Neowin.net

A record number of malicious hacking attempts were made this month, and anti-American groups are responsible.

So says Mi2g, the London-based security consultancy, which notes that US government on-line computers belonging to the House of Representatives, Department of Agriculture, Department of Education, National Park Service, NASA and the US Geological Survey were attacked in September.

According to Mi2g, malicious hacker groups such as S4t4n1c_S0uls, USG, WFD, EgyptianHackers, Arab VieruZ, MHA, The Bugz and FBH, as responsible for many anti-Israeli and anti-Indian attacks, as well as the US targets.

Mi2g has recorded 9,011 digital attacks to date in September, following previous record highs of 4,904 and 5,830 recorded in July and August of this year, compared with 3,499 and 2,820 for the same months last year. September 2001 saw a huge decline in malicious hacking activity with just 816 attacks recorded. This fall is attributed to the aftershock surrounding 911.

This month, US-registered domains suffered the most, with 4,157 attacks, well ahead of the number two nation on the list Brazil which suffered 835 attacks. The UK, Germany and India were next most popular targets, with less than 400 attacks each.

News source: The Reg
View: The full story

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Full list of changes in RealVNC 3.3.4 since the last release, 3.3.3 :-

Unix and Windows :-


• A significant new feature automatically optimizes the choice of encoding and pixel format based on an estimate of line speed. In most cases now the viewer will adapt to slow and fast links without needing extra command-line options. This is particularly useful if the desktop is viewed in the office over a good LAN connection, then later at home over a slow link. On connection, the algorithm assumes a slow link and uses 8-bit color and ZRLE. If the network seems fast, we switch to full-color. If the network seems really fast, we also switch to hextile rather than ZRLE. If server and viewer are on the same machine, we use raw.
• Another significant development is a new encoding for slow links, ZRLE. This offer comparable compression to tight encoding, but better in some cases and much simpler in concept and implementation. It is a combination of the run length encoding scheme with tiling, palettisation and ZLIB compression.
• HTTP server is more standards compliant.
  
  Windows Server :-
  
  
• Improved reliability under certain network conditions. The capture of changes to the display and dispatch of changes to clients are now decoupled making the server more robust when dealing with slow clients. (Used to show up under Win9x in particular)
• Improved multiple client behaviour. WinVNC now behaves better when multiple clients are connected and when one client stalls or is on a slow network connection.
• Connection management. Clients are no longer disconnected when the pixel format changes. They will be disconnected if the display size changes.
• Security. WinVNC can be configured to logoff the current user when all clients have disconnected. Under Win2K and above, it can also be configured to lock the workstation on disconnect. Both options can be configured through the properties dialog.
• Logging code has been modified to avoid potential buffer overlow exploits.
• The remove wallpaper option will now correctly restore the desktop wallpaper of the current user when the client disconnects. The option can be configured through the properties dialog.
• Keymapping improved, eg handling of circumflex character etc.
• Numerous smaller bug fixes, and code tidying.
• More lightweight InnoSetup installer rather than previous InstallShield.
  
  Windows Viewer :-
  
  
• Mapping of the keypad "Enter" key fixed.
• "Empty password" bug on authentication cancel fixed
• Fized unhandled exception bug when a server connects and disconnects quickly.
  
  Unix :-
  
  
• Manual pages for all commands
• Several fixes for AIX, HPUX, etc
• HTTP daemon denial-of-service vulnerability fixed, also fixes to work better with more browsers.
• X viewer can now switch 8-bit / full colour mode on the fly via the popup window.
• vncserver now uses depth 16 by default, and the default pixel format for depths 16 and 24 are now more sensible.
• Better challenge generation in authentication code.
• vncconnect now has a "-away" option to cause a disconnect
• Improved build system based on autoconf.
  
  Installation and upgrade notes for Windows version :-
  
  
• You can safely install VNC 3.3.4 alongside the previous VNC 3.3.3 and earlier versions from AT&T. Files will be installed to a new directory C:Program FilesRealVNC.
• If you ask the installer to register the VNC server service then it will unregister the old service and register the new service correctly.
• Existing WinVNC settings will be read from the registry and are fully compatible. Settings new to 3.3.4 have sensible default values.
• Installing VNC 3.3.4 alongside other VNC distributions *should* work if they are based on the standard AT&T Labs releases, but there have been problems reported in the past of conflicts between other distributions and the AT&T Labs family of releases.
• If in doubt, use "winvnc -remove" and then Add/Remove programs to completely remove prior installations from your system.
• The InnoSetup installer can take /SP- /SILENT or /SP- /VERYSILENT for quiet installations, for example when installing remotely with the psexec utility.