Here is a look at more of Friday's top business stories:
Auto production rises
SOUTHFIELD, Mich., Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Ward's Automotive Reports said
vehicle production this week in the United States, Canada and Mexico is expected to rise to an estimated 347,806 units from the 123,348 cars and trucks built last week.
Ward's said including this week's estimates, calendar year North American output is up 2 percent to 471,154 vehicles from the same period last year.
In the United States, automakers are expected to produce 260,579 vehicles this week, up substantially from the 92,628 cars and trucks built during the holiday shortened previous week. To date, calendar 2003 U.S. vehicle output totals an estimated 353,207 units, up 3.2 percent from the 342,199 vehicles built during the same period a year ago.
This week's Canadian vehicle production is estimated at 47,024, a substantial increase from the 14,148 units assembled last week. Estimated calendar-2003 Canadian vehicle production now stands at 61,172 units, down 11 percent compared to the 68,743 vehicles produced during the same period a year earlier.
Ward's said of the cars and trucks slated for production this week in the United States, General Motors accounted for 34.3 percent, Ford Motor 29.8 percent, Chrysler of DaimlerChrysler 11.9 percent while other
manufacturers accounted for the remainder.
F-Secure warns of four new Internet worms
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 10 (UPI) -- F-Secure Corp. is alerting computer users of four new Internet worms that are crawling across the globe.
The new Windows worms were found on Wednesday and Thursday, and they are known as Lirva.A, ExploreZip.E, Lirva.B and Sobig.
"Several new viruses are found every day, there's nothing special with that," said Mikko Hypponen, Manager of Anti-Virus Research at F-Secure. "But it is not normal to find four new viruses which are all successfully spreading in the wild within two days."
F-Secure said it has released a Level-2 Radar alert on all these viruses, indicating that system administrators and end users should make sure their systems are protected.
Level 2 is the second highest severity under F-Secure Radar alerting system. F-Secure issued 27 Level 2 alerts during all of year 2002 and two Level 1 alerts.
"Apart from the two Lirva variants, these viruses are not related to each other; this does not seem to be a coordinated attack," said Hypponen. "It seems we just got a really bad start for this year."
F-Secure said Lirva, or Arvil, is a mass-mailing worm that uses several methods to spread. Besides e-mail the worm uses ICQ and IRC chat networks and Kazaa file sharing network to spread. It also propagates through shared folders and Windows network drives. Lirva has functionality to disable several antivirus and security applications if it notices their presence. If the worm is active in the system it tries to steal passwords and send them to an external email address.
E-mail messages sent by Lirva vary, but they often make references to Avril Lavigne, a Canadian rocker who was nominated for five Grammy awards this week. The virus was apparently written by a Kazakhstan-based fan of the artist. When Lirva worm activates, it tries to open the official web site of Avril Lavigne and starts a graphical screen effect consisting of colored, moving circles.
F-Secure said functionally Lirva.B is very close to the original Lirva virus. It has been modified to evade detection of some anti-virus software. Another difference is that Lirva.B fakes the sender address of infected e-mail messages, replacing the address of the infected user with the e-mail address of a random innocent bystander. The real e-mail address of the infected user can often be found from the e-mail's "Return-Path" header.
ExploreZip is an internet worm which was first found in June 1999. The original version ExploreZip.A spread all over the globe within days of initial discovery, becoming first of the really widespread Internet worms. After this, several modified versions of this worm have been found.
On the Wednesday, 3 1/2 years after its progenitor was first seen, ExploreZip.E was found. This version was modified so that it was undetectable to most anti-virus programs, although the worm functionality had stayed the same. All of the ExploreZip variants spread as an e-mail attachment and activate by destroying Microsoft Office documents and source code files from infected computers and from local networks. The worm modifies an infected computer so that the worm will reply to unread e-mail messages, sending dummy e-mail replies with an infected attachment.
F-Secure said Sobig is an e-mail and network worm, sending itself around as a PIF e-mail attachment. The worm has remote control functionality through which the virus writer can control infected computers.
State Street Corp. posts higher results
BOSTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Financial services firm State Street Corp. said its fourth-quarter net income rose to $477 million, or $1.46 a diluted share, from $171 million, or 52 cents a diluted share during the same period a year-ago.
The latest results include a net gain on the sale of State Street's Corporate Trust business of $495 million, equal to $296 million after taxes, or 90 cents a diluted share, the company said.
Analysts on Wall Street had expected the company to report earnings, before the one-time gain, of 56 cents a share, according to Thomson First Call.
David A. Spina, chairman and chief executive officer, said, "This was a year of outstanding accomplishment for State Street, achieved in a very challenging environment. We won important new business mandates, continued to strengthen our client relationships, and expanded our product range. These achievements contributed to continued growth in State Street's earnings per share, making this our 25th consecutive year of EPS growth.
"Our success in winning new clients and streamlining operations to control expense growth helped us overcome the challenges posed by weak financial markets worldwide and a difficult interest-rate environment," he added.
