Daily News 2005/03/15

IMLogic: threats of virus to IM to grow by 50% in 2005

The virus writers are attacking the users of instant messenger (IM). In the year of 2005, there are as many as 30 serious malicious codes being found.

According to the data publicized this week by IMLogic threat center, the number of reports on the attacks launched to the IM service with malicious codes, junk mails and hack has increased by 50% this year. As IMLogic says in this report, ever since Jan. 1st of 2005, there have been over 30 kinds of new threats, such as virus, worms and junk mails (spim and so on) aimed to the IM users. IMLogic has sent 12 alarms to the users in the last 30 days. The virus writers are now relocating the focus of attack to IM service that has, to a great extent, been regarded as unprotected channel leading to the enterprise network. According to what the company found, 81% of the attacks involves in the spreading of virus or worms in the IM, 10% of which taking advantage of the file transmission, 13% of which taking advantage of the well-known defects, and 70% of which aimed at Microsoft's MSN Messenger service. It is followed by attacks towards Yahoo. In the later case, attacks aimed at IM service accounts for 18%, while the remaining (12%) is directing at AIM and ICQ.

Talking with VoIP operators, Google will set foot in VoIP service

It is said that senior management personnel from Google have met with several VoIP operators, which makes the rumor more reliable that Google may involve itself in the fast-growing VoIP service.

At the meeting of "Spring VoIP 2005", a insider who has brought on several conversations between Google and VoIP operators says, officials from Google are very interested in their opinions and suggestions. Eric, the products manager, is one of the nine officials from Google who attended this meeting. He is an old friend of Jeff, co-initiator of Free World Dialup, an operator of free-of-charge VoIP service.

It was just in last month that Google said that it had no interest in the VoIP service. However, due to the fact that the VoIP service costs much lower than the traditional ones, it has developed at a very fast speed in the past year.

The meeting shows again that, with the dramatic growth of VoIP service, Yahoo, Google and other powerful searching engines and port websites will not stand by any more. At this meeting, AOL announced that it would provide VoIP service in the next month, which makes the rumor that Yahoo, MSN and Google will follow it more reliable.

Halpern Capital, a market research company, says on this Tuesday, that there are 115,000 families in America deploying the VoIP service each month and by the year of 2008, the number will be increased to 16 million. In contrast, the number of subscribers of traditional telephone service at present is 113 million.