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After tricking several thousand executives into downloading malicious software earlier this week, online scammers started up their subpoena phishing scam again Wednesday, but on a much smaller scale.

First reported Monday, the phishers send a small number of e-mail messages to senior executives within companies, often CEOs, telling them that they've been subpoenaed for a federal court case. The e-mails direct the victim to a Web site that is very similar to a legitimate California federal court page, but ending in “…-uscourts.com,” rather than the “….uscourts.gov” Web domain actually used by federal courts.

Although they end with the same letters, the domains used in this scam are actually different from and not connected with the uscourts.com Web site, which offers access to court records in some jurisdictions.

The e-mail sent to executives is specially crafted to appear legitimate, a tactic called “spear-phishing.” The emails include the executive's name, company's name and even the correct phone number.

Executives who click on the link in the e-mail are then told that they need to download a plug-in in order to read the subpoena. That plug-in is actually malicious software.

Although the U.S. federal court system uses email to communicate information about cases, subpoenas for new cases are not served via e-mail.

Verisign, which estimates that about 2,000 people were tricked by the scam on Monday, believes that Wednesday's attack was on a much smaller scale. Late Wednesday the company's iDefense group had tracked only about 100 infections, said Matt Richard, director of iDefense's Rapid Response Team.

Security experts have been fighting the phishers. By Tuesday they'd managed to get the first phishing Web site taken down, only to have the second one pop up on Wednesday.

Because the attack targets such a small number of victims, anti-spam companies have had a hard time filtering the e-mails and antivirus companies have been similarly pressed to block the malicious software that the attackers are using.

Late Wednesday, antivirus companies were not blocking this latest version of the malware, said John Bambenek, a security researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and volunteer at the SANS Internet Storm Center.

San Francisco - EarthLink's bid to link U.S. cities to the Internet with Wi-Fi came closer to an end on Tuesday as both Corpus Christi, Texas, and Milpitas, Calif., agreed to take back networks owned by the struggling service provider.

EarthLink built networks in a handful of U.S. cities and proposed deals with several others, saying it could put up the networks without tax dollars and make money through advertising or subscriptions. As that business model started to look shaky around the middle of last year and

LAS VEGAS - New data released Wednesday show online views of videos soared 66 percent in the U.S. in February from a year earlier, with TV networks grabbing just a pittance of those eyeballs.

The numbers from comScore Inc. underscored a problem being discussed by network executives this week at the National Association of Broadcasters annual meeting in Las Vegas, as they search for ways to drive viewers to their Web sites and TV channels.

Some networks said their online strategies involve trying to stay ahead of video pirates who upload broadcast content online just minutes after it hits the airwaves.

The culprits often post the footage on Google Inc.’s YouTube, the dominant video service in the new survey.

YouTube racked up one-third of the estimated 10 billion views of online video in February, up from 15 percent last year, according to comScore.

“We still see our content pop up on YouTube,” CNN.com Executive Producer Sandy Malcolm said during the broadcasters meeting. CNN is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

“You deal with it,” she said. “You try to work with them on rights and things, but I don’t think you can completely stop it. You just try to beat the tide and try to get your content out as fast as you can.”

Excluding AOL.com, Time Warner sites including CNN.com grabbed just a 1.3 percent share of video views on the Internet in February, or roughly 133 million views, comScore reported.

Other TV-based entities remained back in the pack, with Walt Disney Co.’s ABC.com attracting 98 million views, or a 1 percent share.

Even as the YouTube juggernaut continued to attract more viewers, comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman said TV networks were fighting back.

He cited last month’s launch of Hulu.com, a video Web site that’s a joint venture of General Electric Co.’s NBCUniversal and News Corp.

“It seems there’s a certain amount of attention and investment going online right now,” Lipsman said.

The move was necessary to adapt to “irreversible shifts” in the content delivery business, said Sheau Ng, NBC Universal’s vice president of broadcast and consumer technology.

“The point is to make legitimate content easily available,” Ng said. “At the same time, you need to tell the local police watch out for this counterfeit stuff.”

YouTube said it has made efforts to clamp down on pirated content and since October has offered content owners the chance to slap ads on even unlicensed video copies and share revenue.

“We’re happy to partner with any and all content creators to do with their content as they wish: monetize it, track it or pull it off the site,” YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes said. “We don’t want infringing content on YouTube.”

BBC, the government-mandated British broadcaster, said the rapid move to online viewing among young people was a potential threat to its fee-collecting structure.

In December, it launched its iPlayer, an online service that replays TV shows for a week. It has since had 42 million streams or downloads.

“Are our younger audiences drifting away from the TV as the centerpiece of their experience? Absolutely,” said BBC’s platforms executive, Troy, who uses only one name. “This is our next generation of license fee payers. If we don’t respond to the need to make ourselves relevant and accessible in new and convenient ways, we risk losing our relevance with the very people that fund us.”

Clyde Smith, senior vice president of global broadcast technology and standards at Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting System, said online details and clips of shows can create incredible brand loyalty, even if some “sampling” occurs.

As an example, some fans have downloaded audio copies of popular TBS shows, re-enacted scenes with puppets and posted the shows back online — which he called “viral marketing.”

In other instances, fans have copied versions of programs like “Frisky Dingo” from its Adult Swim channel and reposted them elsewhere on the Internet, without regard to the royalty rights of the show creators or the associated advertising dollars involved.

“Quite frankly, we can’t afford to produce it and run it just one time and then have it distributed everywhere,” Smith said. “What are the risks the industry’s willing to take in the new media spaces? I think that’s what the industry is deciding right now.”

Comcast, one of the leading providers of broadband cable Internet access in the U.S, has your rights at heart. Of course, exactly what rights you have remains to be seen. But Comcast plans to let you know, just as soon as it's decided what they are.

That was the gist of Comcast and Pando Networks' joint announcement yesterday, calling for a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.” But skeptics worry that such a plan is likely to be light on the rights, heavy on the responsibilities.

At issue is peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software, such as BitTorrent, which Comcast and other broadband providers claim takes up an inordinate amount of their network bandwidth. Worse, such software is often used to share copyright-infringing material, which could land both ISPs and their customers in hot water.

Comcast describes the solution it proposes as “self regulation.” It's a term that's been applied in the past to the film, television, music, and videogame industries, each of which have applied voluntary ratings to keep adult-themed material out of the hands of minors.

But critics argue that what Comcast really wants bears little resemblance to the warning labels placed on entertainment content. Instead, they say, Comcast is looking for a way to justify the practice of throttling or blocking outright any traffic coming from P2P applications, something they allege the broadband provider has been doing for the last year.

According to some critics, that practice violates the principle of net neutrality, which dictates that Internet providers must offer network access the same way that local utilities offer electricity: Once you pay for the service, you're free to use it in any way you like, and no one customer gets preferential treatment over any other.

Not everyone agrees, of course, and Internet providers in particular are becoming increasingly vocal about it. Neil Berkett, incoming CEO of the UK's second-largest broadband provider, recently described net neutrality as “a load of bollocks,” and suggested that customers who don't play by strict rules might end up in “Internet bus lanes.”

Should broadband customers be able to use any software they choose once connected to the Internet? Or is it only reasonable to expect broadband access to be governed by terms of service that dictate what is appropriate usage? Sound off in the PC World Community Forums.

LONDON (Reuters) - Hundreds of child abuse Web sites around the world could be shut down if countries worked together to tackle the problem, an Internet watchdog said in a report on Thursday.

The Internet Watch Foundation said it had made the first attempt to find out how many sites peddle abusive images and videos of children.

Its researchers found about 3,000 sites, with more than three-quarters run as commercial operations, typically by criminal gangs trying to make money out of the images.

“This is the first time any organization has revealed the true scale of this issue and been clear that the problem is something that can be solved,” the watchdog said in a statement.

Chief Executive Peter Robbins said the new figure would help build the case for a global drive to eradicate the sites.

He said: “A coordinated global attack on these Web sites could get these horrific images removed from the Web.

“Speculative figures can create a distorted picture of the scale of the problem of child sexual abuse websites.”

The number of child abuse sites has remained static over the last few years, despite the growth of the Internet, he added.

The watchdog's annual report called for a worldwide campaign by governments, police and the Internet industry to investigate and disrupt abusive sites.

Computer networks in Russia and the United States host the most child abuse images, although many other countries are involved, a watchdog spokeswoman said.

It can be hard to shut illegal sites because operators constantly switch countries, temporarily close them or hop between different Internet hosting companies.

The victims come from many countries, although it is hard to pinpoint exact locations, the spokeswoman added.

“Child identification is an extremely difficult process,” she said. “We often find that new material will surface in a non-commercial area … and those same images will appear on the commercial Web sites a year or so later.”

Since 2003, less than one percent of child abuse content has been hosted on UK computers, down from 18 percent in 1997, the report says. Sites hosted in Britain are closed within hours.

During 2007, the majority (71 percent) of global sites were “live” for less than 50 days of the year, the report said.

It also highlighted a significant problem with pedophiles sharing images between themselves online.

Set up in 1996, the Internet Watch Foundation is a self-regulating charity funded by the European Union and the Internet industry. Its role is to remove child abuse, criminally obscene material and racist content from the Internet.

(Editing by Steve Addison)

A concerted international effort could see the end of websites that profit by selling images of child sex abuse, it is claimed.

The UK’s Internet Watch Foundation conducted research to identify how many sites trade such images and concluded there are 2,755 such sites worldwide.

Of these, 80% are judged to be fully commercial operations.

The IWF said this “manageable” number could be eliminated if net firms, governments and police worked together.

Closing sites

The IWF, which identifies and shuts down UK hosts of child abuse images, said it carried out the research to quantify the scale of the problem.

Before now, said a spokeswoman for the IWF, uninformed speculation about sites that trade and traffic in images of child sexual abuse caused many to think the problem was impossible to tackle.

“We think 2,755 is a manageable number,” said the spokeswoman. “We are now asking for a worldwide effort to go in and really combat this issue.”

The figure of 2,755 had been static for the last three years, said the spokeswoman, though these sites typically moved country and host regularly to stay one step ahead of attempts to shut them down.

She added that the work of the IWF - alongside net firms, law enforcement agencies and government - has meant that fewer than 1% of child abuse sites are hosted in Britain.

The IWF also shared its list of sites hosting image of child sex abuse with net firms so Britons do not stumble over the sites inadvertently and can block efforts to reach them.

Similar work internationally could see the closing of most of these publicly available sites, said the spokeswoman.

“It would make it much harder for criminals to make money from the crime and thereby combat the problem,” she said.

This would take co-ordination by a transnational body because the sites hopped to hosting firms in different countries so often.

Nobody has yet come forward to take on the problem, said the spokeswoman.

The research into child abuse sites was contained in the IWF’s annual report in which it revealed its evidence helped convict seven paedophiles and that it had contributed information for a further 13 investigations.

BOSTON - Anemic U.S. growth didn’t prevent computer makers from posting another double-digit gain in shipments worldwide in the first quarter, according to two technology research firms that both said the increase beat their forecasts.

IDC and Gartner Inc. on Wednesday also said Dell Inc.’s recent initiative to offer computers in retail stores is helping it gain ground on Hewlett-Packard Corp., which wrestled the title of world’s largest PC maker from Dell in late 2006.

Both firms ranked Dell the U.S. market leader, however, with about 31 percent of the market to HP’s nearly 25 percent.

Even with growth in U.S. sales slowing to around 3 percent, overseas gains boosted global first-quarter PC shipments 14.6 percent, according to IDC, and to 12.3 percent by Gartner’s count. That’s because the U.S. accounts for just 23 percent of global shipments in the first quarter compared with 25 percent a year ago.

“Even if there is a particularly bad U.S. market, it’s becoming a smaller piece of the global puzzle,” said Bob O’Donnell, an IDC vice president.

IDC estimated Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP’s global market share at 19.1 percent and Dell’s share 15.7 percent. Gartner estimated an 18.3 percent share for HP, compared to 14.9 percent for Dell.

Framingham, Mass.-based IDC and Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner measure sales differently, and their results usually differ.

The first-quarter numbers beat both firms’ forecasts by greater than a percentage point.

“There were a lot of questions about whether the U.S. economy would impact other regions, and clearly the answer was ‘No,’” said IDC’s O’Donnell.

Portable computers for the consumer market drove much of the global increase, O’Donnell said.

“The notion of a PC used to be that you’d have one per household, and now it’s one per person,” O’Donnell said. “Notebook computers are really driving that.”

IDC said shipments in January through March rose to 69.5 million, up from 60.6 million a year earlier. Gartner counted 71.1 million shipments in the first quarter, compared with 63.3 million in the year-ago period.

IDC said the sagging U.S. economy slowed the growth in U.S. computer shipments growth to 3.5 percent, compared with 8.8 percent in last year’s fourth quarter. IDC also said last quarter’s U.S. growth was the slowest since the fourth quarter of 2006, when the rate was flat.

Gartner put the latest quarter’s growth at 3 percent.

The double-digit global first-quarter growth followed gains of nearly 17 percent in last year’s third and fourth quarters.

Gartner said the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America posted the world’s fastest growth rates last quarter, both about 19 percent, while sales in the region that includes the Middle East and Africa grew 14.9 percent.

The competition between HP and Dell for the title of world’s biggest PC maker heated up in the first quarter, in part because of Dell’s recent success selling through large retail chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Staples Co. — a departure from Dell’s original direct-to-customer model.

Both firms said Round Rock, Texas-based Dell saw more growth in shipments. IDC put Dell’s first-quarter growth at 21.6 percent, while Gartner pegged it at 21.8 percent

HP’s shipments grew 17.4 percent by IDC’s count and 17.5 percent by Gartner’s.

Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa said Dell has enjoyed robust growth because of its retail channel initiative, while HP has been hurt by excess inventory that could linger throughout the current quarter.

Taiwan-based Acer Inc. remained the world’s third-largest PC maker, with a 9.9 percent market share, up from 6.9 percent a year ago, IDC said.

China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. was fourth, with a 6.9 percent share, up from 6.6 percent a year ago, IDC said.

Both research firms ranked Japan-based Toshiba Corp. fifth, with a roughly 4 percent share.

With so many blogging tools out there — and so many bloggers trying to earn some bucks with advertising networks — as well as dozens of social networks, it's getting increasingly difficult and time-consuming to manage so many different online presences.

Six Apart has at least a partial solution. The maker of the popular blogging software MovableType and TypePad has partnered with Facebook to create BlogIt, a write-once, publish-many solution.

“BlogIt brings some of the best social aspects of Facebook to blogging, making it easy to blog from within Facebook and tell people you know all around the Web that you're doing so,” said David Recordon, the open-platforms tech lead at Six Apart.

Twitter, Too

The program, which is used within Facebook, supports not only Six Apart's platforms, but also many others, including Blogger, LiveJournal, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, Vox, WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

“By bridging the gap between blogging and social networking, Six Apart brings social tools to bloggers all over the Web no matter the publishing platform they use,” Recordon said. “BlogIt is a power tool for bloggers who want to spread the word to their friends and colleagues about the content they're creating.”

In addition, BlogIt can send a message to the Twitter and Pownce alert systems, making it easy for bloggers' subscribers to find out when they make a new post.

“Twitter makes it easy for anybody to tell their friends or the world what they're up to,” said Evan Williams, Twitter's founder. “BlogIt works perfectly with that goal.”

News From Cambodia

“After using Facebook for four years, it's the first place I go to stay in touch with my largest social network,” said Jessica Young, a Kiva Fellow in Cambodia. “I'm based in Cambodia now, and I was keeping in touch with my friends and family through my personal blog on Vox, with my colleagues through the Kiva Fellow blog on WordPress, and with everyone through my statuses on Twitter. Now, using BlogIt to update them all from within Facebook has made it easier and quicker to share my activities in Cambodia with users on just about any service.”

BlogIt is not a feature-rich option, however. It lacks a rich text editor or the ability to upload pictures, for instance. And users have to provide the application with all of the login information and passwords for all of their blogging accounts.

“BlogIt is a pretty slick Facebook app, perhaps the best I've used, and while it still lacks a few features … it definitely makes it easier to broadcast your life to multiple locations,” one reviewer wrote.

While the application is limited to Facebook right now, Six Apart is a member of Google's OpenSocial initiative, and Recordon indicated that the company may expand the service to other networks. “We could probably see this running inside Plaxo,” he said.

A sharp-eyed blogger and PR man in San Antonio spotted what turned out to be the installation of the first AT&T networked Starbucks near the telecom giant's headquarters. Alan Weinkrantz, who has no business connection with AT&T, happened to notice the completion of the first conversion of a Starbucks from T-Mobile's HotSpot brand to AT&T Wi-Fi. Starbucks announced that they had opted to switch providers in February 2008, and that “second quarter” would see the first markets move over, with the network completed by the end of 2008.For business travelers, this move could save money. T-Mobile was the only hot-spot network of any scale in the U.S. that didn't have a roaming relationship with similar networks, and only worked with one domestic aggregator: iPass. This meant that frequent travelers needed to either have an iPass subscription through their company to use Starbucks without paying extra, or needed a T-Mobile HotSpot subscription, which ran from $20 to $40 per month depending on term of commitment and whether you had a voice plan. Their day rate is $10 and their hourly rate $6. (I wrote up iPass' new service plan for individuals a few weeks ago.)AT&T's approach with Starbucks is somewhat different. First, all AT&T fiber customers and most DSL customers get free, unlimited use of the Starbucks locations in addition to about 10,000 other locations- mostly McDonald's- in AT&T's so-called home network. (DSL customers must have at least a 1.5 Mbps downstream connection to qualify for free Wi-Fi.) All remote business users also gain access at no cost above their current plans. That's 12 million home and 5 million business users right there. (Home users can pay $10 per month to get hotel and non-AT&T-operated airport access plus 53,000 hot spots outside the U.S.)For those who aren't in AT&T's thrall already, you can get up to two hours of consecutive free access every day by putting value on a Starbucks stored-value card, and either using it or adding funds to its balance at least every 30 days. AT&T already had liberal roaming agreements with other providers and aggregators, and they've extended that with this deal. T-Mobile signed a five-year roaming relationship, so existing T-Mobile customers just continue to use Starbucks, which is neat, and non-disruptive. Boingo Wireless users also gain access to Starbucks as part of their $22 per month unlimited U.S. and $39 per month worldwide plan.Everyone else can pay $20 per month for acess to all 17,000 domestic locations and 53,000 international locations that AT&T aggregates into its Premium network.We're still all waiting to see how AT&T extends this offer to its wireless subscribers; there were strong hints at the announcement two months ago that some offer would be provided, which makes especially good sense with the 2G/Wi-Fi iPhone. So far, though, no word.With one Starbucks converted, that's 7,000 or so to go, but we'll likely see markets open up in the next few weeks, and I imagine the rest of San Antonio and all of Seattle–Starbucks' home–are lucky top of the list.

And here's one more tip: If you're an AT&T customer or roaming partner already, you can use your login at any current Starbucks hotspot. Look for an AT&T logo in the upper-right corner. Click it, then enter your login details. Very nice of Starbucks, T-Mobile, and AT&T to ease the transition from one provider to another.

San Francisco - Customers at the MySQL conference this week said Sun's acquisition of the database company could increase MySQL's credibility among senior IT decision makers still skittish about using open-source software.

There were some, though, who feared that ownership of MySQL by a traditional IT vendor would diminish growth in the community of MySQL developers, who provide a regular stream of patches and new features for the database.

“The main downside is that the community might reject it [Sun's purchase of MySQL],” said Yuriy Demchenko, a database administrator and Web applications developer at a large Canadian telecommunications company. “We'll see if the community continues to grow at the rate it has.”

Demchenko said his company, which he did not want identified because he is not authorized to speak for it publicly, runs primarily Oracle and IBM's DB2 databases, but his department uses MySQL for “semi-official startup projects” that sometimes end up running in production. He uses the community edition of MySQL “because it's free.”

The upside of the acquisition is that it will make higher-level executives at the carrier more comfortable with MySQL because it is owned by a big, stable company, Demchenko said. His company already uses Sun servers.

Sun closed its $1 billion purchase of MySQL