IBM reported an increase in malware volume and sophistication, the rise of exploit leasing and a lower number of vulnerability disclosures versus the first half of 2006 as part of its security statistics report for the first half of 2007. So far for the year, the IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force research and development team has identified and analyzed more than 210,000 new malware samples, already exceeding the total number of malware samples observed over the entirety of 2006.

A month after being on the losing end of a critical legal ruling in its campaign to claim ownership of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights, the SCO Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors. SCO said it plans to maintain all normal business operations throughout the bankruptcy proceedings.

According to a SCO statement, the company’s Board of Directors unanimously decided that the Chapter 11 reorganization was in the best long-term interest of the company and its shareholders, employees and customers.

The OpenOffice.org community announced the release of OpenOffice.org 2.3, the latest version of the open source office productivity suite. OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an extensive array of new features and enhancements to all its core components, and protects users from newly discovered security vulnerabilities.

The Web site for the U.S. Consulate General in St. Petersburg, Russia, was broken into and was serving up malicious iFrames earlier the week of Sept. 10, according to security researchers.

After trying to load a malicious iFrame onto victims’ systems from a remote server, the iFrame then attempted to silently load even more malware, according to Sophos. The site, which has since been cleaned up, was actually only one of hundreds of compromised Web pages linking to two distinct malicious attack sites.

Learn how to build a robust Web application using Rational Application Developer, DB2, and WebSphere Application Server in this two-part series. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to install, set up, and configure trial versions of Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software, DB2 Enterprise V9.0, and WebSphere Application Server V6.1. Perhaps you used open source versions of these products to kick-start your Web-based application development. This tutorial takes you the next step: scaling your application to run in a business environment. In Part 2, you will use Rational Application Developer to build a Web application using data from a DB2 database, and publish your page to a WebSphere Application Server, all without writing any code. IBM’s middleware takes care of all the hard work so you can focus on your own unique business logic.

Lenovo unveiled its smallest, most energy efficient desktop PC, called the ThinkCentre A61e or "Blue Sky," which is about the size of an average U.S. phonebook, according to the company.

The A61e ultra small form factor desktop PC runs on 45-watt AMD Athlon 64X2 dual core and AMD Sempron single core processors, and starts at just $399 after mail-in rebate. Lenovo says users of its existing PCs can save as much as 50 percent in annual energy costs by making the switch to the A61e.

Internet crime has become a major commercial activity, reveals a report by computer security company Symantec. The report said cyber crime had become increasingly professional and was now a multi-billion dollar industry.

The underground economy has its own auction sites and marketplaces that sell valuable data such as credit card numbers and bank accounts. They also sell toolkits for novice cyber criminals who lack technical know-how to craft their own attacks.

Both experienced computer programmers looking for a useful desktop reference book and information technology beginners in search of the best tips and tricks in the trade will find what they seek with Roland Hughes’ "The Minimum You Need to Know" series. Hughes’ 20 years of experience in the IT field allowed him to write three books filled with practical and readily applicable knowledge for today’s IT specialists.

IBM’s decision to offer a Linux-only mainframe–at 90% less than the cost of its flagship box has had the intended effect, research now shows. "Linux is a key to the IBM mainframe new-workload strategy," said Charlie Burns, a vice president of Westport, Conn.-based Saugatuck Technology Inc.

Is your organization in the process of migrating from Microsoft Word to OpenOffice.org on Linux? If so, your biggest obstacle may not be getting used to the new suite, but rather moving from Microsoft’s proprietary .doc format to OpenOffice’s Open Document Format.

Granted, the .doc format has been reverse-engineered in sufficient detail that many users can work with it as is. But if you’re making the leap from Microsoft Office, it makes sense to jettison as many of its legacies as you can. This article covers the issues involved in converting from Word to ODF: The converting options available to you, the potential pitfalls and the third-party tools that make conversion easier.