Staff Writters

According to online analysts firm Net Applications, Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 browser is now being used by over 19 per cent of web surfers.

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This gain came at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, whose market share has fallen to just over 73 percent.
 
According to newsfactor.com, Mozilla set a world record with 8,002,530 downloads in June and the Mozilla Foundation will receive the official certificate in London next week.

Although Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser, Firefox is fast gaining ground, according to Net Applications.

The newsfactor.com report notes that IE’s market share dipped from 73.75 per cent in May to 73.01 per cent at the end of June and Firefox increased its overall share during the same period from 18.41 percent to 19.03 percent.

The researchers also said the “auto-update mechanism within Firefox is the most efficient patching mechanism of the all web browsers” currently on the market.

According to a number of overseas reports, Internet industry heavyweights are trying to fix a flaw in the foundation of the Internet that could allow hackers to control traffic on the worldwide web.

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The reports note that several “major software and hardware makers worked in secret for months to create a software patch released overnight to repair the problem, which is in the way computers are routed to web page addresses.

The flaw would be a boon for bank phishing cons that involve leading people to imitation web pages of businesses such as bank or credit card companies to trick them into disclosing account numbers, passwords and other information.

According to a recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report survey released last week, 453,100 Australians lost on average AU$2,160 each as a result of personal fraud, which included online phishing.

Attackers could use the vulnerability to “route Internet users wherever they wanted no matter what website address was typed into a web browser”, the report notes.

DNS is used by every computer that links to the internet and works similar to a telephone system routing calls to proper numbers, in this case the online numerical addresses of websites.

Automated updating should protect most personal computers. Microsoft released the fix in a software update package overnight and most importantly, the patch can’t be reverse engineered by hackers.

According to reports, Telstra has thrown its hat into the ring to build the fibre-to-node broadband network by lodging a $5 million bidder’s bond with the federal government.

This decision to join the tender process for the network is the first salvo in what analysts say will be a long and protracted battle with the rival Optus-led G9 consortium as to who be the preferred builder of the National Broadband Network (NBN).

However, recent reports make it unclear as to whether the G9 consortium is really serious about building this network, as it has been quite apparent over the years that Optus’ parent company, SingTel, has been quite reluctant to invest on a large scale in the local market.

The ball now is now firmly in the federal government’s court and business commentators have noted that any delayed decision by communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy would suit the G9 group more so than Telstra as it gives them more time to develop a more politically palatable tender for the Rudd government.

Moreover, analysts have said the NBN investment will have a very short pay back time, so the longer it takes before the NBN decision is made, the better it will be from the G9 perspective.

Symantec has posted a warning on its website that attackers are using an “undisclosed vulnerability affecting Microsoft Word.”

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courtesy: www.tech2.com

Historically speaking, there have been a large number of bugs found in Microsoft’s Office software, including Word, over the past few years and in this case, the malicious code is a Trojan horse program, called Backdoor.Darkmoon, which logs the victim’s keystrokes in order to steal passwords, according to reports.

According to the anti-virus vendor, this is the second Microsoft attack reported this week, with only a few days ago cycbercriminals exploiting a bug in Microsoft’s database program, Access.

Symantec released very few other details of the new potential threat to Word.