A Spanish Computer Virus called Mariposa Botnet

Beware of Spanish botnet (computer virus) called Mariposa botnet. As BBC reports it could compromise your computer and the details inside it. Some major company computers has been affected by it:

All are Spanish citizens with no criminal records and limited hacking skills.

It is estimated that the so-called Mariposa botnet was made up of nearly 13 million computers in 190 countries.

It included PCs inside more than half of Fortune 1000 companies and more than 40 major banks, investigators said.

The criminals have so far only been identified by their internet names, netkairo, aged 31, johnyloleante, aged 30 and ostiator, 25.

Other arrests may follow, the investigators believe.

The first member of the gang was arrested in early February, when he inadvertently logged into the network without disguising the address of his computer.

His computer linked investigators to two more suspects who were arrested later in the month.

A City Named Google

Imagine, if your city’s name is changed by your mayor into Google or whatever. That’s what happens to city of Topeka, Kansas, USA. The change, however, applies only for one month. This is what the mayor of Topeka, Kansas, USA has to declrare when announce the change:

“I, William W. Bunten, mayor of the city of Topeka, Kansas, urge the citizens of Topeka to recognize and support the continuing efforts to bring Google’s ‘Fiber for Communities’ experiment to our city, and do hereby proclaim that for the month of March 2010, the city of Topeka will be known as Google, Kansas.”

Hurricane not caused by Global warming?

The latest research suggests that the rise in hurricane frequency since 1995 was just part of a natural cycle, not as UN’s climate panel used to claim.

Research by hurricane scientists may force the UN’s climate panel to reconsider its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms.

The benchmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that a worldwide increase in hurricane-force storms since 1970 was probably linked to global warming.

It followed some of the most damaging storms in history such as Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans and Hurricane Dennis which hit Cuba, both in 2005.

The IPCC added that humanity could expect a big increase in such storms over the 21st century unless greenhouse gas emissions were controlled.

… However, the latest research, just published in Nature Geoscience, paints a very different picture.

It suggests that the rise in hurricane frequency since 1995 was just part of a natural cycle, and that several similar previous increases have been recorded, each followed by a decline.

SEO Wordpress Themes

Kyle Eslick has compiled a great collection of SEO friendly wordpress themes. Good for those bloggers who are not good in coding and clean up some coding mess themselves.

Divided into two and three columns themes, the review help the self-hosted wordpress bloggers to pick easily some of those free themes for maximum use.

Microsoft Uses Legal System to Combat Cyber Criminals

Microsoft’s move is the latest escalation in a continuing battle against cyber crime

Microsoft Corp. launched a novel legal assault to take down a global network of PCs suspected of spreading spam and harmful computer code, adding what the company believes could become a potent weapon in the battle against cyber criminals.

But security experts say it isn’t yet clear how effective Microsoft’s approach will be, while online rights groups warn that the activities of innocent computer users could be inadvertently disrupted.

On Monday, a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., granted Microsoft’s request for an order to deactivate hundreds of Internet addresses that the company linked to an army of tens of thousands of PCs around the globe, infected with computer code that allows them to be harnessed to spread spam, malicious virus programs and mount mass attacks to disable Web sites.

The court order was issued under seal—a rare move in civil cases of this nature—to allow the company to secretly sever communications channels among the computers before the network’s operators could reestablish contact with the machines.

Firefox 3.6 Free Download

Firefox 3.6 has been released and is up for free download.

You may download Firefox 3.6 here for free.

Obama Statue now in SD Menteng

Obama statue heads back to Obama’s elementary school popularly known as SD Menteng Jakarta

A statue of Barack Obama as a boy was placed late Sunday night at the Jakarta elementary school the U.S. president once attended, after its display in a public park prompted backlash in the Indonesia capital.

The re-placement of the bronze statue a week after it disappeared from public view was a low-key event officiated by the school’s principal and three local education officials. Scores of proud students had been among the crowd of 500 watching when Jakarta’s mayor unveiled the statue in the nearby park in December.

The likeness based on a childhood photograph shows a 10-year-old Obama smiling at a butterfly perched on his outstretched thumb.

The late night schedule was aimed at finishing before almost 500 students arrive for school Monday, not an attempt to keep a low profile, said the main fundraiser for the statue, Ron Mullers. The statue’s removal from the park also was done on a Sunday night.

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