300,000 UK T-Mobile customers had a quiet morning as they were unable to make or receive calls thanks to a database snafu that forced the operator to restore from backups - a process which is still in progress.

The problems started at around 10am this morning, and meant that 300,000 customers couldn't be verified by the network and so were unable to make or receive calls. Restoration from a backup is already underway, and 200,000 customers are already back on the network (in London and the south east, naturally) - the remaining 100,000 should be working by 16:00 this afternoon.

Customers calling up T-Mobile had been told that the problem could take even longer to fix, though it seems that the rapid availability of backups has helped speed things along.

Network operators work hard to reduce critical points in the network, replicating key servers and infrastructure, but such procedures are much harder to implement where security and authentication are involved, leaving customers at the mercy of software bugs or hardware failure

In a statement, Microsoft said that Morro would be designed specifically to be a small-footprint program that uses fewer system resources. This, it said, would be ideal for users with low-bandwidth connections or computers without much processing power.

That will be of particular interest to consumers buying comparatively low-powered "netbook" computers.

Amy Barzdukas, senior director of product management in the online services division at Microsoft, said: "This new, no-cost offering will give us the ability to protect an even greater number of consumers, especially in markets where the growth of new PC purchases is outpaced only by the growth of malware."

Bojan Zdrnja from the Internet Storm Center (ISC) warns that he has encountered malicious PDF files, which exploit the recently announced and patched JavaScript-based buffer overflow vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.1.2 and older. The attack is based on proof of concept code that was released on exploit tracking website Milw0rm soon after the vulnerability was disclosed.

Adobe has released an advisory and patches for several serious flaws detected in its Reader and Acrobat products. Five of the eight announced vulnerabilities allowed local and remote code execution, if exploited successfully. Only 8.1.2 and older versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat were affected, but these versions are still in use on many systems, even though version 9 has been out for quite some time.

The vulnerability exploited by the malicious PDF file circulating on the Internet is identified as CVE-2008-2992, and is probably the most serious of all. It was discovered by Damian Frizza from the CORE IMPACT Exploit Writers Team at Core Security Technologies, and it consists of a buffer overflow flaw in the way Adobe Reader handles the util.printf() JavaScript function.

 

The Sinowal trojan has been tracked by RSA, which helps to secure networks in Fortune 500 companies.

RSA said the trojan virus has infected computers all over the planet.

"The effect has been really global with over 2000 domains compromised," said Sean Brady of RSA's security division.

More at BBC News

Asus has admitted that some of the its Eee Box desktop mini PCs have shipped with a virus.

But while the company has only admitted the infection was present in machines shipped to Japan, other territories may be affected too.

According to an email sent out by Asus, PC Advisor reports, the Eee Box's 80GB hard drive has the recycled.exe virus files hidden in the drive's D: partition. When the drive is opened, the virus activates and attempts to infect the C: drive and an removable drives connected to the system.

(From MSN).

Broadband brings lightning-fast, always-on internet into our homes. But unless you are careful it can also bring a string of unanticipated charges and costs along with the latest news, information and e-mails from friends and family.

New research shows 56% of providers will cut off customers who use the internet "to excess", data from uSwitch.com shows, with close to a million broadband users already penalised for downloading too much while on an "unlimited" deal.



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