The project to bring one laptop per child for $100 is expected to hit mass production during August/September. The project uses Linux Operating system for the laptop and are designated for third-world countries.

LG have produced a dual-format DVD player which will play the Sony backed Blu-ray discs and the rival Toshiba-led HD DVD discs. A welcome solution to a public confused by HD DVD or the rival Blu-ray format.

Toshiba unveils world's first 8GB SDHC (SD high-capacity) memory card. The new card meets the Class 4 standard meaning it has a data write speed of at least 4GB a second.

The next generation encryption system for high-definition DVDs are looking into a hacker's claim that he has cracked the code protecting the new discs from piracy.

A hacker known as Muslix64 posted on the Internet details of how he unlocked the encryption, known as the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), which prevents high-definition discs from illegal copying by restricting which devices can play them.

Toshiba electronics wants consumers to use their HD-E1 DVD system rather than the rival Blu-Ray format. Blu-Ray is being backed by electronics firms Sony, Samsung and Panasonic as well as a number of film studios.

Computer security specialist Ibas is acquiring UK-based Vogon International Ltd, making it European market leader for data recovery and computer forensics. While data recovery is the biggest business area at Ibas, Vogon has specialised particularly in computer forensics. The acquisition makes it possible to combine two technical teams and research departments."The market for computer forensics is expanding sharply, and the acquisition of Vogon also gives us a leading role in this area," says Mr Skogstad, President and CEO of Ibas. "Our own expertise in computer recovery and erasure complements Vogon's leading-edge expertise in investigating computer crime. We will jointly be very well placed in all three business areas."

A Hampshire man has found sensitive Ministry of Defence plans on a laptop he was given at a rubbish dump. A subsequent investigation of the PC revealed "70 top-secret files" giving details of contingency plans at Army and Navy bases about what do in the event of a terrorist attack. This data should not have been so easily accessible, according to Peter Jaco, chief exec of encryption specialist BeCrypt. Mobile devices can easily be lost or stolen, so data held on them should be encrypted to adhere with the Data Protection Act and to avoid a compromise of national or individual security, he added. An MoD spokesman said it had initiated an inquiry to establish whether or not the laptop was official MoD equipment. The MoD has procedures in place to ensure equipment being disposed of doesn't contain sensitive information, he added. In 2002, the MoD admitted 594 laptops had been either misplaced or stolen from the ministry during the preceding five years. The statistic came in answer to a parliamentary question prompted by a series of reports about spies leaving laptops in black cabs and other such mishaps around that time.

System administrators know it, and so do the hackers. Its the hole in the wall that often fails to be closed after an employee has left. Oh yes, its all well and good having cleared their desk and frog marched the employee off the site. However who told the Systems admin to clear the ex-employee's user account. Where is the final audit? Computer Associates have purchased technology for finding and purging unused user IDs on mainframe computers. CA bought software from InfoSec Inc. in early March that automatically finds and removes obsolete IDs and user access rights. Hacking using unused accounts is one of the oldest crimes, and proves time and again that often it is not the technology, but the human link in the chain that is the weakest point, while being the hardest to fix.

An investigation into the disposal of computer equipment has uncovered psychological reports on school-children, confidential company data and even details of an illicit affair on hard drives that should have been wiped clean. Universities, schools and global businesses are routinely breaking the Data Protection Act by disposing of computers without removing personal data, researchers found. The Computer Forensics team at the University of Glamorgan examined over 100 hard drives at the behest of investigative journalist Peter Warren. Some of the drives were bought from eBay, others from computer fairs and traders. Only two contained no recoverable data at all, and one of those was brand new. The previous owners of half the remaining drives had made no attempt to remove the data, and the rest had failed to remove it properly, according to Jon Godfrey, at Life Cycle Services, which contributed ten professionally cleansed drives as a blind control. "What the university found was frightening," he told us. "Half of the owners didn't seem to care, and half didn't know how to erase their data. Over half breached the DPA because they held personal data." The Data Protection Act requires that organisations storing personal data do so securely, and that the data is deleted when it isn't needed any more. As well as breaching the DPA, the lax disposal of hard drives could mean sensitive information falling into the hands of organised technology crime gangs in Nigeria and Russia. Godfrey also warned that much of the information on the drives could be used for identity theft.

At least 75 pages of highly classified information about human traffickers from the Dutch Royal Marechaussee - a service of the Dutch armed forces that is responsible for guarding the Dutch borders - have been leaked to the controversial weblog Geen Stijl (No Style). The documents, whicn contain phone numbers and tapped conversations, were found unencrypted on a P2P site - possibly Kazaa according to Dutch newspaper reports. The likeliest explanation for their appearance is that a member of the Dutch Royal Marechaussee worked on the documents from home and unintentionally shared his entire hard drive with the rest of the world.

A British teenager has been sentenced for his part in writing and distributing the Randex worm which turned infected PCs into 'zombies', controlled by spammers to send out vast quantities of unsolicited email. The creation of such 'bot-nets' has become a prolific weapon in the arsenal of professional spammers and their creation through the distribution of worms and Trojans has become big business for virus writers. In this case the British teen is believed to have been part of an international gang, based in Canada, Europe and the US. The Randex worm is also thought to be behind a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks which crippled ISPs in October 2003. The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was handed a six-month suspended sentence at South Cheshire juvenile court, leading one security expert to suggest he escaped lightly because of his age. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said whatever age the perpetrator it's important the authorities don't "turn a blind eye". Cluley cited figures which suggested the DDoS attacks alone cost businesses around $2m.

Virus writers have unleashed a second version of the "Skulls" Trojan horse and packaged it with a mobile phone virus, a security company has warned. The hybrid Skulls.B Trojan horse displays images of skulls instead of the program icons on handsets running the Symbian operating system, software maker F-Secure said in an advisory on Monday. It also releases the Cabir.B worm, the company said. Cabir, which asks its victims if they would like to be infected, was thought to be a proof-of-concept virus when it was released earlier this year. The virus spreads by sending itself to other handsets within Bluetooth broadcasting range. Phones infected with the Skulls.B hybrid can infect nearby handsets with Cabir. The Trojan horse, though, can only be downloaded and does not spread using Cabir as a vehicle. Skulls was originally distributed on Symbian shareware websites as "Extended Theme Manager". When infected with Cabir, a phone displays the word "Caribe" on a screen as the worm modifies the Symbian operating system and looks for other mobile phones to target. F-Secure said that mobile phones from manufacturers such as Nokia, Siemens, Panasonic and Sendo were vulnerable. It has posted advice on disinfecting mobile phones on its website. But Symbian has said in the past that the Trojan horse only affects mobile phones running Nokia's Series 60 software. The software developer could not be immediately reached for comment.

A worm which exploits curiosity about the death of Yasser Arafat is the first to exploit the known Extended MetaFiles vulnerability. Aler is a network worm that was widely bulk-mailed with the subject "Latest News about Arafat!!!". These infected emails had two attachments, one a clean JPEG file and the other an infected EMF file, according to anti-virus firm F-Secure. The EMF file exploits a well-known Windows vulnerability (MS04-032) to install the worm onto systems when the attachment is opened. Thereafter, Aler spreads across network shares and hosts with weak user passwords. The worm's payload is a connection proxy that allows the attacker to initiate network connections through an infected computer. This feature could be used to send spam or attack other computers. F-Secure rates Aler - which only infects Windows PCs - as a medium category nuisance. Standard precautions apply - vigilance about unsolicited messages, updating AV protection, use of stronger passwords, tin-foil hats etc.

A new worm initially thought to be MyDoom is exploiting a vulnerability discovered just five days ago. The worm combines multiple attack techniques in an innovative way: spamming, social engineering, virus infection and Trojans. It has also appeared in record time. According to antivirus company F-Secure, the virus sends out hundreds of emails from an infected machine. The reader on the target machine follows a link sent in the email, which leads to a website hosted on the original infected PC. The IE exploit on that website turns the computer into another infected machine, and the cycle starts again. All version of the worm also open a back door to the infected computers. Versions A, B and C of the Bofra (buffer overflow frame exploit) worm were first thought to be the most recent additions to the MyDoom family, which targets a weakness in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0. But further research has showed that the worms, which spam themselves using social engineering tactics, share too few similarities with MyDoom to be classed as one of the family.

A computer security glitch that allowed customers to access other people's accounts by just entering a username and no password has been uncovered at internet bank Cahoot. Computer programmer David Eade at multimedia agency blueberrytwist.com started contacting the bank over six months ago to inform them of potential security holes, but was assured that the bank was safe. Although Eade concedes that he is a computer expert, he claims that the hole in the Cahoot site was simple enough for anyone to stumble across, even just by clicking a few too many times in the right places. Professor Neil Barrett, a security expert that advised the BBC, has warned that other online banks could be at risk from the same problem.

Lexar Media, Inc. (Nasdaq: LEXR), a leader in advanced digital media and accessories, today at Photokina (Hall 1.2, Booth-058), introduced JumpDrive TouchGuard, a USB flash drive with an integrated biometric fingerprint sensor to authenticate a user's identity and provide easy access to secured files and password protected web sites. Setting a new standard for secure portable storage, JumpDrive TouchGuard allows users to automatically login to most web sites with the swipe of a finger, eliminating the need to remember and enter usernames and passwords. JumpDrive TouchGuard functions as a USB 2.0 hi-speed portable storage device and personal Internet gatekeeper storing and managing web favorites and up to 200 user names and passwords. Utilizing Fujitsu's compact MBF310 Sweep Sensorä combined with sophisticated algorithms, the device stores and recognizes up to 10 unique fingerprints. The MBF310 Sweep Sensor was developed specifically to provide easy integration into the JumpDrive USB Flash drive. Leveraging state of the art technology, the sweep sensor software and the data encryption technology offer a full solution with an easy to use interface.