Hacker pleads guilty

A hacker pleaded guilty to infecting hundreds of thousands of computers with malware to steal money from Paypal accounts. He could spend 60 years in prison and face a $1.75 million fine, reports PC World.

John Schiefer, 26, admitted he and some associates developed malware that allowed them to create botnet armies of as many as 250 000 computers.

Schiefer was able to collect information sent from the infected computers, including user names and passwords for Paypal accounts. He and his associates were then able to make purchases using the Paypal accounts.

The planned launch of Intel`s Penryn processors on 12 November might hit AMD heading into 2008, said CNET News.

Just a few months after the launch of AMD`s quad-core Barcelona chips, Intel is hitting back with Penryn, now known as the Xeon 5400 family of processors.

A total of 15 server chips are set to launch today, as well as a new Core 2 Extreme desktop processor, with Penryn chips for mainstream desktops and notebooks scheduled to launch in the first quarter of next year.

Google faces a federal patent infringement lawsuit by Northeastern University over technology used in its core Web search system, according to legal papers filed last week, said Reuters.

The complaint was filed on 6 November, in Marshall, in the Eastern District of Texas, the US court with a history of decisions that are highly favourable to plaintiffs in patent cases, but the case only came to light over the weekend.

The plaintiffs are Boston-based Northeastern University and Jarg, a start-up founded by a Northeastern University professor that is the exclusive licensee of search technology patented in 1997, a year before Google was incorporated.

Hackers are scamming users with ads on legitimate high-traffic news, entertainment and job Web sites, states eWeek.

Researchers at SecureWorks are warning Web surfers about a multi-step scam involving rogue anti-spyware. Tricking users into downloading Trojans via bogus anti-spyware is nothing new; however, security researchers said the magnitude of the scam makes it problematic.

"Rogue anti-spyware scams have been in circulation for years, but they were typically one-off-type scams," said Don Jackson, a security researcher at SecureWorks. "We have never seen a malicious campaign using rogue anti-spyware of this magnitude before," he added.