Sober epidemic reveals strength of its botnet origins

The Sober epidemic may be a testament to the size of the botnet used to spam it out, rather than any indication of actual infection levels, according to antivirus experts Kaspersky labs. Many security companies, including Kaspersky, noted high levels of Sober-infected email traffic in the 'epidemic' that kicked off 2 May. Sophos said that about 80 per cent of virus reports were Sober-related and that infected mails accounted for nearly 5 per cent of all traffic. ...more

Nvidia sees profits slump

A bad day on the markets for Nvidia as it announces its second quarter results. The reason? A big drop in profits as the graphics chip giant failed to meet analyst expectations. 'Q2 was challenging and disappointing as the desktop GPU segment declined significantly as a result of several unusual market events,' said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA, referring to attritional price competition with rivals ATi and Intel's delay of its Grantsdale chipset, which was blamed for holding back the advance of PCI-Express products. ...more

HSBC strengthens online defences

The HSBC is claiming the largest UK roll out of access code generating key fobs to its business customers. Some 180,000 of its business customers will receive the key fobs, costing the bank around ?3 each, in a bid to combat online fraud following successful roll outs in the US and Hong Kong. A spokesperson told us that HSBC has no plans to offer the security devices to its consumer customers as 'the risk profile is so much higher' for businesses. ...more

Internet Explorer's market share 'falls below 90 per cent'

Dutch web analysis company OneStat.com is reporting that the market share of Internet Explorer has fallen below 90 per cent. The company says that the current metrics of the sites that it monitors show that IE is currently running at 88. ...more

Google denies China licensing claims

Google has denied claims by a Chinese newspaper that it does not have the necessary licence to operate inside the country. The Beijing News said the Google.cn does not have the ICP licence that is a prerequisite for running an Internet service in China. ...more