Beyond

I was checking my email earlier when I saw an interesting article on a new type of social-network worm:

“Security company ESET’s analysis of Win32/Inject.NBL reveals it to be an interesting piece of malware.” “This instant messaging-based bot has the following functions built into it:

• download
• update
• rm
• msn.msg
• msn.stop
• aim.msg
• aim.stop
• triton.msg
• triton.stop

In other words, it can download files, update itself, remove itself, and send messages through MSN Messenger, AIM and Triton, spreading itself on those networks. This is a nice chunk of functionality.”

What next - A virus that decides whether it likes you or not? Are viruses becoming more intelligent? The first viruses were more an annoyance than anything else; soon to be followed by the destructive type of virus that lurks on your system undetected until its clock reaches zero-hour and it delivers harmful payloads that wreak havoc with your machine. Around the same time they were equipped with their own SMTP engines, enabling them to mail themselves as an attachment to a bogus email-message on the internet to any email addresses that they could find on the host machine…You know the story.

Not long ago appeared the network-aware variety of virus that actively sought out unprotected paths in cyberspace to infest anything from individual computers to entire networks: The first signs of intelligence.

Nowadays worms are infecting individual machines and adding them to a collective, using those collectives as botnets to launch mass DDOS attacks, send and relay spam and [illegal] porn.

As computers develop in sophistication, will we one day see independent malevolent data-entities roaming the web, looking for a computer to possess and set up home in, like some form of information-based AI? In my opinion it’s not that far off being a future reality given the right circumstances. Could our computers eventually at a future date become a separate living collective entity - Life; but not as we know it? Maybe it’s already starting to happen?
Is “Skynet” only a piece of science fiction from the Terminator series; or will some similar lifeform eventually evolve? Will that lifeform be malevolent? In my estimation, if it actually did happen, probably not; given that it would have access to nearly all of human knowledge and be able to devise intelligent and productive concepts for itself from that information. Without doubt it would probably be hard to live with; particularly initially, but I feel that soon certain people would befriend it and it would learn from them as well as they from it. Could such an entity become a new “god” that lives in cyberspace? Would there be a Cyber-Fundamentalist cult? What are your thoughts on this?

Latest reports appear to indicate that Apple  aren’t quite as bad as it seems; in fact it might appear at first sight that they had a windfall.

That’s not exactly the case though: Despite news of their taking top customer-satisfaction honours among personal computer manufacturers, as released on Tuesday of this week, there are two things you should note before assuming that Apple are the tops and that this blog is heavily biased against them:

Firstly nobody even thought to ask Kustom Komputa if they even wanted to be included in this award; probably because they knew Kustom Komputa would trounce Apple into second place. On a more serious note, though, the index measures results only for the three-month period ended in June - Before the crap began to hit the fan for Apple, starting with the release of the iPhone.

Also on Tuesday; Apple admitted that a software update for their much troubled iPhone only partly fixes the connection problems it has had in connecting to 3G networks: In other words; honestly this time: “FAIL: We scratched again.”

It has been reported that it isn’t only Apple’s buggy software that’s to blame: There have been reports that the Infineon Technologies 3G chipsets used in the iPhone are faulty. That could mean that no matter how good the software, the hardware issue might cause the problem to never totally go away.

It has been reported that it isn’t only Apple’s buggy software that’s to blame: There have been reports that the Infineon Technologies 3G chipsets used in the iPhone are faulty. That could mean that no matter how good the software, the hardware issue might cause the problem to never totally go away.

The crap certainly has been hitting the fan lately for Apple; and maybe rightly so too: It seems that Steve Jobs has always been a bit of a dreamer;   and now incarnated as “Jobsweh”; the god of all things Apple; it appears that the power has gone to his head and mingled with his dreams, turning his wallet into a bottomless pit that seeks filling with loot, no matter what the cost.

As reported here on kkomp.com; Apple were recently forced to extend the free trial of MobileMe in a face-saving operation.

“We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make.” Said Apple.

To me that sounds like: “We did it again by releasing a service well ahead of schedule in order to market before the competition: It wasn’t actually ready to be released; but we did so out of a case of having to. We hope we can eventually get it to work.”

If they don’t it’ll end up costing them a few dollars more; which could incur the wrath of Jobsweh!

In the same email Apple stated “We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour.” ROFLMAO - You’re telling me! What exactly has been Apple’s finest hour during the past two months? Steve Jobs seems to think he’s Apple’s answer to Bill Gates of late. The question is; is Jobsweh, the god with the bottomless pockets, fit to run Apple any longer? Should someone more competent and less greedy take over?

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A few of the dodgy comments posted on MySpace and Facebook :-

These comments lead on to a link to a bogus You-Tube clone, which asks you to download the latest Flash player; at which a file called “codecsetup.exe” - a network worm - downloads to the victim’s machine.

Kaspersky said its security suite detected the threats proactively and signatures were added to the database on July 31, 2008.

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In their press release on this new version of the old threat, the FBI said:

“The spammers spreading this virus are preying on Internet users and making their computers an unwitting part of criminal botnet activity. We urge [all] citizens [of every country] to help prevent the spread of botnets by becoming web-savvy.”

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