IDG News Service —
Those nasty JavaScript attacks that besieged thousands of Web sites from January until March started back up again this week, with the hackers setting up shop at a Chinese IP address. Meanwhile, security officials in China expressed worries that computer systems there will be hacked during the Olympics in August, even as hackers went after the CNN site and defaced a sports page with a message that Tibet is part of China, now and forever. Elsewhere, Steve Ballmer said Microsoft is prepared to carry on even if it does not succeed in buying Yahoo, OLPC head Nicholas Negroponte vexed open-source developers with his push to make the XO laptop interface Windows-compatible and a federal court said it's OK for customs agents to spark up our laptops and look over the contents, just because they can.
1. Hackers jack thousands of sites, including U.N. domains: The massive JavaScript attacks that were first detected in January and seemed to disappear since last month have started up again, with U.K. government and United Nations sites infected with malware after being hacked. It's unclear how many sites have been nailed this go-around, but in March the attacks affected (and infected) more than 100,000 URLs. "The attackers have now switched over to a new domain as their hub for hosting the malicious payload in this attack," according to a Websense alert. "We have no doubt that the two attacks are related." The domain in question is at a Chinese IP (Internet Protocol) address. So was the one in March.
2. Ballmer: Microsoft could walk away from Yahoo deal: We're not sure what to make of this one, but after all the brouhaha and back and forth and digging in of heels, Steve Ballmer hinted at a conference in Milan that the company is "prepared to move forward without merging with Yahoo." But Microsoft's CEO also continued to insist that Microsoft needs Yahoo (even if Yahoo doesn't think it needs Microsoft) to succeed in online advertising and to compete with Google. "Today Google has the lead, there's no doubt about it, and I wanna make sure that they have plenty of competition," he said. "We think the best way to move that forward quickly is to come together with Yahoo. I hope that it works, but if it doesn't, we go forward alone." That sounds sort of lonely and sad, doesn't it? Ah, well. More will be known soon enough, as Microsoft's deadline for Yahoo's decision on the US$40 billion-plus bid is Saturday.
