Subscribe

Cellphone cancer link rejected

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 21 Oct 2011

Cellphone cancer link rejected

Further research has been published suggesting there is no link between mobile phones and brain cancer, according to the BBC.

The risk mobiles present has been much debated over the past 20 years as use of the phones has soared.

The latest study, led by the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Denmark, looked at more than 350 000 people with mobile phones over an 18-year period. Researchers concluded users were at no greater risk than anyone else of developing brain cancer.

New mass malware discovered

A new malware attack has infected approximately 180 000 Internet pages and is downloading malicious software onto users' machines without their consent or knowledge, writes Computing.co.uk.

The attack was revealed recently by security firm Armorize on its blog. Armorize researcher Wayne Huang says the problem will affect users with outdated browsing software, highlighting the need to keep software patched up to the latest version.

“In a drive-by download attack, visitors who navigate to the infected Web sites will have malware installed on their machines without their knowledge. This is if they have outdated browsing platforms (browser or Adobe PDF or Adobe Flash or Java etc),” he says.

Michelle Obama sends first tweet

US First Lady Michelle Obama has officially joined the Twittersphere with her very first tweet on 19 October sent from the World Series, reveals Mashable.

Mrs Obama's first tweet went out over the @joiningforces account to answer questions about Joining Forces and to spread awareness about supporting America's troops.

The First Lady joined with Dr Jill Biden, the Second Lady of the US, to talk about Joining Forces at - of all places - the first game of the World Series. The choice was actually appropriate since Game One was officially dedicated to veterans, service members and their families.

Symantec, McAfee split over Stuxnet look-alike

Security vendors across the globe appear to be split over the newly discovered Duqu malware threat, disagreeing over its intended attack target and even the team behind it, notes V3.co.uk.

Symantec and McAfee both came to slightly different conclusions about Duqu, despite ostensibly obtaining a sample of the malware from the same anonymous source - a team of independent researchers.

McAfee believes the “Stuxnet team” is behind this latest malware and that it is primarily targeted at certificate authorities (CAs) in parts of Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. While Symantec agreed that the code, keys and techniques had much in common with Stuxnet, it argues the team behind Duqu created the malware as a “precursor to a future Stuxnet-like attack”, rather than aiming it at CAs.

Share