Conficker makes its move

The minds behind the infamous Conficker worm are making their move, roughly a week after many people expected. According to Trend Micro security researchers, computers already infected with Conficker are receiving a new payload via peer-to-peer communication, reports eWeek.

Roughly a week after Conficker's much-anticipated 1 April "big day", Trend Micro reports the presence of a new payload spreading via peer-to-peer between infected computers.

"Basically the component it's downloading via peer-to-peer is just a dropper - so it drops yet another component, which we are in the process of finalising analysis on now," said Trend Micro advanced threats researcher Paul Ferguson.

According to research by Microsoft, Europeans will spend more time on the Internet than watching television by June 2010, says Computing.co.uk.

The report, Europe logs on: Internet trends of today and tomorrow, analyses online behaviour across Europe, and for 2010 predicts Web consumption will average 14.2 hours per week, while TV programme watching will average 11.5 hours per week.

Driving the rise of online media consumption is always-on broadband, with almost half (48.5%) of Europeans now having an Internet connection. The report says that for watching television programmes, "three screens will dominate" - the traditional TV, desktop and laptop PCs, and mobile devices.

Google has lost a trio of bigwigs in less than a month, says The Register.

In mid-March, US sales boss Tim Armstrong departed for AOL. Earlier this week, Latin America director Gonzalo Alonso jumped ship for Argentine IT services company Globant. Now the company has parted ways with Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, president for Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations.

Cassidy left to become "CEO-in-residence" at Accel Partners, the venture capital firm known for backing such big online names as Facebook and Baidu.

UK police say there has been a "phenomenal" increase in the number of incidents in which aircraft are targeted by small handheld lasers, reports the BBC.

In 2008, there were 69 times as many such incidents as in 2003. The Civil Aviation Authority has set up a task force to respond to the threat of pilots becoming disoriented.

The police have new devices designed to record and analyse laser "strikes" on their aircraft, tracking their source and leading to arrests of attackers.