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Microsoft is reporting very limited attacks against the newly reported ANI vulnerability, but some security researchers believe the new ANI exploit has similar potential to last year’s Windows Metafile attacks, which rank among the most dangerous and widely exploited vulnerabilities since the Zobot worms of 2005.

On Thursday, Microsoft Relevant Products/Services warned that hackers are actively exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in animated cursor, or .ANI, files for Windows. Some security Relevant Products/Services researchers are comparing it to last year’s widespread Windows Metafile (WMF) attacks.

Users of most supported versions of Windows and Windows Server, including Vista, are at risk of attackers taking complete control of their system. However, Microsoft offered a silver lining: Users running Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 in protect mode should be safe because the security feature doesn’t allow files to access or modify any system files without user permission.

“In order for this attack to be carried out, a user must either visit a Web site that contains a Web page that is used to exploit the vulnerability or view a specially crafted e-mail message or e-mail attachment sent to them by an attacker,” Adrian Stone from Microsoft’s Security Response Center, wrote in an official advisory.

Security Researchers Scramble

Microsoft is reporting very limited attacks against the newly reported vulnerability in the way Windows handles animated cursor files. Nonetheless, some security researchers believe the new ANI exploit has similar potential to last year’s WMF attacks, which rank among the most dangerous and widely exploited vulnerabilities since the Zobot worms of 2005.

Security researchers are scrambling to gather information on the breadth of the risk. Ken Dunham, director of VeriSign iDefense’s Rapid Response Team, worked late into Thursday night to collect data on the latest Windows zero-day threat.

“iDefense has confirmed active exploitation of the new ANI exploit in the wild,” Dunham reported. “Multiple domains point back to two different hostile servers at this time.” There is no known e-mail or file vector exploits in the wild to date, he added, but e-mail possibilities are being researched. In short, Dunham said iDefense has proven that, with few modifications, file execution is possible through the exploit.

Meanwhile, Craig Schmugar, researcher for McAfee Avert Labs, tested the Vista vulnerability and posted a video of the ramifications of the attack on YouTube at youtube.com/watch?v=hf0S0Vk7j6I. “In the process of setting up the environment, I dragged and dropped a malicious ANI file to the desktop,” he wrote in the McAfee Avert Labs blog. “This causes Vista to enter an endless crash-restart loop.”

Thwarting the Attack

At the time of this writing, mitigation data remains mostly unproved. However, Dunham said unconfirmed data suggests that configuring e-mail clients for plain text might help mitigate the primary vector of initial attacks, though not the vulnerability itself. In addition, he said, blocking all types of e-mail attachments might be required to trap any ANI files that might be disguised within other file types, such as JPEG.

Another security firm, eEye Digital, released a workaround for the zero-day vulnerability as a temporary measure for Microsoft customers. However, the company said the workaround is not meant to replace the forthcoming Microsoft patch.

“The temporary patch aims to mitigate the vulnerability by preventing cursors from being loaded outside of the SystemRoot,” the company said in a statement. “This disallows Web sites from loading their own, potentially malicious animated icons, while causing little to no business disruption on hosts with the patch installed.”

For its part, Microsoft said it has added detection to the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner for up-to-date removal of malicious software that attempts to exploit this vulnerability. The software giant said it will continue to investigate the issue.

Intel Life After “Penryn”

Intel’s “tick tock” development cycle continues to chime with the Nehalem processor architecture scheduled for production next year. Intel Senior Vice President Pat Gelsinger detailed the advanced features on the next-generation to DailyTech earlier today.

In the second half of this year, Intel will release its first 45nm Penryn-based processors. While nearly identical architecturally to the Core 2 Duo processors released last year, Penryn’s 45nm node allows Intel to put more L2 cache onboard; the company already announced Penryn-based processors will utilize up to 12MB of L2 cache on quad-core designs.

Intel’s 45nm node utilizes metal transistor gates and high-k dielectrics. The departure from silicon-based transistors translates to a 5-fold reduction in source-drain leakage and a 10-fold reduction in dielectric leakage. According to Intel guidance, this means existing processors could run 20% faster just by switching to metal gate and high-k transistors. Gelsinger claims mature Penryn processors will operate in excess of 3 GHz per core, with 1600 MHz front-side busses on server platforms.

After the 45nm shrink has matured, Intel will then incorporate architectural changes into its processor family, currently dubbed Nehalem. Nehalem is still a 4-issue architecture similar to Core, but new advances in management and scalability give Nehalem its new micro architecture designation.

Earlier this year Intel roadmaps stated Hyper-Threading would appear on some Penryn processors. Shortly after, Intel retracted the roadmap, stating that simultaneous multi-threading will not reappear until 2008. This was made evident today when Intel unveiled its next-generation threading plans for Nehalem.

High-end server Nehalem-family processors have eight cores. Coupled with 2-way threading, these processors appear as 16 logical CPUs. This threading is dynamic: Threads can be powered on and off depending on the application needs.

Dynamic threading isn’t the only on-the-fly operation for Nehalem. Almost everything about Nehalem can be dynamically managed: Power, threads, bus, cache and cores. This management is primarily a power-saving feature, but also allows for saleable designs as well.

The bulk of these changes are possible due to Nehalem’s on-board memory controller. AMD realized the advantages of integrated memory controllers (IMCs) with the introduction of its Opteron series processors four years ago. Intel has long toyed with with IMCs on some processors, and will even deliver the Tolapai system-on-a-chip later this year with an integrated memory controller.

Intel’s dynamic bus, the Common System Interface (CSI), is clearly a focal point for the Nehalem architecture. With many respects, CSI is very similar to HyperTransport: Variable, serial interconnects for processor-to-processor communication. CSI will not only make its debut on Nehalem, but design engineers have also confirmed to DailyTech that CSI will have a large presence on next-generation Itanium platforms as well.

Intel leaves a single teaser in its Nehalem design guidance: “High performance integrated graphics engine for client.” Speaking on background, Intel insiders stated “The majority of the Intel Northbridge is already on the Nehalem die, so adding the final logic to include graphics is essentially [trivial] with the correct bus support.” Intel’s renewed interest in graphics processing came just weeks after AMD made similiar announcements, which AMD has codenamed Fusion.

In addition, Intel will also expand the SSE4 instruction set. Other architectural tweaks include shared multi-level cache. AMD’s upcoming Barcelona processors share L3 cache between cores; Intel’s last NetBurst processors shared L3 cache, but no current Core processor utilizes such functionality.

Gelsinger emphasizes that Nehalem is on track for production in 2008.

Intel’s “tick tock” strategy doesn’t end at the 45nm node. In 2009 Intel will optically shrink Nehalem process from 45nm to 32nm. In a sense, it’s the same move Intel is currently undertaking with the transition from Conroe to Penryn. Nehalem’s 32nm shrink is dubbed Westmere. The 32nm architecture that will succeed Westmere is dubbed Gesher.

ISS crew move Soyuz spacecraft

Houston, March 30 (PTI): Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams along with fellow cosmonauts moved a Soyuz spacecraft from the earth-facing port of the International Space Station to another module to make way for another spacecraft.

Three astronauts took a brief trip around the International Space Station (ISS) to clear an orbital parking spot for an incoming crew and the next tourist bound for the high-flying laboratory.

ISS Expedition 14 flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin deftly guided his crew’s Russian-built Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft to a berth at the aft end of the station’s Zvezda service module, ending a 24-minute trip that began at a docking port 80 feet away.

“It was a nice and smooth job,” Sunita told Tyurin after the short flight. “Any landing you can float away from is a good landing.”

Clad in their Russian-built Sokol spacesuits, Tyurin, Sunita and Expedition 14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria cast off from an Earth-facing docking port on the space station’s Zarya control module as both spacecraft flew 354 kms above the Pacific Ocean.

Their destination port on the Zvezda module was cleared Tuesday with the successful jettison of an unmanned Progress 23 cargo ship.

A main battery glitch prompted the astronauts to switch to a backup system aboard their Soyuz vehicle before undocking, but had no other impact on brief spaceflight.

The Soyuz move cleared the Zarya docking port for the anticipated April 9 arrival of Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov, who will welcome Sunita into their crew and relieve Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin.

AMD M690 Chipset goes Mobile

AMD has announced the availability of its M690 chipset along with Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology.

The M690 chipset, a new mobile platform, incorporates innovative memory technology known as Display Cache, which is designed to allow the CPU to operate in low-power mode without accessing system memory.

This new platform is coupled with the energy efficient processor design of Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technologies, thus extending battery life by up to 30 minutes over previous mobile technologies from AMD.

In addition, the M690 is powered by the ATI Radeon X120S0 series graphics processor, delivering seamless access to any of the visually rich features found in Windows Vista and strong gaming performance.

As the first mobile AMD chipset to support ATI Avivo technology and integrated HDMI and DVI connectivity options, the M690 series provides smooth video playback and vivid images for all multimedia applications, including HD content.

Combined with Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology and a superior wireless connectivity solution, AMD promises to deliver the ultimate mobile computing experience, optimized for the new demands of Vista.

According to AMD, each component of the new mobile platform is designed from the ground up to deliver a superior computing experience, resulting in increased application stability, higher performance, improved visual experience, longer battery life and greater system value than AMD has ever offered before.

Besides, the M690 also benefits from the ATI Catalyst graphics drivers, optimized to deliver one of the most stable graphics experiences available for Vista, with high performance and broad application support.

The M690 and Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology will be available in notebook designs from leading computer manufacturers including ASUS, HP and Fujitsu Siemens Computing.

Hutch one of India’s leading telecom service providers, today announced it is teaming up with Microsoft to offer Live Search for mobile to its customers, giving users the first time in India access to an easy-to-use mobile search engine that returns relevant results quickly.

Live Search for mobile will now enable Hutch subscribers to search for content like Tones, Images, Videos and Games on PlanetHutch as well as information on the worldwide web.

Speaking on the launch of Live Search for mobile, Harit Nagpal, Marketing Director, Hutch, said, “We have always believed in giving our customers services that help simplify their life. We have collaborated with various global service providers like Microsoft on an open access principle to help us achieve this objective. Starting with this initiative, Hutch will provide the entire Windows Live suite of services to its customers over a period of time.”

Commenting on this initiative, Jaspreet Bindra, Country Manager Microsoft Online Services Group, said, “This service is the first of its kind for mobile users in India, one that allows you to discover information or content at the press of a single button on your mobile phone. Discoverability will now become the ‘killer’ application on the mobile phone. With Live Search for mobile on your Hutch phone, the consumer is just one click away from his or her favorite content. This initiative with Hutch builds on our great existing relationship and commitment to helping consumers find the information they are looking when they’re on the go.”

The Live Search for mobile box will be available on the PlanetHutch home page. All that a subscriber needs to do is to type in his search keyword in the box and click on the search button. In case a subscriber wants to refine the search within a few defined categories, they can type in the search keyword in the box, select a category from Tones, Images, Videos, Games, World Wide Web and click on the search button. In this case, only the relevant content will be displayed.

For Example – If a subscriber searches for Amitabh Bachchan using Live Search for mobile on PlanetHutch, he will get links to all content of Amitabh that is available on PlanetHutch followed by all links that are available on the internet. The www pages will be adapted for mobile screens.

For the same example, if the subscriber were to enter Amitabh Bachchan in the search box and select “Images” from the category drop down list and click on ‘search’ – then the result will include images in the form of wallpapers, themes, animations etc.

In Microsoft and Hutch’s current relationship, Microsoft powers Hutch’s mobile portal (“PlanetHutch”) and has built and manages Hutch’s Fun Cards platform (prepaid card for downloading value added services for its customers). Microsoft and Hutch will be extending this alliance to allow advertisers and content partners to reach mobile customers with the broad availability of advertising opportunities in the Indian mobile market. Also included in the alliance are Windows Live services such as Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Spaces. Through these community driven services Hutch customers soon will be able to access their online world of relationships, information and interests from their Hutch phones.

<%image(20070331-vert.astronaut.ap.jpg|220|242|Astronaut Suni Williams runs while tethered to a treadmill on the international space station in December 2006. She'll use the treadmill for her Boston Marathon in space)%>

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) — Zooming through low-Earth orbit at 17,500 mph, Suni Williams completes the standard marathon distance every 5.4 seconds.

But for next month’s Boston Marathon, the U.S. Navy commander will run the equivalent distance on a treadmill — 210 miles (338 kilometers) above Earth in the international space station, and tethered to her track by bungee cords so she does not float away.

“She thought it would be cool if she gave it a try,” said Williams’ sister, Dina Pandya, who will run the race the traditional way with almost 24,000 other runners. “She said, ‘I’ll call you on Heartbreak Hill.’ “

Although the world’s oldest annual marathon starts at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) on Earth, Williams might not be able to run at that time because her sleep schedule — a fairly arbitrary matter in space — is set for the arrival of a Soyuz mission.

“I’m not sure the timing will be that she’ll be awake,” Pandya said. “They’re going to be on Russian time, so they’re kind of sleep-shifting.”

Williams, 41, qualified for the Boston race by finishing last January’s Houston Marathon in 3 hours, 29 minutes, 57 seconds. On December 9, Williams took off on the space shuttle Discovery, and it became clear she was not going to make it to the starting line.

“I considered it a huge honor to qualify, and I didn’t want my qualification to expire without giving it a shot,” Williams told the Boston Athletic Association, which organizes the race.

The BAA offered to send an official entrant’s bib and a special finisher’s medal — made without lead, per NASA orders — to the space station. But when this month’s launch of the shuttle Atlantis was postponed, Williams had to be e-mailed a bib that she can print out; the other souvenirs will have to wait.

Race organizers have cooperated with far-flung endeavors like the “Boston Marathon in Iraq,” sending extensive packages of trophies, water bottles and even a finish line tape to the Middle East for three years running. A similar shipment is headed for Kosovo this year.

But this is the first race they have ever had on a satellite.

“The Boston Marathon is the pinnacle achievement for most runners,” BAA spokesman Jack Fleming said. “For Suni to choose to run the 26.2 miles [42.2 kilometers] in space on Patriots Day is really a tribute to the thousands of marathoners who are running here on Earth. She is pioneering a new frontier in running and in sports with her run, which will truly be out of this world.”

Williams has run a handful of marathons, and she went through rigorous testing before being blasted into orbit. But three months with little gravity takes a toll on a human, and NASA requires all members of a station crew to exercise on the treadmill, a stationary bike and a resistance machine to maintain bone density and muscle mass.

“In microgravity, both of these things start to go away because we don’t use our legs to walk around and don’t need the bones and muscles to hold us up under the force of gravity,” Williams told the BAA.

A “vibration isolation system” built by a NASA engineer will keep her from shaking the entire space station as she runs, but the machinery puts a strain on the runner’s hips and shoulders.

Running a marathon is a strain under normal conditions: the first person who ran one, according to Greek legend, dropped dead when he finished. Since then, thousands of runners have sought refuge from on-course aid stations and finish-line medical tents to be treated for such ailments as hypothermia, dehydration, blisters, broken bones and heart attacks.

“That harness gets hard on her back and her shoulders or her hips. Her foot was going numb because the strap was on her hip so much,” Pandya said.

“She realizes that she has to be OK [after she's finished]. She mentioned the other day, ‘There’s no hot bath.’ “

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Internet services company AOL said on Friday its Advertising.com unit would help serve and manage advertising on a new online video venture being built by News Corp. and NBC Universal.

News Corp. and NBC announced last week the creation of a free site featuring full-length movies and television shows to launch this summer in a challenge to Google Inc.’s popular video sharing site YouTube.

NBC and News Corp. said they had signed up three of Google’s largest rivals, including Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, to distribute their programming and offer a major Internet advertising vehicle.

Advertising.com’s technology will manage display and video advertising for the new site, which has yet to be named, as well as ads inserted into an embedded media player to be used by the venture’s distribution partners.

The new venture plans to build its own advertising sales team, with ad revenue shared between the owners of the programming and their Internet distribution partners.

Advertising.com will also help generate revenue from display and video advertising space that is not utilized by the venture’s own sales team.

NBC is controlled by General Electric Co. with a minority stake held by Vivendi.

The dual suns that rise and set over Luke Skywalker’s homeworld in the film Star Wars may be more than just fantasy, according to data from Nasa.

<%image(20070331-laun.jpg|202|140|In the film Star Wars, Luke Skywalker gazed at a twin sunset from his desert homeworld)%>

In a classic scene from the 1977 movie, the hero gazes into the distance as two yellow suns set on the horizon.

Nasa’s Spitzer Space Telescope has found that planetary systems are as common around double stars as they are around single stars, like our own Sun.

Details of the research have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

In the study, a team of researchers used an infrared camera on the Spitzer telescope to search for so-called dusty discs around binary, or double, stars.

Dusty discs are made from the leftover debris of planet formation.

“We knew the stars would be there, the question was whether there was a planet to be the place where you could stand and see these sunsets,” said Karl Stapelfeldt, a scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

“The inference is getting stronger now that there must be such planets based on what Spitzer has found.”

The presence of planets in dusty discs is thought likely, but is by no means certain.

“In our Solar System, asteroids collide with each other and produce showers of dust and that is, we assume, what we’re seeing in these other discs – the dust produced by the collision of two bigger bodies,” lead author David Trilling, from the University of Arizona, told BBC News.

“We can infer that there are bigger bodies like asteroids. The next logical leap is that if there are processes that formed these bigger bodies like asteroids, those same processes may also have formed planets.”
<%image(20070331-_42742947_spitz_nasa_203.jpg|203|152|Planets could be commonplace around binary stars)%>

The team looked for dusty discs in 69 binary systems between about 50 and 200 light-years away from Earth.

The data show that about 40% of double systems had dusty discs – slightly higher than the frequency for a similar sample of single stars.

This finding suggests that planetary systems are at least as common around these binary stars as they are around single stars like our Sun.

In systems where stars are 50-500 astronomical units (50-500 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun) apart, dusty discs circle one of the pairs of stars.

Close-knit stars

But the researchers found no discs in binary systems where stars were 3-50 astronomical units (AU) apart.

In these double systems, Dr Trilling suggests, gravitational forces may kick debris out into deep space, preventing the formation of planets.
<%image(20070331-Nasa's Spitzer infrared telescope.jpg|203|152|Nasa's Spitzer infrared telescope)%>

When the team looked at even more closely spaced binary stars – positioned at three to zero astronomical units distance – they were surprised to find that dusty discs were common, occurring in about 60% of cases.

In these systems, a dusty disc circles both stars, rather than just one. Any planets orbiting these close-knit star systems would experience sunsets similar to the one depicted on the fictional desert world of Tatooine in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.

“The number of potential sites for planets has just increased enormously, because now we know these multiple star systems may be commonly associated with planetary formation,” said Dr Trilling.

Habitable zones

Dr Trilling said that if planets did exist in dusty discs around these binaries, they might be at distances where the conditions could be hospitable for life.

“The Luke Skywalker picture is science fiction. But I don’t see anything that’s astronomically incorrect about it,” said the University of Arizona researcher.

“With some of our systems, you could play with the geometry, put a planet there, get the temperatures right and make it look just like [Tatooine].”

“Of course, we don’t know anything about planets in these systems – it’s all imagination – but it looks fine.”
<%image(20070331-which binary systems might have planets.gif|416|270|which binary systems might have planets)%>

Buses equipped with wi-fi are being used to deliver web content to remote rural villages in the developing world.

In rural India and parts of Rwanda, Cambodia and Paraguay, the vehicles offer web content to computers with no internet connection.

The buses and a fleet of motorcycles update their pages in cities before visiting the hard-to-reach communities. As well as offering popular pages, the United Villages project also allows users to request specific information.

A small box, with an antenna, onboard the buses and motorcycles communicates with the rural computers.

Local business

In many parts of the developing world it is too expensive to lay the fibres and copper cable to deliver a standard internet connection. Wireless technologies also do not reach many remote places.

The founder of the United Villages initiative Amir Hassan said the company had been set up to give those people in these areas a slice of the web for a fee.

“There’s only 0.003% percent of the web that rural India cares about,” he told BBC News.

“They want to know the cricket scores, they want to see the new Aishwarya Rai photos, and they want to hear a sample of the latest Bollywood tunes.”

The village computer was often in the local store, he added.

Every time the wi-fi bus rolled by the village – up to six times a day – the pages were updated, he said.

Britney requests

As well as this regular content users can make special requests for a few additional rupees.

For example, if there was no information about Britney Spears on the village computer, a fee could be paid to get hold of such information.

The bus would then go back to the city and communicate with an internet server.

The box on the bus would be updated with the requested information and, a few hours later, the bus would arrive back at the village to zap the Britney Spears pages to the computer.

The wi-fi vehicles also deliver and collect e-mails from the villagers.

Product catalogue

The system also made it easier for villagers to buy essential products such as fertilisers, pesticides, books and medicines, Mr Hassan added.

“What we’ve done is created a catalogue of those products that they can order at the kiosk and get them delivered the next day via the bus,” he said.

“We’re bringing e-commerce to rural India.”

Because many people in rural communities cannot read, and because the majority of the web is in English, villagers often rely on the person who operates the local computer to help them.

Raj Kishor Swain, who runs the computer in the village of Satasankha, said he is now a popular man.

“Right now, more and more people are asking me about what can be done on the PC and internet,” he said.

“My objective is to show to the village youth that having a PC with connectivity is a viable business so that more and more unemployed youth can take up this as a self-employment opportunity.”

Animated cursors could prove risky for Windows users, Microsoft has warned.

The software giant is investigating reports that the way Windows handles alternatives to the traditional arrow cursor can leave PCs open to attack.

By booby-trapping a website or e-mail attachment with code that exploits the flaw, malicious hackers could hijack a Windows PC.

Microsoft warned users to be wary of attachments and urged them to update security software to combat the threat.

Open Windows

Malicious hackers are already known to be exploiting the flaw according to reports from the Sans Internet Storm Center.

In an alert, Sans said several security firms had seen evidence of websites being set up, hosting code that can exploit the bug. Information about it is being spread on bulletin boards malicious hackers are known to frequent.

PC users could fall victim by opening a booby-trapped attachment on an e-mail or by visiting a website that is hosting the code.

“Exploitation happens completely silently,” said security firm McAfee which was one of the first to find the bug. Once installed, the exploit code could download and run any other file, warned McAfee.

Microsoft urged people to update their security software so they could get hold of signature files that spot and stop the exploit code.

Simply blocking the .ani files that denote animated cursors will not work as many attackers are renaming booby-trapped files to disguise their dangerous nature.

Microsoft said that many different versions of Windows were vulnerable to the attack. The list of potential victims includes Windows Vista, XP, 2000 and Server 2003.

The software firm said those using Outlook Express would be vulnerable as would those who forward or reply to booby-trapped e-mail messages with Windows Mail on Vista.

However, it said that users of Outlook 2007 would be protected.

Security firms said users can stay safe from this vulnerability by using an alternative browser, such as Opera or Firefox 2.0, with Windows. Also protected are those using Windows Vista with Internet Explorer 7.0.