Experts: virus writers are unusual criminals

Law enforcement experts say the creators of Internet worms and viruses are an unlikely bunch: They leave clues to their identities everywhere, often proudly, and yet they often go uncaught. Retired New York City detective Pete Angonasta told Wired News: "Cyber criminals are like idiot Hansel and Gretels, scattering electronic breadcrumbs that lead straight to them. You just don't see this sort of behavior in other criminals. I've never seen a burglar leaving cute notes crediting the crime to himself. And I've never run across a burglar who puts up a self-promotional website or goes into a chat room to discuss the night's activities." Tracking down such offenders is getting more difficult, however. The wavering tech economy has made it more difficult for law enforcement to get help from security experts, who often are too busy trying to keep their businesses alive to help out law enforcement, according to Wired News.

Yahoo, MSN claim holiday sales boost

Web destinations Yahoo and MSN both said the holiday shopping season has been a lucrative one. Yahoo said sales at its online retail sites jumped to $10.3 billion, or 86 percent compared to the same period last year. MSN, a division of Microsoft, said its sales were up 56 percent to $5.6 billion. Analysts cautioned against reading into the numbers too much, noting that they probably do not reflect a jump in overall retail sales. A simple rise in the number of people shopping online could account for the boost noted by Yahoo and MSN, the analysts said.

FBI recommends fix for XP security flaw

The FBI says Windows XP users concerned about the security hole found in the operating system's "universal plug-and-play" service can simply shut it off. Microsoft has provided a patch for the security hole, but the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center says it is safer to simply disable the plug-and-play feature when it is not being used. The NIPC said the security hole could allow hackers to use affected computers for distributed denial-of-service attacks. The agency's warning and directions on how to disable the plug-and-play feature can be found at www.nipc.gov under the headline "Universal Plug and Play Vulnerabilities."

No Monster takeover for HotJobs

It looks as if two of the top online job-search services will not merge. TMP Worldwide, owner of top-ranking employment site Monster.com, said Thursday that it would not change its offer for HotJobs.com in order to top an unsolicited takeover bid by Yahoo, which offered about $435 million. TMP Worldwide's offer was worth about $382 million. Monster.com has the largest pool of resumes online, with about 14 million. HotJobs.com is a distant second at about 5 million.

Experts say most passwords come up soft

Password-cracking software has become more and more sophisticated, meaning that folks who rely on catch phrases, pet words and personal information for passwords are only making it easier for the computer world's snoops, according to the New York Times. Helen Petrie, a professor of human computer interaction at City University in London, told the Times: "When you are thinking of something neutral to use as a password, whatever your obsession is will pop into your head. It's the new version of the inkblot or word-association test." Password-cracking programs use both brute computing force and processes that attempt to mimic human habits. Less than one-tenth of all users -- the most security-conscious -- pick passwords based on random or semirandom sequences of letters, numbers and symbols, according to the Times.

Group offers amnesty period for pirates

The Business Software Alliance, which represents companies such as Microsoft, Adobe and Apple, is offering January as a month-long amnesty period for businesses that are running pirated software. The BSA is targeting businesses in Northern California, Virginia, Florida and Montana as part of the program, which will allow violators to register and pay for their pirated products without facing legal action. Sandy Boulton, director of the piracy prevention department at Autodesk, a BSA member, told the San Francisco Chronicle: "It's not a secret that you should buy one piece of software for each computer. But many people don't. The grace period gives companies an opportunity, if they've let compliance slide, of getting that legal liability off the books." The BSA, based in Washington, D.C., estimates that software publishers lose about $12 billion a year worldwide due to piracy.

Web failures doubled in 2001

Internet industry research company Webmergers.com says at least 537 Web companies folded or declared bankruptcy in 2001, more than twice as many as the 225 that went belly-up in 2000. Webmergers.com said the Web crash might have hit its critical mass, because the number of failures has slowed the past two months. November and December of this year each saw 21 failures, according to Webmergers.com, which said 50 and 49 Web companies burned out during the same months in 2000.

(Compiled by Joe Warminsky in Washington.)