The biggest online holiday shopping day is not, as it turns out, the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Only 10 percent of Americans surveyed online said they will shop on the Web on so-called Cyber Monday, according to a report published Monday by MasterCard. The survey was conducted by Ipsos Insight for the credit card company.

Last year, the day with the highest amount of Web transactions processed was actually December 5, a week after Cyber Monday, according to MasterCard’s worldwide data for 2005. However, a survey by online retail trade group Shop.org of its members found that their busiest day last year was December 12. Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation (NRF), released results of its own study of holiday e-commerce on Monday.

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News source: News.com

Browser makers may have added new antiphishing features to their products in recent months, but the criminals are still gaining ground in their efforts to defraud U.S. consumers, according to the Gartner research firm.

Phishers have hit more victims with their online attacks, and while fewer people are losing money to phishers, successful attempts have been yielding bigger payoffs, said Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “When they do succeeded, they’re stealing five times more than they stole last year.”

The average loss per phishing attack was $1244 this year, Litan said, up from $256. Gartner estimates that the total financial losses attributable to phishing will total $2.8 billion this year.

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News source: PCWorld

A self-replicating worm Linden Labs dubbed “grey goo” overtook online game Second Life Sunday, forcing the game’s owners to block all logins but their own for about half an hour. According to comments on the company’s blog, the worm planted spinning gold rings in the world. Perhaps a Pavlovian response by fans of Sega’s old Sonic the Hedgehog game, or an indication of the general curious nature of people playing Second Life, players willingly interacted with the objects, spreading the worm even further. As the worm spread, players reported serious lag in the game.

News source: Security Blog

The pirated Vista comes with a product key that users can enter to activate a version of the products on their computers without paying for them, a report on the Web site of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said. A product key is a unique serial number tied to each package of a software product.

A second download, called an “activation crack,” can then be applied that bypasses the activation process intended to guarantee that the Vista OS being downloaded is legitimate, the Herald reported. Pirated copies of Office 2007 can be downloaded just with the product key with no second activation code required.

But Microsoft said in a prepared statement that those pirated copies of the OS won’t work for long.

“The copies available for download are not final code and users should avoid unauthorized copies which could be incomplete or tampered. This unauthorized download relies on the use of pre-RTM [release-to-manufacture] activation keys that will be blocked using Microsoft’s Software Protection Platform. Consequently, these downloads will be of limited value,” the statement said.

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News source: InfoWorld

Not everyone saw it coming… nothing came in Office 2007 for testers but Vista was always a hell of a lot bigger than Office 2007. Windows Vista released to manufacturing last week, and MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers could get it… and those with Volume Licensing access… and now fellow testers can!

If you’re a Vista tester, Windows Vista Business (by default, Ultimate if you ask for it) is yours – check your email account associated with your Connect profile. If you qualify (if, that is) then you’ll get a free copy in form of a unique Connect invitation to a new sub-page with the build on. You must have submitted one bug at least to get a free copy and be on the technical beta.

News source: msblog.org

The extrapolation of a trend that was becoming clear even as long ago as 1965, and has been the pulse of the IT industry ever since will eventually end, said Moore, who is now retired from Intel.

Forty years after the publication of his law, which states that transistor density on integrated circuits doubles about every two years, Moore said this morning: “It can’t continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens.

“In terms of size [of transistor] you can see that we’re approaching the size of atoms which is a fundamental barrier, but it’ll be two or three generations before we get that far – but that’s as far out as we’ve ever been able to see. We have another 10 to 20 years before we reach a fundamental limit. By then they’ll be able to make bigger chips and have transistor budgets in the billions.”

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News source: Techworld.com

In the past year, individuals who earn more than $100,000 per year received an average of 112 phishing e-mails, the research firm said in the report released Thursday. For users in all income brackets, the figure was 74 phishing e-mails. Such messages appear to come from trusted sources but contain links to Web sites, such as fake banking sites, that try to trick people into handing over sensitive information.

While high-income users tended to click on bogus links less than others, their losses were greater when they were duped, the study noted. They lost an average of $4,362 per incident–four times higher than people in other income categories.

“While we can’t say phishers were targeting these people, we can say they did get more phishing e-mail than others,” Gartner analyst Avivah Litan said. “It could be because of the lists they are on, which phishers find attractive. I’ve seen lists (on the Internet) where people are advertising platinum card holders’ information.”

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News source: c|net

Google accidentally sent out e-mail containing a mass mailing worm to about 50,000 members of an e-mail discussion list focused on its Google Video Blog, the company said Tuesday.

“On Tuesday evening, three posts were made to the Google Video Blog-group that should not have been posted,” Google said in a statement, posted late Tuesday night.

“Some of these posts may have contained a virus called W32/Kapser.A@mm — a mass mailing worm. If you think you have downloaded this virus from the group or an e-mail message, we recommend you run your antivirus program to remove it,” said the statement, which was attributed to the Google Video Team.

W32/Kasper.A@mm is better known as the Kama Sutra worm. Discovered in January of this year, it deletes files and registry keys on affected systems. It is blocked by most antivirus software.

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News source: PCWorld

“Great news! Today we’re announcing the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Vista.

Yes, you read it right — development of Windows Vista is complete.

Want proof? Watch this video and hear it from Jim Allchin himself.
Watch the video!

And just what is this so-called RTM? It’s the major milestone where we can confidently say that Microsoft is done with Windows Vista and will be handing it off to our industry partners: PC makers, ISVs and IHVs. They in turn will continue to ramp-up in earnest now that the target is locked — for example, by refining hardware drivers — in order to complete the cycle and make Windows Vista available via retail channels on 30 January 2007. On that date Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system will be available to customers around the world.

Vista will be available to for general retail availability Jan 30th, 2007.

View: Windows Vista Team Blog

Microsoft confirmed on Monday that it has completed work on Office 2007’s system code and released it to manufacturing.

Customers in Canada and the United States can start downloading Office 2007 on Dec. 1. That is one day after the company plans to officially launch the updated productivity suite along with the Windows Vista operating system and the Exchange Server 2007 communications software in New York City.

Users in an additional 13 countries will be able to download the free 60-day trial versions “soon” after the beginning of December, according to a Microsoft spokeswoman, who declined to give further details. Those countries will include the U.K., Ireland, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands and Mexico.

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News source: InfoWorld