China deploys virtual Internet cops

Two "virtual" police officers will start surfing the Internet from Saturday to help combat pornography and other illicit activities, reports China View.

They will first visit major news portals, including sohu.com and sina.com, and then monitor all Web sites and online forums based in Beijing by the end of the year.

They will be on the watch for Web sites that incite secession, promote superstition, gambling and fraud.

Despite the sizeable security investment of A$84 million ($69.8 million), a 16-year-old schoolboy has all-but breezed past a new dedicated Internet pornography filtration system set up by the Australian federal government, says Monsters and Critics.com.

Young Tom Wood, a victim of cyber bullying who turned his attentions to child safety online, required a mere 30 minutes to successfully devise a way to avoid the filter. His approach involved leaving the software's default on-screen toolbar intact so as to indicate to parents that the filter was still functioning properly.

According to Wood, any budding technophile child could likely fathom how to bypass the government-funded filter without too much effort.

Software included with high-end memory sticks sold by Sony can make personal computers vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, according to researchers with two Internet security firms, reports Reuters.

Sony's MicroVault USB memory stick and fingerprint reader includes software that creates a hidden directory on the computer's hard drive, researchers with Finnish security software maker F-Secure reported on the company's blog on Monday.

Such software that hides itself, which is known as a root kit, leaves room for hackers to secretly infect personal computers, they said.

Yahoo on Monday filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by two Chinese journalists who alleged the Internet company and its subsidiaries "willingly" handed over information about their online writing to the People's Republic of China, reports CNET News.com.

The case hinges on a lawsuit filed in April in the US District Court for Northern California. The plaintiffs charged Yahoo and its Hong Kong subsidiary with divulging information about their online activity and pro-democracy writing to Chinese authorities, an act that ultimately caused their arrest and prosecution.

Two of the accused were sentenced to 10 years in prison. In a 51-page motion to dismiss, filed with the district court, Yahoo argued that the case has no merit.