Hacker on hacker: Zeus bot master dupes Anonymous backers into installing password stealer
Hackers have duped supporters of the Anonymous group into installing the Zeus botnet, which steals confidential information from PCs, including banking usernames and passwords, security researchers said last week.
According to Symantec, someone modified a link to a popular distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack tool to direct users to a Zeus bot Trojan instead.
The replacement of a Zeus client for the "Slowloris" DDoS tool took place on the day after Anonymous launched strikes against websites operated by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and others in retaliation for the arrest of four men associated with the popular Megaupload "cyberlocker" site on charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering. Read more...
Mass. schools team up for supercomputer center
At a gritty industrial site occupied a century ago by a textile mill, five universities are collaborating to install supercomputers that will recreate the start of the universe and perform other research.
The developers of the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, which is being built and is expected to be operating by the end of next year, were drawn to Holyoke for the same reason industrialists flocked to the city in the 19th century: cheap water power from the Connecticut River.
"It's coming full circle for us," said John Goodhue, executive director of the project. Read more...
Google bypasses admin controls with latest Chrome IE
Google has released a new version of Chrome Frame – the Internet Explorer plug-in that turns Microsoft's browser into a Google browser – letting users install the plug-in even when they don't have administrator privileges on their machines.
The new version runs a "helper process" when IE starts up that can then load the Chrome Frame plug-in when it's requested, and you don't need admin privileges to do so. "Yay for clever technical hacks that help users circumvent ossified IT bureaucracy," said one commenter on Hacker News. But admins aren't likely to feel the same.
Google is well aware of this. But the company says that if admins don't like it, they can use separate Google admin tools to stop it from happening. Read more...