iPad searches lead to malware

Security companies are warning consumers and Web site operators to be wary of iPad-related search scams, states CNet.

"This is just the kind of opportunity fraudsters like to exploit by poisoning search terms," says Symantec's Candid Wueest. Wueest also warned about "iPad-related spam and phishing attacks hitting consumers hard over the coming weeks".

In an interview, Don Debolt, CA's director of threat research, warned about "black hat search optimisation". This is a scam whereby hackers take advantage of security flaws in blogs and other sites that use PHP to imbed popular search terms like iPad, to trick search engines into directing people to compromised legitimate sites that may have nothing to with the subject matter at hand.

IBM has said that over 200 of its customers migrated business-critical systems from Sun Microsystems and HP to IBM systems in the last quarter of 2009, reports Computing.co.uk.

The announcement came yesterday, just a day before Oracle is due to reveal its roadmap for Sun products, suggesting IBM hopes to capitalise on uncertainty among Sun customers.

IBM claimed that 550 Sun customers moved across to its products in the whole of 2009, and said that competitive displacements of customers, primarily from Sun and HP, passed a value of $200 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Operators of electrical grids, telecommunications networks, and other critical infrastructure say their systems are under constant attack, often from sophisticated nation-states, according to a poll of 600 IT executives in 14 countries who oversee such networks, says The Register.

The findings come two weeks after Google said it and at least 20 other companies in the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical industries were victims of attacks that pierced their defences to steal intellectual property. Google has said the attacks probably originated in China.

More than 54% of the respondents said their critical systems have already suffered large-scale attacks or stealthy infiltrations, according to the report, which was commissioned by McAfee and prepared by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. A majority also believes critical infrastructure in their countries is already under attack by foreign governments.

Results in a new report show that a major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, writes the BBC.

The controlled fusion of atoms - creating conditions like those in our sun - has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source.

However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the "plasma" they create could interrupt the fusion.