Oscarbot(aka Doyorg), an windows only Trojan, continued to spread on Monday among America Online instant messaging clients. It installs backdoor on the infected PC when users click on a link within lines like "hey check out this" or "i thought youd wanna see this" from a buddy on their AIM contact list. Following the hyperlink results results in the user being prompted to save/run an executable file (such as pictures@gallery.com). If users choose to download and/or run this file, Oscarbot will contact a remote IRC server, logon to a specified channel and wait for further instructions. It propagates by sending the same message to every buddy in the system's AOL Instant Messenger client's address book.

Two "Extremely Critical" (as classified by Secunia) vulnerabilities have been discovered in Firefox, which can be exploited by malicious people (read crackers) to conduct cross-site scripting attacks and compromise a user's system. Unfortunately the proof-of-concept exploit code has been made publicly available, without providing Firefox a chance to fix them first. This is what makes it so dangerous.

Thank you for your interest in Google Web Accelerator. We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support. Source: Google Web Accelerator Web Site I think there is much more to it then they are letting in. When GWA debuted there was no hint about such limited resource availability for this project. The fact that Google has targeted this product for broadband market indicates that they have allocated a fat pipe (bandwidth) for this project. Never before have any Google project terminated for end-users midway. They have limited users from start in GMail or Orkut; but this is different. They changed mind within few days after debut, closing doors to new users. Google Web Accelerator is beleaguered with problems from start. For starters it serves one's cookies to others (allowing access to web sites with undesired privileges at several sites including but not limited to phpBB), it artificially loads web servers by assuming demands and for sure it totally messes up your web analytics. Several web applications reported accesibility and security problems with GWA. For the end user there are significant privacy concerns. Several web sites are starting to block GWA users.

We absolutely need Open Source Java today. I realized after a long time that Java must be Open Source sofware for its own good. I was wrong all along. The one thing it needs most is the pride and honor associated with The GNU GPL (praise The Mr. Richard Stallman) or the The Apache License. Finally our beloved language can join the leagues of Mono, Maven, Jelly, Struts(now obsolete), James and others.