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SEGA-AM2 (a new subsidiary of Sega Corp., and Sonic Team Ltd) will be developing its hit title "Shenmue(TM) II," the popular game series and current Sega Dreamcast bestseller that goes beyond the boundaries of existing games with an exciting story line. "Shenmue II" is the sequel to "Shenmue(TM)," which sold a record 1.2 million copies worldwide. Since its release on Sept. 6, "Shenmue II" has attracted attention due to its vast world and photo-realistic imagery never before depicted in video games. In the development of "Shenmue II," the full potential of Xbox has been utilized to convey the game's magnificence.

Sonic Team will be developing the networked RPG game "Phantasy Star(TM) Online (working title)" for Xbox. This game has amassed more than 300,000 registrants since its launch and has garnered several awards, including the Fifth Annual Japan Game Award. "Phantasy Star Online (working title)" is the first consumer networked RPG game that is compatible worldwide. Some of the innovative elements in Phantasy Star Online include a word select system that allows players to communicate with other players worldwide and a visual lobby that expands the breadth of communications by adding graphic elements to text-based chat, a current standard of network games. "Phantasy Star Online (working title)" for Xbox will provide content that will be a major factor in Microsoft's broadband network strategy.

"By bringing 'Shenmue II' and 'Phantasy Star Online (working title)' to Xbox, we are bringing Sega's renowned franchises to even more gamers worldwide," said Peter Moore, president and COO, Sega of America. "We expect that both titles will be killer apps on Xbox and that the technical capabilities of the platform will surely bring both games to new levels in terms of graphics and experience."

News source: CBS MarketWatch

This patch eliminates three vulnerabilities affecting Internet
Explorer. The first involves how IE handles URLs that include dotless
IP addresses. If a web site were specified using a dotless IP format
(e.g., http://031713501415 rather than http://207.46.131.13), and the
request were malformed in a particular way, IE would not recognize
that the site was an Internet site. Instead, it would treat the site
as an intranet site, and open pages on the site in the Intranet Zone
rather than the correct zone. This would allow the site to run with
fewer security restrictions than appropriate. This vulnerability does
not affect IE 6.

The second involves how IE handles URLs that specify third-party
sites. By encoding an URL in a particular way, it would be possible
for an attacker to include HTTP requests that would be sent to the
site as soon as a connection had been established. These requests
would appear to have originated from the user. In most cases, this
would only allow the attacker to send the user to a site and request
a page on it. However, if exploited against a web-based service
(e.g., a web-based mail service), it could be possible for the
attacker to take action on the user's behalf, including sending a
request to delete data.

The third is a new variant of a vulnerability discussed in Microsoft
Security Bulletin MS01-015, affecting how Telnet sessions are invoked
via IE. By design, telnet sessions can be launched via IE. However, a
vulnerability exists because when doing so, IE will start Telnet
using any command-line options the web site specifies. This only
becomes a concern when using the version of the Telnet client that
installs as part of Services for Unix (SFU) 2.0 on Windows NT(r) 4.0
or Windows(r) 2000 machines. The version of the Telnet client in SFU
2.0 provides an option for creating a verbatim transcript of a Telnet
session. An attacker could start a session using the logging option,
then stream an executable file onto the user's system in a location
that would cause it to be executed automatically the next time the
user booted the machine. The flaw does not lie in the Telnet client,
but in IE, which should not allow Telnet to be started remotely with
command-line arguments.