By Elizabeth Armstrong

A new and "nastier" variant of the MyDoom worm is racing across the Internet, Michelle Delio reports for Wired News.

Computers that have been infected with MyDoom.B (the first version is now called MyDoom.A) will launch a 12-day denial-of-service attack on Microsoft.com beginning Feb. 1. They will also launch a separate attack on the SCO Group's website on the same date, which is what the original virus is coded to do:

MyDoom.B also alters system files in order to block infected computers from accessing a list of 65 websites, most of them belonging to antivirus vendors, in an apparent attempt to stymie users attempting to download antivirus application updates or information.

MyDoom.A, designed to attack computers running Windows OS, clogged e-mail servers and attacked the site of Unix vendor The SCO Group, according to IDG News. The SCO Group has angered the Linux community for its claims that important pieces of the open-source operating system are covered by SCO's Unix copyrights. IBM, Novell, and other Linux backers dispute the claims.

"The MyDoom worm takes the Linux Wars to a new intensity," Chris Belthoff, an analyst for anti-virus firm Sophos, tells CNN. "It appears the author of MyDoom may have taken the war of words from the courtrooms and Internet message boards to a new level by unleashing this worm which attacks SCO's Web site."

The worm copied itself at a fierce pace, according to CNN's Jeordan Legon. "We're essentially watching the virus follow the sun as the various time zones come online," MessageLabs Chief Technical Officer Mark Sunner told CNN Tuesday.

The worm, which travels as e-mail with an attachment (extensions include .exe, .scr, .zip, or .pif), in many cases appears to be an error report stating that the message body cannot be displayed and has been attached in a file. The sender's address can be spoofed, appearing to represent the e-mail system administrator or even a coworker or friend. According to Symantec Security Response, only users of computers running Microsoft's Windows are at risk.

Antivirus experts tell Wired News that computers infected with MyDoom.A are probably being used to send e-mails containing copies of MyDoom.B. Infected computers have a backdoor in their systems that allows hackers remote access and thus control.

The Monitor will continue updating as more information is available.

By Elizabeth Armstrong

The Recording Industry Association of America has just filed 532 lawsuits against music file swappers who share an average of at least 800 songs with other online music fans, reports The Associated Press. It is the largest single sweep of lawsuits the group has made since it launched its campaign against file sharing last summer.

Currently, the RIAA knows the Internet protocal addresses of the 532 targeted file sharers, but not their names or addresses. It plans to discover the identity of each defendant through Internet service providers such as Verizon Internet Services Inc. Verizon successfully challenged the industry's use of copyright subpoenas in December. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the recording industry cannot use subpoenas to force Internet providers to identify music downloaders without filing a lawsuit.

Hence today's filing of hundreds of lawsuits. How Internet providers respond remains to be seen, though Verizon has been fighting to maintain the privacy of its customers since the RIAA's campaign to stop file sharing began.

The move comes on the heels of a report released by The NPD Group, a marketing research firm, which found that the number of people downloading music illegally increased in October and November after a six-month decline.

NPD's MusicWatch Digital service, which monitors household usage of peer to peer services, reports that the number of households downloading digital music files was up 14 percent in November 2003 compared with September, and that the number of people who report using P2P services rose from 11 million to 12 million in that same period.

"It's important to keep in mind that file sharing is occurring less frequently than before the RIAA began its legal efforts to stem the tide of P2P file sharing," Vice President Russ Crupnick said. "We're just seeing the first increase in these numbers. NPD will continue to monitor whether it's a temporary seasonal blip, or a trend that suggests that the industry should be more aggressive in capping the use of illegal methods to acquire digital music."

The RIAA announced Wednesday morning that after the identity of each defendant is determined, the group will attempt to negotiate a financial settlement with each person before updating the lawsuit with the defendant's name and transferring the case to the proper courthouse.

By Jim Bencivenga

She’s back.

Just look to the southwestern sky after sunset and the purest, whitest light this side of the sun dances against the black backdrop of space.

Venus.

She’ll be in our evening skies through the Spring. It will be eight years before the planet shrouded in clouds (all the better to reflect sunlight) will be this close to Earth again.

And if you’re fortunate enough to be far away from city lights, this weekend (as well as any evening between Feb. 20-24 when there is little if any moon), look for your shadow by the light of Venus. Find an open grove of trees. Stand where you have an unobstructed view of the planet and see the faint shadow you, and the surrounding trees, cast.

Awesome.

For even better viewing of Venus, get your hands on a pair of binoculars. Have them handy Jan. 24 and Feb. 23. Venus and the scantiest of crescent moons perch side by side. Venus will be sparkling to the right with a fingernail of light showing on the bottom side of the moon to the left. The contrast makes for one galactic odd couple. A Venetian, lunar rendezvous summons for me an image of the comings and goings of friendships. For the next three nights watch how the two, like friends in our busy lives, meet, pass, then distance themselves, while the memory of their encounter remains.

With or without binoculars note the darkened, faintly illuminated outline of the moon. What you are looking at since it is so close to sunset is earthshine, sunlight reflected off Earth bouncing off the moon back to Earth. Add in the sunlight bouncing off Venus casting a faint shadow back on Earth, and you’ll be bouncing with the thought that this subtle, galactic glimmer includes you, the planet you are standing on, a satellite that revolves around the planet you are standing on, a planet reflecting light all from the star that gives life to our planet and makes our solar system go - the sun.

Just standing will never be the same again!

And finally, because Venus is so bright in the night sky it is impossible to see her phases without a telescope or powerful binoculars. If you have access to a telescope, get ready for a Galilean moment. Focus on the second planet from the sun right after sunset. The first time Galileo did this he observed that Venus had phases just like the moon. Galileo had an "a ha" moment. Venus must be orbiting the Sun, like the moon orbits earth. Then, if Venus, likewise Earth must orbit the Sun. Rather than being at the center of the universe, Galileo knew he was standing on a planet that circled the true center of the universe.

by Tom Regan

Earlier this week the good folks at the Pew Internet and American Life Project released new data that showed more people are using the Internet to gather political information and news.

Television news remains dominant, but there has been further erosion in the audience for broadcast TV news. The Internet, a relatively minor source for campaign news in 2000, is now on par with such traditional outlets as public television broadcasts, Sunday morning news programs and the weekly news magazines. And young people, by far the hardest to reach segment of the political news audience, are abandoning mainstream sources of election news and increasingly citing alternative outlets, including comedy shows such as the Daily Show and Saturday Night Live, as their source for election news.

Interesting, no? I'm as intrigued by the growth of the comedy shows (Jon Stewart, the 21st century's Walter Cronkite?) as I am by the growth of the Internet. But the fact that the Internet now rivals the talking head gabfests and the PBS news, shows tells me that the Net is becoming the medium of choice for political junkies.

Then today The Washington Post reports that political candidates trying to use the Internet to win support from young, Web-wise voters should avoid pop-up and banner ads and instead use interactive media like Internet chats and "blogs." The study showed that almost 70 percent of those surveyed said they would be less likely to pay attention to the candidate who only wanted to send text messages to their e-mail inboxes or cell phones. The study was conducted by ... (take a deep breathe) ... the DC-based Council for Excellence in Government's Center for Democracy and Citizenship, and the University of Maryland's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

"There's no question that young people, probably more than any other subset of voters, want to be listened to, not talked to," said Michael Cornfield, research director for the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at the George Washington University. "They want to have someone connect their perception of the issues on a local scale to those on a national or global scale."

Well, duh. You don't need a study to know that people want interactivity from the Web. Especially young people. Young people want candidates to listen to their ideas, not just have the candidates throw their ideas at them and hope some stick. The politician who realizes that the Web is the way to reconnect young people with politics will go far indeed. Howard Dean has come the closest so far, but even his efforts leave much to be desired.

We can only hope that political candidates (and most media sites for that matter) will learn to listen more, and pontificate less. I also want to hope for the best, and believe politicians will take full advantage of the Web to do more than just raise money.

But then again, I also want the Red Sox to win the World Series, so I've learned to live with disappointment.

By Elizabeth Armstrong

Spam messages used to be deleted with reckless abandon. Subject lines assaulted the imagination so viciously that most messages weren't even opened. And as spam filters began to weed out the worst of the worst, advertisements for various appendage enlargements became all the more rare. Then "daphnia blue-crested fish cattle," "dark orange fountain moss," and "dulltuned amazons" threatened to bring the entire filtering system to its knees.

Random compilations of misfitted nouns and adjectives are spammers' weapon of the day. So far, according to Wired News, they have successfully sneaked past the filters that incorporate Bayesian analysis techniques, which examine incoming e-mails and weed out the spam based on each message's contents:

By throwing a hundred or so random words rarely used in sales spiels into each e-mail missive, spammers hope to thwart Bayesian filters by making the spam appear to be personal correspondence. Incorporating words that might be used in legitimate e-mails is also intended to poison the checklist the filter uses, forcing it to mark, for example, e-mails with somewhat common words like Amazon and fish as spam indicators.

Steve Linford, of antispam advocacy organization Spamhaus, calls the nonsensical strings of words a "hash buster," meaning they defy the "hashing" technique that compares new spam to old spam to filter out the guilty. The good news, Mr. Linford says, is that spammers who use hash busters are easier to catch:

"What spammers probably don't realize is that the mere presence of hash busters screams 'Spam!' And it's impossible for spammers to claim they're not spamming when the spam contains hash busters. Spamhaus sees hash busters as proof a spammer knows he's spamming and is deliberately trying to get past filters, so we actually come down on them harder when they're using hash busters."

But Anthony Baxter, one of the developers of SpamBayes, a free, open-source Bayesian antispam filter, says that a good half of all spam these days contains hash busters: "This is yet another escalation of the arms race between spammers and those people who like to have a useful e-mail inbox."

Until the filters catch up, beware the dark orange fountain moss.