Neowin.net

British police have arrested a man suspected of hacking into high-profile corporate Web sites and defacing them with a distinct digital calling card: a "fluffy" pink bunny rabbit.

New Scotland Yard said on Wednesday they arrested 24-year-old Lynn Htun at a London convention center, the site of InfoSecurity Europe 2003, one of Europe's largest trade fairs for Internet and computer network security.

Law enforcement and Internet security professionals said they believe Htun is the mastermind of the "Fluffi Bunni" hacking exploits, which European and U.S. authorities have been investigating for over a year.

The sources said Fluffi Bunni has been active for more than two years, hacking into sites ranging from those of McDonalds Corp to Internet security specialists SANS Institute and Symantec Corp's virus detection group SecurityFocus.

News source: CNN

Silicon Substitute

This is the first time light has ever been generated from a molecule by applying electricity, said Phaedron Avouris, manager of nanometer-scale science at IBM Research's Watson Labs.

Light, already the foundation of today's high-speed communication networks, could someday be used to process data in computers and other electronic devices, as engineers run out of ways to cram more performance into silicon chips. Carbon nanotubes with semiconductor properties can be made into transistors much smaller than current silicon transistors, increasing the number of transistors that can be placed on a single chip.

Silicon, the main material used in semiconductors, does not emit light, and therefore can't be used in optoelectronic products, Avouris said. The capability of these nanotubes to generate light means the same type of material is suitable for both electronic and optoelectronic uses, he said. Optoelectronic components include solar cells, light-emitting diodes (LED), and optical-fiber communications products.

Current optical-fiber communications devices are much larger than those that could be constructed from carbon nanotubes, said David Tomanek, professor of physics at Michigan State University. Carbon nanotubes could allow the manufacture of extremely small optical fibers, allowing a greater number of fibers to be placed in a smaller device, he said.

The more fibers in a communications device, the larger the pipe for information to flow through, Tomanek said.