Millions of computer in the US are infected with fake security software, which their owners may have even paid for, according to a cybercrime report from security company Symantec. Such software would only make computers more vulnerable, possibly allowing cybercrooks to take complete control of an infected computer.

"Lots of times, in fact they're a conduit for attackers to take over your machine. They'll take your credit card information, any personal information you've entered there and they've got your machine," said Vincent Weafer, Symantec's vice president for security response.

Symantec found 250 different kinds of fake security software installed on computers, all with perfectly legitimate sounding names such as "Antivirus 2010" and "SpywareGuard 2008". According to Weafer, around 43 million downloads of fake security software were attempted in one year, although they do not know how many would have successfully completed.

"In terms of the number of people who potentially have this in their machines, it's tens of millions," Weafer said.

So how do cybercriminals get people to download or buy the fake security software? They plant fake adverts and alerts across the web that inform users that they have a virus on their computer - we've all seen them - and that if you download their "security software" the virus will be removed.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the cybercriminals are also using affiliate schemes to get middlemen to "sell" the software to potential victims, with the affiliate potentially earning 55 cents a download. According to Weafer, one affiliate scheme (which has been shut down), boasted that its top affiliates earned as much as $332,000 a month.

"What surprised us was how much these guys had tied into the whole affiliated model," Weafer said. "It was more refined than we anticipated."

Finland have recently passed legislation which secures their citizens a "legal right" to broadband. This step forward for Finland has resulted in a right to 1mbps broadband for all homes. This passing of law has sparked debate within the UK, discussing the British government's similar plans for the totality of UK broadband users.

According to the BBC Technology page, In a speech to MPs this week, Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms told MPs that the government's promise of broadband to all homes by the year 2010 was "an obligation."

Upon previous governmental discussion regarding this matter, MPs have only spoken of a "commitment" rather than an "obligation", only the latter of which is legally binding. The notion of providing broadband for every citizen within the UK was first heard in the Digital Britain Report which announced that the government would "commit" to a minimum level of 2Mbps for all homes by 2012.

This debate between one man's "obligation" and another's "commitment" has caused some confusion amongst UK broadband users to the extent that The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills have had to correct the minister, Stephen Timm's, reiterating that his comments were "a slip of the tongue", adding that the plans for UK broadband remained a "commitment." Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband news site ThinkBroadband commented on this matter for the BBC:

"As yet the USO [Universal Service Obligation] or USC [Universal Service Commitment] has not been defined properly, the forthcoming Digital Economy bill and various groups working to implement it should hopefully flesh out the detail, but as is often the case we see grand plans announced, which are slowly watered down to cope with those harder-to-deal-with areas. In the UK we are at a juncture where a minister is calling for something tougher than what the original Digital Britain report laid out, but is certainly more in line with what many of the public we suspect always believed the report meant."

Finland is also promising its citizens 100mbps broadband via fibre, available to all by 2015, knocking two years off of the UK's plans. According to the UK's Office for National Statistics, the growth of broadband users in the UK has been steadily increasing since 2006. 18.3 million households in the UK (70 percent) had Internet access in 2009, an increase of just under 2 million households (11 percent) over the last year, and 4 million households (28 per cent) since 2006.

Following the public release of Microsoft Security Essentials a few weeks ago, Microsoft has combed its data and released an interesting set of results showing how different infections apply across the 19 countries in which the software is available. This is how the breakdown of threats fell across those countries:-



According to the data, trojans come up as the number one detection in the USA, worms affect Brazilians the most, and China is mainly affected by potentially unwanted software threats.



Breaking the results down into particular threat families, the Wimad trojans and FakeXPA trojan are the top culprits when it comes to infection in the USA. Brazil is mainly infected by the Conficker worm and the Taterf worm, and China's software exploits include Shellcode and IFrameRef.



In total, around 4 million threats were detected on the 500,000 machines the survey included. This equates to around 8 detections per machine, suggesting that most machines had multiple threats.

Interestingly, 44% of machines that use Microsoft Security Essentials are running Windows 7, which isn't due for release until October 22. Of those, about one-third are running in 64-bit mode.

The most detections were found on machines running the ageing Windows XP, and the least on Windows 7, which Microsoft suggest follows the typical trend of seeing fewer threats on newer operating systems.

Microsoft Security Essentials is currently available for download for Windows users at http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

Programmers are essential in this day and age. We all rely on technology, and having people who know how to make machines do what they do is a vital part of our daily activities; Microsoft, being a software company, knows this, and has opened a Kid's Corner education website.

In an extension to the Beginner Developer Learning Center, the Kid's Corner aims at teaching the very basics, helping construct a foundation of knowledge to build on. Written on the main page of the section is, "Are you a cool kid who wants to impress your friends and family with your mad skillz? Check out the Kid's Corner for lots of fun, easy to understand lessons on programming!" Mad skillz are an ever valuable asset to have, and hopefully it will draw the interest of the cool kids in question.

Microsoft has two main videos listed on the front page of the Kid's Corner, the first being an introduction to the Internet, and the second jumps straight to objects & object-oriented programming. Perhaps a big leap, but we trust that Microsoft will ease into the rough stuff. It aims to build experience in languages such as Visual Basic and Visual C#, whilst of course introducing kids to Visual Studio; some articles are even based on teaching web development languages, beginning with HTML. If you want to have a look at what the company has to offer children in terms of development, feel free to peruse the website.

British ISP TalkTalk has staged a stunt aimed at proving to Lord Mandelson that his plans to cut-off file-sharers without due process is "naive". The company's stunt demonstrates how innocent parties could easily be disconnected for file-sharing done without their knowledge through a wireless Internet connection.

The company, which has long been a critic of government plans to cut off file-sharers, sent a security expert to an ordinary street in Middlesex. The expert then obtained access to 23 unsecured wireless connections on the street and downloaded music from two of the connections.

Residents had given prior permission to be hacked and the downloads were legal, but with so many unsecured wireless connections it demonstrates just how easily a wireless connection could be hijacked for illegal file-sharing. TalkTalk plans to offer advice to all of the residents on how to make their wi-fi networks secure.

TalkTalks director of strategy and regulation, Andrew Heaney, believes that due process of law must be maintained.

"The Mandelson scheme is every bit as wrong-headed as it is naive," he said, "The lack of presumption of innocence and the absence of judicial process combined with the prevalence of wi-fi hacking will result in innocent people being disconnected."

According to the BBC, several cases of users being wrongly accused of illegally sharing video games have been highlighted by magazine, Which? Computing.

However, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is confident that innocent people would not be caught out, due to its "robust" evidence gathering.

BPI spokesman Adam Liversage said, "The account holder would receive a notification in the first instance, which would represent an opportunity to discuss filesharing with others in the household and which would provide the account holder with the information and tools to help ensure that the account is not used illegally again."

"This information would extend to explaining to the account holder how they can secure their wireless router to ensure that it isn't accessed by unknown third parties," he added.

A statement from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that it would be important to ensure that there is an "independent and easy route of appeal at all stages in the process" and that they are currently envisaging a "tribunal system to which people would have recourse before any action was taken against them."

The government's decision on Lord Mandelson's controversial plan is due in November.