Although the infamous Storm worm enters 2008 with a reputation as the world’s most dangerous botnet, security experts say there’s an up-and-comer called Nugache that could give it a run for its money.

Nugache was first sighted about two years ago as a worm designed to work with chat protocols, says Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing. As such, it did not propagate virulently. But last month, hackers believed to be tied to the notorious Russian Business Network online criminal mob gave Nugache a facelift, copying many of the successful attributes of Storm, such as encryption, a rootkit and the ability to spread as Web-borne malware.

Hackers have attacked software vendor CA’s Web site and are redirecting visitors to a malicious Web site hosted in China. Although the problem now appears to have been corrected, cached versions of some pages on CA.com show that the site had been redirecting visitors to the uc8010.com domain, which has been serving malicious software since late December, according to Marcus Sachs, director of the SANS Internet Storm Center.

Attendees of this year’s Lotusphere will have two chances to win a Nintendo Wii–stop by booths 608, 609, or 625 to enter. Proudly sponsored by IBM Business Partners Ardexus, DLI.tools and MetaLogic, those entering the draw will also receive a special t-shirt celebrating the 15th anniversary of Lotusphere, while supplies last. Also learn more about the latest solutions for CRM, Document Management, Automating Lotus Forms, Email Archiving and Domino Web Development.

Sherpa Software announced that its Mail Attender for Lotus Notes software has been selected as a finalist in the Best Messaging and Collaboration Solution for the 2008 IBM Lotus Awards. Submissions were chosen based on their ability to leverage IBM software that offers significant business value, creativity and uses the latest release of IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino 8 software. Nominations were submitted from five continents including over 30 countries. Winners will be featured at this year’s Lotusphere 2008 in Orlando, FL January 20-24th.

Chipmaker Intel has been granted a further short extension to respond to antitrust charges leveled by the European Commission, an Intel representative said Friday. The response had been due on Friday, but Intel will file instead on Monday, January 7, the representative told Reuters. The Commission in July 2007 charged Intel with slashing prices below cost and offering huge rebates in an illegal attempt to drive smaller competitor Advanced Micro Devices out of the market.

IBM is aggressively expanding its security portfolio in hopes of becoming the de facto source of advice and technology for businesses looking to adopt high-level IT governance and risk management strategies — a transformation among customers that officials at Big Blue cite as both ongoing and inevitable.

As the waves of security threats and data management regulations have washed ashore and left organizations struggling to balance perimeter and internal security concerns with mounting obligations to protect highly-valuable data, companies are being forced to take more of a top-down approach that addresses broad sets of IT-oriented risks, versus individual problems, IBM officials maintain.

U.S. government agencies need to take additional steps to protect against cybersecurity problems after a series of congressional hearings and reports exposed several weaknesses in 2007, representatives of Symantec said.

The government sector, including state and local governments, accounted for 26 percent of data breaches that could lead to identity theft in the first half of 2007, according to Symantec’s latest Government Internet Security Threat Report, published in September. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) also issued about a dozen reports in the last six months criticizing federal agencies for not fully implementing GAO’s cybersecurity recommendations, noted Jim Russell, Symantec’s vice president for the public sector.

Retailer Sears, Roebuck & Co has been hit with a lawsuit seeking class-action status that alleges a company Web site compromises customers’ private information.

The suit, filed last Friday in Circuit Court in Cook County, Illinois, states that the retailer’s managemyhome.com site allows users to view purchase histories of Sears customers by entering public information such as a name or street address, in violation of a state Consumer Fraud Act that forbids "unfair or deceptive" practices.

CIOs and IT managers at organizations of all sizes, from SMBs to large enterprises, are looking for scalable, manageable tools that will enable them to quickly and easily secure email archives for industry and regulatory compliance. Recognizing the importance and specific requirements of email archiving compliance, Forensic & Compliance Systems (FCS), developer of Cryoserver, a leading forensic email archiving and compliance solution, have released Cryoserver Archive 4.5, the latest version of its email archiving solution. The new version strengthens and enhances all aspects of its email archiving solution, enabling Cryoserver to meet the demands of all size customers with a cost effective solution.

On December 23, 1997, we wrote our first news story. We wanted to get in a week of practice and testing before we went live. On January 1, 1998, PalmPower Magazine went live and we published our first issue online. This week, we reached a huge milestone: 10 years of continuous publishing online here at ZATZ.

Read this DominoPower article.