Day: August 28, 2008

Remember the Muppet show’s “Pigs in Space?” Well, now it is “Virii in Space!” If even the International Space Station can get a computer virus… well, is nowhere safe from these evil minions of the “pigs” that design viruses? Sigh.

Computer Virus Hits ISS, Should NASA Worry?

“It was confirmed yesterday by NASA that they have discovered a computer virus on a laptop that is aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The big question that has come out of this though, is should NASA worry? The virus was first discovered by Symantec back on August 27, 2008, with the virus being called W32.Gammima.AG. It impacts systems running Windows 2000, 95, 98, Me, NT, XP, and Windows Server 2003. At this point though, it does not seem that there is much of a threat to NASA directly from the virus. The report states that the virus is very easy to contain and remove, and can cause minimal damage. The best thing the virus can do is steal passwords, but it is not believed that the worm virus could do any damage to NASA at this. NASA is seeing it as more of a pain than a major threat, and for good reason. Many continue to question though how a virus managed to get on the International Space Station in the first place. Don’t they have virus scanning software?”

Notice a black screen with a notice that “You may be a victim of software counterfeiting” on your PC? It may be the result of Microsoft’s latest Genuine Windows Program!

New Windows Genuine authenticator can blank desktop backgrounds

If in the last week or so you’ve noticed that your desktop background in Windows XP Professional goes completely black exactly every 60 minutes, don’t worry, it’s not a virus. A blackened desktop is the latest indication that the Microsoft Genuine Advantage program has determined your copy of the operating system to be non-authentic, as a service of its latest version rolled out to XP Professional users this week. ‘The desktop background can be reset to anything else in the usual ways,’ wrote WGA senior product manager Alex Kochis yesterday, ‘but every 60 minutes it will change back to the plain black background. This will continue to happen until that copy of Windows is genuine.’ Kochis’ team has been tinkering with multiple ways to provide some kind of ‘in-your-face’ notice to the user that Microsoft doesn’t believe his copy of Windows to be a valid one, without making any kind of implied accusation that somehow the user is at fault. For Windows Vista, WGA disables the Aero translucent front-end, substituting the more conventional ‘Vista Basic’ theme instead. In addition to the blackened desktop, the new WGA will show a transparent, immobile notice in the lower right corner of the screen: ‘You may be a victim of software counterfeiting.’ The notice will remain in place whatever software the user may try to run, though it’s probably not intense enough to cause screen burn-in.”