4 SLI x16 6.82 w2k-XP.