The Atlanta-based security services firm SecureWorks discovered, by way of an inquiry from one of its Windows customers, what appears to be a very sophisticated Trojan horse program. Under intense analysis, the program was discovered to be attempting to deliver users’ certificates and other identifying data to a variety of IP addresses found to be hosted in Russia.

The Trojan trips only a handful of anti-virus programs using heuristic analysis, an in-depth SecureWorks report states, including Sophos, Symantec, F-Prot, and CA’s VET. But it just slips by most other protection programs; and evidence trails uncovered by SecureWorks indicate that specifically-targeted users may have been infected as far back as December 2006.

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US cable service provider Cablevision Systems was handed a defeat yesterday in its defense against a lawsuit by three broadcast TV networks, two cable TV networks, and four TV production studios. Cablevision had announced its intention in March 2006 to roll out a kind of off-site DV-R service to subscribers, allowing them to record up to 45 hours of programming for a limited time onto storage devices that are housed at the Cablevision headend instead of households.

Cablevision had planned for a test deployment of what it called Remote Storage Digital Video Recorder (RS-DVR) service to two million charter subscribers on Long Island, New York last spring. But in May, the lawsuit brought by 20th Century-Fox, Paramount, Disney, and Universal; by CBS, ABC, and NBC; and by Cartoon Network and CNN, put that rollout on hold.

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Harvard University has announced that it has selected Microsoft chairman Bill Gates to be its keynote speaker during the commencement ceremony scheduled for June 7. The selection is an interesting choice considering Gates dropped out of Harvard in his junior year to focus on co-founding Microsoft with Paul Allen. Regardless, the college still considers Gates part of the Class of 1977.

Microsoft also counts CEO Steve Ballmer among those executives who attended Harvard. Ballmer and Gates' paths actually crossed while they were both in school, however Ballmer finished his degree at the storied Ivy League University. ""His contributions to the world of business and technology, and the great example he has set through his far-reaching philanthropy, will rightfully put him on center stage in Harvard Yard," Harvard Alumni Association president Paul Finnegan said.

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In his decision yesterday which struck down the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, Judge Lowell Reed, Jr., agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union's contention that technological measures can do a better job of protecting children from access to content that any "average" person might deem harmful to them, than some regulation that threatens a $50,000 fine and six months in jail.

While I agree wholeheartedly with that assessment, I would suggest that Judge Reed's opinion, removed from the local context of the ACLU v. Gonzales case and applied to the broader context of our everyday lives, omits mention of an extremely important fact: While the US government could not possibly protect the nation's youngsters from the dangers of communicating on the Internet, and should not be expected to, the burden now shifts to the parent. And in recent days, parents have not fared much better.

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Accusing its competitor of "corporate theft on a grand scale," business software rival Oracle sued SAP on Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

The Redwood Shores, Calif. company claims that SAP used the access codes of its customers to gain access to the company's servers and then download copyrighted material. It further alleges that the company kept a large library of Oracle's property on its own servers.

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A federal judge handed Palm a victory on Thursday, saying that the company could continue to sell phones including technology that has caused them to be sued by patent-holding company NTP.

NTP is no stranger to patent litigation -- the company most recently successfully settled a$612.5 million with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. The suit against Palm is similar to that case.

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Attempting to stave off a similar situation to that of YouTube, Microsoft said this week it would not accept new registrations for as long as two months while it works on a better system to protect copyright.

The move is in response to an increasing number of illicit videos appearing on the service. While current users will be able to continue to access Soapbox, the site would not accept any new registrations.

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The San Jose Mercury News this afternoon reports that a US district judge in San Jose has dismissed a case against Google originally filed in March 2006, that alleged its page rankings that pertain to relative placement in search results unfairly rated a particular provider of parenting information lower than other sites in the same category.

This is the second time the case has been dismissed, although Judge Jeremy Fogel has given plaintiff Kinderstart another opportunity to amend and re-file its case yet again.

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A controversial 1998 law that set a minimum federal penalty of $50,000 in fines and six months' imprisonment for anyone providing minors with access to "harmful" material via the Internet, was soundly struck down this morning in US District Court in Philadelphia. Judge Lowell Reed, Jr., affirmed in his decision today that Web filtering programs may do a better job of protecting minors from objectionable content than federal regulations.

"[The government's] own study shows that all but the worst performing filters are far more effective than COPA would be at protecting children from sexually explicit material on the Web," wrote Judge Reed in his decision this morning.

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Borders is about to take its online fate into its own hands, as it plans to reopen its own online store and end a several year partnership with Amazon.com. It also announced that it will abandon its international strategy, choosing to focus domestically.

Amazon took over Borders' online service in 2001 following the dot-com stock market crash. While it was branded with the company's name, all proceeds except for a commission on sales was kept by the online retailer.

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In rather emphatic and unmistakable terms, a managing director for Google's Southeast Asia operations flatly denied his company is building a cell phone of its own, in a statement for The Australian Financial Review, despite reports from major press services over the past 48 hours that the company had actually confirmed those rumors.

BetaNews had been seeking confirmation of the "confirmation," but had received none from either Google itself or from reputable analysts with whom we've communicated in the past. On Tuesday, Nomura mobile phone industry analyst Richard Windsor said he was told at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover, writing in an official note circulated through press sources, "Google has come out of the closet at the CeBIT trade fair admitting that it is working on a mobile phone of its own."

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Fuji Xerox and Microsoft said Thursday that they had agreed to allow access to each other's patents, which includes monetary and non-monetary compensation for their patents. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Fuji Xerox will gain access to relevant patents for its current and future product lines, while Microsoft will gain similar access to benefit its own offerings, including Microsoft Office.

"Both Fuji Xerox and Microsoft have a strong commitment to innovation, and the broad patent agreement will give us both the freedom to continue developing and building technologies that will ultimately work better together," Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel Brad Smith said.

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Nokia has begun shipments of its N95 multimedia computer device Thursday, with the first devices going to key European, Asian, and Middle Eastern markets.

The phone, which was first announced back in September, has no release date as of yet in the US. It includes a 5-megapixel camera and HSDPA/WCDMA support, along with integrated GPS functionality and a two-way slide design.

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The European Commission seems to still feel Microsoft is acting in an anticompetitive manner as its competition chief Neelie Kroes told the EU parliament that the company was still gaining market share through what she called "abusive behavior." She pointed to the fact that the company's server products still continue to work far more smoothly with Microsoft products than those of competitors.

Since the EU began its investigation in 1999, Microsoft's share of workgroup servers has ballooned from 35 percent to about 75 percent of the market. While the Redmond company is making steps towards interoperability, the EC contends that Microsoft is charging too much for it.

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A U.S. District Court Judge has denied the RIAA's effort to walk away quietly from its case against New York resident Patricia Santangelo, saying she had the right to have her legal status resolved "one way or the other."

In a judgment filed on Monday and obtained by BetaNews, Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that RIAA will either have to proceed to trial or motion to dismiss the case with prejudice. Either way will result in an unfavorable situation for the group.

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