Online criminals have pounced on the unpatched Windows DNS Server service vulnerability, using the security hole to seed and replenish for-profit botnets. The latest twist in the ongoing attacks comes less than a week after Microsoft’s pre-patch advisory provided clues for hackers to write and release detailed exploit code.

Anti-virus researchers have detected signs of a variant of the talkative Nirbot Trojan squirming through the worm hole created by the vulnerability. According to data from Arbor’s ATLAS threat monitoring portal, the bulk of the attacks are coming from the U.S., China, India and Korea.

Barracuda Networks is profiling email as it’s received by antispam appliances in order to augment spam filtering based on the reputation of a sender. The Mountain View, Calif., antispam appliance maker on Tuesday plans to announce "Predictive Sender Profiling" as its latest technique to combat junk email. Filtering email is more effective by profiling messages and senders on the fly than by just looking up a reputation score in a database that’s based on past behavior, said Stephen Pao, vice president of product management at Barracuda.

A widespread system failure of Research In Motion’s network has left BlackBerry users in the Western Hemisphere without email on their handheld devices.

The problem, first reported on news site WNBC.com, is believed to have originated around 8 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday and has not yet been solved. Because the problem concerns the RIM BlackBerry network, all cellular carriers that support BlackBerry are affected. [Ed. note: Please bear in mind, your provider’s tech support can do nothing about this problem, so please don’t pester them with this issue. When the system is back you’ll know because you’ll begin receiving your email again.]

Microsoft made available a plug-in that allows its Windows Media Player to integrate more smoothly with the Firefox Web browser, a growing rival to Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser. With competitors like Adobe vying for Web developer mindshare, Microsoft may have to give an inch to open source in order to keep WMP strong.

Available via Port 25 as well as the Firefox add-on site, the plug-in is designed to support Windows 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, including Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista. It is also backwards compatible with the older 6.4 Windows Media Player.

Google plans to launch software similar to Microsoft’s popular PowerPoint program as the two companies vie to dominate the online experience.

Google Chairman and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt described the software Tuesday at a conference for Internet entrepreneurs. He also blasted Microsoft and AT&T, whose executives complained over the weekend that Google may soon have an illegal monopoly in online advertising.

Google announced Friday it would pay $3.1 billion to acquire ad-management technology company DoubleClick. Almost as soon as Google announced the cash acquisition, Microsoft and AT&T executives said the deal could violate antitrust legislation–and result in a dangerous concentration of Internet users’ personal data at Mountain View-based Google.

Oracle’s customer relationship management applications are now available on BlackBerry smartphones from Research in Motion.

Oracle announced April 12 its namesake Siebel Wireless support for RIM’s smart phones. With Siebel Wireless on the BlackBerry platform, mobile workers will have access to real-time CRM data, officials said.

In addition to having access to corporate e-mail and their CRM applications, users will be able to manage customer interactions and service tasks. At the same time, users can push notifications or data to any other user via the BlackBerry push-based e-mail, voice and text messaging channels.

Samsung has announced a 2.5-inch drive with 40GB greater capacity than any from its rivals.

The SpinPoint MP1 provides between 80- and 200GB on its two platters, spins at 7200rpm and has a 3.0 Gbit/s serial ATA (SATA) interface. It is designed for blade servers, general servers, RAID arrays and workstations. It has perpendicular recording and native command queuing (NCQ), as competitor drives do. What is unique for an enterprise drive is a rotary vibration controller plus a drop sensor that parks the head if free fall acceleration is detected.

There are a variety of ways to include IBM’s recorded demonstrations within your Web site. Here, they provide three options for your convenience. Each option includes a visual example and the necessary HTML source. While the first option is intended for both IBM and non-IBM web sites, the remaining options use IBM OneX style sheets and standards and are pre-formatted for IBM Internet Web site use only. This inclusion addresses Lotus Quickr.

There are a variety of ways to include IBM’s recorded demonstrations within your Web site. Here, they provide three options for your convenience. Each option includes a visual example and the necessary HTML source. While the first option is intended for both IBM and non-IBM web sites, the remaining options use IBM OneX style sheets and standards and are pre-formatted for IBM Internet Web site use only. This inclusion addresses Lotus Notes 8.

There are a variety of ways to include IBM’s recorded demonstrations within your Web site. Here, they provide three options for your convenience. Each option includes a visual example and the necessary HTML source. While the first option is intended for both IBM and non-IBM web sites, the remaining options use IBM OneX style sheets and standards and are pre-formatted for IBM Internet Web site use only. This inclusion addresses Lotus Expeditor Bank Customer Service.