Ars Technica is reporting that the attack on Google which was announced a few days ago on the Google Blog has disturbingly been traced back to the Chinese government, according to VeriSign's iDefense security lab who traced the attack back to its origin.

iDefense researchers at Verisign were able to trace the source of the control servers that distributed the malware which gained access to private customer and corporate Google data. Verisign does not hesitate to point out that the Chinese government was the source of the attacks. The source IPs and drop server of the attack correspond to a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof," reads the report.

The report goes on to point out that the attack was executed using infected PDF files that were designed to exploit a vunerability in Adobe's PDF reader and distribute malware across PCs.

The researchers also found that there were large similarities between the attack on Google and one that was perfomed in July against US companies - both attacks were managed through the same servers; "The servers used in both attacks employ the HomeLinux DynamicDNS provider, and both are currently pointing to IP addresses owned by Linode, a US-based company that offers Virtual Private Server hosting. The IP addresses in question are within the same subnet, and they are six IP addresses apart from each other," the report says. "Considering this proximity, it is possible that the two attacks are one and the same, and that the organizations targeted in the Silicon Valley attacks have been compromised since July."

If all the claims in the report are correct, the report suggests that the Chinese government has been attacking companies across the world for months in a campaign of industrial espionage.

Adobe has claimed that the PDFs were not used to distribute the malware. In a press statement shortly after the reports release Adobe announced they have found no evidence that a PDF flaw was used to perfom attacks in this incident.

Microsoft has confirmed it plans to make an initial commitment of $1.25 million to support the relief efforts in Haiti following a massive 7.0 (on the richter scale) earthquake on January 12.

The software giant is providing support via cash and in-kind contributions and said it will match US based employees donations up to $12,000. It also plans to assist the relief efforts in the following ways:

• Disaster Response team - Microsoft's team is currently engaging with humanitarian relief organizations to assess how they can make a difference. The Disaster Response team plans how Microsoft's company, people and partners can be mobilized during issues such as Earthquakes - through outreach to lead government, inter-government and non-government agencies involved in leading local and global response efforts.
• Working with impacted customers and partners to help get critical systems up and running.
• Helping drive awareness and donations for relief efforts through MSN and Bing.
• The NetHope Emergency Working Group was activated last night to set up the basic telecommunications communications between the relief agencies operating in the affected areas.
• The NetHope Haiti Emergency Center (a secure Sharepoint application used by all of the NetHope members) is active and serves as a focal point for all reports, events, contact lists and collaboration.

The scale of destruction and death from this traggic incident is still not fully known. Reports suggest as many as 100,000 may have died as a result of the powerful Earthquake on Tuesday. The US government is sending 3,500 soldiers and 2,200 marines to help with relief efforts and many companies worldwide are also offering donations and aid. There are many ways to help, through donations of your time as a volunteer, and through financial contributions if you wish to do so. Both Neowin and Microsoft invite you to consider supporting the relief organizations who are working in Haiti:

American Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/
Care: http://www.care.org
NetHope: http://www.nethope.org/
MercyCorps: http://www.mercycorps.org/
Save the Children: http://www.savethechildren.org/
Unicef: http://www.unicef.org
World Vision International: http://wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.nsf

Google has announced on the Official Gmail Blog that they have begun rolling out default https settings to all Gmail accounts. For users that don't want this setting, or if it causes some sort of connectivity issues through someone's firewall, the feature can always be disabled. Here's how it will work…

"If you've previously set your own https preference from Gmail Settings, nothing will change for your account. If you trust the security of your network and don't want default https turned on for performance reasons, you can turn it off at any time by choosing 'Don't always use https' from the Settings menu."

Google is doing this to protect people's private data from being sniffed by third parties. If someone is using a public Internet connection, they are at risk having their traffic monitored. The reason this was not enabled by default, up until now, is that https slows down data transmission. This is due to the fact that the information must be constantly encrypted and decrypted. Google, however, after much research into the issue, feels that https doesn't really cause any significant slowdown from a user's standpoint. They concluded that the security benefits outweigh the slight performance hit that some users may notice.

Google notes that the enabling of https may cause problems with offline Gmail, if you currently use the feature over http. As well, many commenters have pointed out that the iGoogle email widget is not compatible with https.

AOL is to shut down many of its European offices after failing to cut a third of its international workforce through voluntary redundancy. Although 1,100 of the company's staff have taken voluntary redundancy, a further 1,000 cuts are expected across the US and Europe.

The company announced plans late last year that it would be cutting 2,500 jobs worldwide as it attempted to save $300 million a year, but the Guardian reports that the shortfall on those taking up voluntary redundancy means more jobs will have to be cut.

Although AOL UK would not detail how many jobs would be cut, but it did say would be closing its offices in Spain and Sweden, as well as four German offices. AOL's operations in France have yet to decide whether they will be closing their Paris office.

Over the pond in the USA, the company said that it will "begin notifying a limited number of individuals impacted by the involuntary lay-off... with the majority of notifications taking place in the USA on 13 January." AOL added that "for many of the employees impacted in the USA Wednesday will be their last day in the office." The Seattle office, home of some of AOL's mobile operations, will also be closed and centralised in California.

A spokesman for AOL said, "We have looked at every aspect of this business. We evaluated our competitive position and product portfolio in every market, and we asked the hard questions about areas that were no longer core to the strategy and our profit profiles in the businesses and countries where we operate."

The spokesman also stressed that the offices of successful divisions, such as AdTech, would be unaffected by the restructuring.

Microsoft and HP both announced a joint deal today that will see the software and hardware giants collaborate on future engineering road maps to eliminate the complexities of IT management.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, HP chairman and CEO Mark Hurd, held a joint teleconference call this morning to announce the agreement. According to Ballmer the agreement, that spans both hardware, software and services, "will transform the way large enterprises deliver services to their customers, and help smaller organizations adopt IT to grow their businesses." Microsoft and HP believe a combined effort will offer a lower total cost of ownership for business customers.

Microsoft is using the tag line "simplify technology environments for businesses of all sizes" to describe the new deal. In short it appears Microsoft and HP will share ideas and technologies based on Microsoft's Cloud infrastructure and virtualization efforts. The deal isn't cheap and 250 million incremental dollars will be invested into the initiative. The two companies will also partner on some support solutions and marketing campaigns. During the joint teleconference call Ballmer stated "we're able to build on our incredible 25 year partnership of the two companies put together to drive things forward."