Ex-Intel worker guilty of aiding terror

A former Intel engineer accused of aiding terrorist organisations has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to supply services to the Taliban, reports CNet. Maher "Mike" Mofeid Hawash faces seven to ten years in prison after admitting that he travelled to China with five suspected terrorists and attempted to enter Afghanistan to fight against the US in 2001.

After Hawash was arrested and detained for weeks without charges, his friends and former boss at Intel set up the FreeMikeHawash.org Web site, and said in response to the charges: "Mike`s friends...think the idea that [he] would have fought for the Taliban or travelled to Afghanistan is absurd." Supporters held rallies in front of the courthouse.

As a lead engineer on Intel`s Multimedia Extensions, or MMX, software team, Hawash worked on the MMX technology emulator and MPEG decoders.

Memory sticks have been branded the latest security risk by security firm SecureWave, whose intrusion prevention technology can be used to control the use of the popular devices in corporate environments.

The Register reports that the alleged risk here, as with floppy disks, is of viruses and unauthorised software entering the network, as well as confidential data being removed. But, the site reports, if people really want to smuggle data out of an organisation, they`ll always find a way.

The site reports that SecureWave`s argument is that users can`t manage USB devices using Group Policy in Windows 2000/XP, but the USB ports can be disabled using a third-party tool called SecureNT from SecureWave.

According to SACM, Security Corporation has reported several security bugs that affect both the server to which players of Half-Life version 1.1.1.0 and previous versions of the game connect, as well as clients. MODs based on the game, such as "Half-Life: Counter-Strike", are also affected.

These vulnerabilities, which can be exploited remotely, stem from a buffer overflow, which can lead to a denial of service. In some cases this will prevent users connected to Half-Life from playing the game, and in other cases it will allow an attacker to run code of their choice both on the servers and the clients.

Cisco Systems has announced the milestone of shipping its two millionth Internet Protocol (IP) telephone.

The company says this indicates that IP telephony is becoming a mainstream technology in businesses worldwide. Approximately 30% of Cisco`s IP telephony customer base is accounted for by sales throughout the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.