Sony unearths Playstation modding scam in Chinese jail

Sony Computer Entertainment has traced large numbers of modded Playstations back to a Chinese prison. The company says that containerloads of PS2s were being sent to Shenzhen prison for several days at a time where the inmates altered the machines by adding a extra chip to allow them to play pirated games. Following a five year investigation, Sony found that the productive prisoners were part of a criminal network turning around up to 50,000 modded PS2s a week. ...more

Intel updates Centrino

After much delay, Intel has finally announced the details of the next generation of Centrino technology optimised for portable computing. The company has overhauled all three legs of the system from the processor to the chipset to the wireless capability Intel is offering no less than seven new versions of its Pentium M processor ranging from 770 running at 2.13GHz down to 1. ...more

BT hits LLU target but sidesteps price cut

BT is proclaiming that it has now established 1.5 million LLU (local loop unbundling) connections. The UK telco says it will reach this figure of unbundled local loops for communication providers this week, and it represents an increase of 200,000 connections in a month, since the last figures were published. ...more

MySQL under attack from bot

The world's most popular open source database is under attack from a bot. The UDF worm - so-called because it uses a User Defined Function that allows developers to build their own customised functions is spreading rapidly on instances of MySQL running on Windows. The worm is exploiting security vulnerabilities on Windows to propagate. ...more

Million Dollar Homepage facing extortion

It may have been that the criminal fraternity thought this was just too easy a way of making money - tantamount to robbery. But the boy with the million dollar homepage has been hit by extortion attempts and denial of service attacks. 21-year-old Alex Tew's money-spinning brainwave of selling adverts on a web page by the pixel, and at a dollar a dot, finally made the magic million earlier this month, earning him a lot a publicity. ...more