Week in Review: 'Superhacker’ to face US justice

Hacker McKinnon loses final appeal

Gary McKinnon, the British so-called ‘most dangerous hacker in the world’, lost his fight to avoid extradition to the US. He could face a life sentence in an American court if found guilty of crimes which include breaking into Ministry of Defence and NASA computers. He is a minor celebrity in the hacking world thanks to speeches and appearances at various events, and even made the IT PRO list of top ten Black Hat Hackers.

Ex-Google engineers aim to topple Google with Cuil

Well… if you are going to set a target, you might as well set them high. A group of engineers have started the fearsome task of bringing the fight to Google with Cuil, a new search service. The makers have been involved with Google or around the search engine business so the technology may not be the problem – it’s the fact that any new contender will have to completely change the search habits of the majority of internet users who routinely ‘Google’ as a matter of course.

Nokia’s N96 to arrive in October

The Finnish mobile phone giant announces that 1 October is the date when it will release its own contender in the hotly contested business smartphone wars – the Nokia N96. It is part of the new group of ‘E-Series’ enterprise handsets which include the previously released E71. Pricing details are not confirmed but the device is anticipated to retail at around at £430. It will feature a five megapixel camera with an enlarged 2.7" QVGA screen, built-in GPS and 16GB memory.

Home Office announces interactive crime maps for every neighbourhood

The Government uses web 2.0 technology to fight crime as it reveals that interactive maps showing how much crime goes on around us could be with us by the end of the year. It will allow anybody with internet access to see when and where crime takes place – street by street for some offences. Images of how the maps are likely to look are available here.

Malware on legitimate websites up 50 per cent

On of the biggest and most concerning trends in security during the first half of 2008 is that of malware infecting websites that we know and trust. One of the most common ways of doing this is with SQL injections, with some very serious incidents occurring during the last year. It seems that attackers are getting away from trying to find ‘zero-day’ vulnerabilities in web software or transferring malware through attachments, as the defensive barriers are now usually very strong. Instead they are targeting weaknesses in the coding of many legitimate websites.

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