Hackers continue trying to exploit a patched vulnerability in Microsoft’s Graphic Display Interface (GDI), researchers said this week.

Craig Schmugar, threat researcher at McAfee, reported that the first exploit was discovered on Friday, three days after the issue was patched by bulletin MS08-021.
“One method the bad guys use is to take the patch and reverse engineer it,” Schmugar said on Tuesday. “They look at the files on the computer prior to installing the patch and then after, and try to compare the two and see how they can take advantage of the change.”

The exploit – which can permit remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted EMF or WMF image file – does not affect customers who have installed the updates detailed in MS08-021, said Bill Sisk, security response communications manager for Microsoft.

“By default, Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008 customers will have this update applied automatically through Automatic Updates,” Sisk said.

Microsoft encourages all customers to apply its most recent security updates to help ensure that their computers are protected from attempted criminal attacks.

Schmugar said that GDI has had vulnerability issues in the past. The fact that Microsoft credited three researchers with discovering the flaw suggests that multiple people were looking for potential problems and more problems could be on the way.

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The layout of the new Live Search News is somewhat similar to Google News, but also may remind some of Techmeme, another aggregator. Sections are listed across the top, with news headlines listed down the left column. Users are able to drill down from the major headlines by clicking “more on this story,” which returns news articles having to do with the topic of the headline article.

While Live Search News may never be able to break into Google’s dominance in the news aggregator segment, having another player in the space will benefit publishers.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that these services may actually do a better job of driving traffic to news sites than the front pages of these sources themselves. While in some cases these companies have taken issue with their content being indexed, for the most part they have been well received.

Exact details on Microsoft’s future plans for Live Search News are not yet known, as no official announcement of the service had been made as of midday Wednesday.

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A journalism student photographing demonstrations outside a police station in Egypt found himself jailed by police, but he managed to put a word out to his friends on Twitter.

By telling his followers one word, ARRESTED, James Karl Buck managed to set off a chain of interest and attention that led to his release from jail. The Twitter ‘tweet’ ended up being heard by several major news publications, rights organizations, and ultimately the US Embassy.

“On 10 April around 6pm I was photographing outside the Mahalla police 1st station,” Buck wrote. “Police surrounded me and despite the efforts of the crowd to get me free, police caught our taxi and told the driver I was from the CIA.”

Buck and a local translator, Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree, were released but re-arrested a second time. Though police later let Buck go, Maree was not, and is apparently still in police custody.

Once news of Buck’s arrest began to circulate among his Twitter connections, they alerted UC-Berkeley and the US Embassy. The school arranged for a local attorney for Buck, the Mercury News said.

Now back in America, Buck and others plan to hold a demonstration outside the Egyptian consulate in San Francisco on Friday morning to call for Maree’s release. Reporters Without Borders also pointed out several other arrests of bloggers in Egypt, and called for their release as well.

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Does Gmail need to advertise in order to get people using it? Some Russians certainly think so. But they do come out with interesting and funny ads in video format for Gmail. The video promotional clip doesn’t rely on computer generated special effect, and simply depends on human to present the familiar Gmail user interface in real, and large scale.

The video was created and produced by Saatchi Moscow for Google to attract more Russian people on GMail, and is finalist in Idea Festival 2008. The producer is very creative in able to present all features of Gmail in the created model. Probably not an easy task.

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Searching the web could help save the planet from global warming according to a new ‘green’ search engine initiative being launched today in New Zealand and 13 other countries.

Sydney-based ecocho says it will sponsor the growth of up to two trees for every 1000 searches users conduct on Yahoo and Google at no cost to the user.

To achieve this, the company has struck a deal with the search giants to direct advertising revenue to ecocho according to searches made through the ecocho search engine that uses Google and Yahoo! The search results are the same as on Google and Yahoo!, except the Ecocho logo is displayed above the results.

To join the scheme, users download an ecocho toolbar, selecting either Yahoo! or Google, and make ecocho their search engine.

Founder of ecocho, Tim Macdonald says that in New Zealand alone, web users conduct close to 120 million internet searches each month. “If we could capture just 1 per cent of that traffic, we would make a significant contribution towards lowering the impact of harmful greenhouse gas emissions.”

“ecocho.co.nz is a free service that doesn’t alter or slow your search results, plus users can choose between technology they know and trust, Yahoo and Google,” Macdonald says.

According to its website FAQ page, Ecocho generates funds through advertising, which is used to buy carbon offset credits, which in turn contributes cash to carbon dioxide emission offset initiatives.

Initially, Ecocho will plant trees in New South Wales, Australia, because it is close to the Ecocho headquarters and the NSW GGAS scheme was the first local government mandatory emissions scheme in the world.

Purchases through the New South Wales Government Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme (GGAS) will be monitored by KPMG, which will check the acquisition, registration and retirement of the carbon credits.

A similar scheme in New Zealand is currently being investigated with one option being a tie up with Landcare.

Each of the 14 nations involved will have its own national ecocho country domain, such .ca for Canada, com/de for Germany and so on, and local representatives will strike deals with carbon offset and/or forestry schemes. In New Zealand, the local representative is Creo Sustain.

“ecocho.co.nz aims to reinvest 70 per cent of the site’s revenue in forestry schemes, and as the site progresses, we’ll begin to support similar carbon-offsetting schemes in other states and countries,” Macdonald says.

To find out more or download the ecocho toolbar, visit www.ecocho.co.nz

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Companies that create fake blogs in order to hawk products violate what most people would consider basic truthfulness. Starting May 28th, they may also be violating UK law.

An 88-page document gets into the specifics, but it appears anyone or anything misrepresenting itself to consumers could get in trouble thanks to new regulations. The potential penalties are serious: “a fine or imprisonment not exceeding two years or both.”

That’s the sort of stuff that’ll make a lot of marketers play it safe. Judith Lewis, who seems to have been the first person to notice the fresh policy, wrote, “Be aware black hats in the UK - if you get caught the stakes just got criminally high.”

Still, what remains to be seen is how frequently the regulations will be enforced. Big UK-based corporations are probably at risk of prosecution, yet there’s simply too much going on for every fake blog to be stopped. All sorts of businesses may continue acting as their own best customers.

We’ll see how this goes. For the record, there doesn’t seem to be any equivalent legislation, either on the books or in the works, that would apply in America.

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The large British retailer Tesco has announced that it will be launching Tesco Downloads, a digital and video store.

The service will be similar to that of Amazon and Wal-Mart which offer a “web-based interface”. The service will offer 3.3 million songs initially with about half being unprotected MP3 versions that will work with all media devices including iPods. The other 1.6 million tracks that have DRM will be available as MP3s by the end of the year, added the company.

Pricing structure is the same as it is in the UK, with £0.79 per track and £8 per full album. As an added bonus however, Tesco will “tie the online store to its physical presence and will offer clubcard points for each download that translate to discounts either on other products or content at retail shops.”

The store is accessible immediately but the store will formally launch in May with the full music catalog. Movies and TV episodes will be available later in the year, promises the company.

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Microsoft Corp. has completed its acquisition of Danger Inc., the company responsible for the popular Sidekick line of smartphones.

According to a statement from the company, “The combined force of Danger and Microsoft strengthens the company’s ability to provide innovative mobile experiences to more consumers.”

Danger will become a part of the new Premium Mobile Experiences (PMX) team, a group within the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. This team will focus on consumer-oriented mobile projects.

It will be led by Roz Ho, corporate vice president of Premium Mobile Experiences. Danger co-founders Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt will join the new organization, reporting directly to Ho.

Making Windows Mobile Friendlier

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system has grown to be popular with business uses, but so far has been less successful attracting general consumers. One of Microsoft’s goals for the future is to change this.

With the acquisition of Danger, Microsoft hopes to benefit from the company’s nearly 10 years of expertise with mobile consumers.

“At Danger, we created a fun and easy-to-use mobile experience for today’s Internet-savvy consumer,” Britt said. And Hershenson added, “As we combine our team and technologies with Microsoft, we see a clear path to evolving that experience and delivering it to an even broader group of consumers.”

Ho said, “Combining Danger and Microsoft talents together in the Premium Mobile Experiences team is how we’re going to deliver cool, new, fun mobile experiences to consumers. We want people to smile every time they look at their phone.”

Danger employees will continue to work from their current offices. Financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

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Under Apple’s EULA, installation of Leopard onto any computer equipment other than Apple’s own hardware is prohibited. If the past is any precedent, the company should be shortly contacting Psystar with a cease and desist request.

However, Psystar appears ready to fight, suggesting the clause forbidding such installations are a violation of US antitrust laws. Until then, it will continue to sell the OpenMac clone for $399.The $399 OpenMac’s base configuration includes a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of DDR2 RAM, Integrated Intel GMA 950 Graphics, a 20x DVD rewritable drive, and 4 rear USB ports.

A higher-end version, the OpenPro, retails for $999. The base configuration there includes a 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo, GeForce 8600GT graphics card, 600 watts of power, 3 120mm fans, standard FireWire ports and front USB ports.

For both systems, Leopard is available preinstalled for an additional $155. On the Pro, additional systems other than Apple’s can be installed.

“You don’t need to spend an arm and a leg to get the full OS X Leopard experience,” Psystar says on its Web site.

Psystar officials are comparing Cupertino’s restrictions to Microsoft saying Windows could only be installed on Dells, or a car company telling you which roads you could drive on.

Either way, this offer does not look to be targeted to the average consumer. A quick perusal through the company’s FAQ indicates that a user may not be able to always use the upgrades from Apple because some may be “non-safe,” and the Web site seems to target the PC to the “experienced” user.

Apple could not be immediately reached for comment.

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Broadband penetration has increased more than 300 percent since 2002, according to a new analysis from Scarborough Research.

In 2002, 12 percent of U.S. adults had a broadband connection in their household. Now, close to half (49%) have broadband. DSL connections have grown more than cable modems, but both have seen significant growth. Since 2002, cable modem penetration increased 188 percent and DSL connections increased 575 percent.

San Francisco is the top local U.S. market for broadband penetration with 62 percent of adults living in a household that has a broadband Internet connection. Other cites with high levels of broadband penetration include Boston and San Diego, both with 61 percent penetration.

Cities with high levels of broadband penetration are also in high Internet usage markets. Adults in San Francisco, Boston and San Diego are more likely than the average person to have gone online in the past month, and they are also more likely to have spent 10 or more hours online in the past week.

Broadband subscribers are more likely than other Internet users to be engaged with Internet content. They are 30 percent more likely than total Internet users to have downloaded podcasts in the past month, 29 percent more likely to download TV programs and 27 percent more likely to have downloaded audio clips in the same time period.

Additionally, broadband subscribers are more likely than other Internet users to go online for sports content. They are 23 percent more likely than other Internet users to have participated in fantasy sports during the past month and 15 percent more likely to have checked sports scores online during the same timeframe.

“There is obviously an increasing need for more high-speed Internet connectivity as it enables fast and efficient delivery of rich media content,” said Gary Meo, senior vice president of digital media services, Scarborough Research.

“Consumers clearly are demanding more speed in order to upload, download, post and interact with content in a Web 2.0 environment.”

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