Security

America Online Inc. (AOL) users may want to upgrade to the latest version of the company's software following the discovery of a critical flaw in the AOL suite of client software.

The wildly successful pixel-powered Web page of a British university student is coming under increasingly intense DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks trying to knock down the profitable brainstorm. Alex Tew, who created The Million Dollar Homepage to finance his schooling, has been selling pixels for US$1 each since September and auctioned the last 1,000 pixels earlier this week on eBay Inc. The technicolor site resembles a well-traveled suitcase covered with stickers, ranging from Che Guevara's image to a stop-smoking ad to a yellow smiley, all leading to paid links.

The Windows operating system expert who exposed Sony BMG Music Entertainment use of "rootkit" cloaking techniques last year is now criticizing security vendors Symantec Corp. and Kaspersky Lab Ltd. for shipping software that works in a similar manner.

The next variant of the Sober worm is set to attack computers already infected by previous versions of the malware at the stroke of midnight GMT as Jan. 5 turns into Jan. 6, according to antivirus software vendors. The worm has been around since 2004, propagating itself by infiltrating e-mail address books and spewing out Nazi propaganda to users' contacts.