State prosecutors offered to drop felony charges against former Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and the four other defendants in the company’s boardroom spying scandal if they agree to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, a defense lawyer said Thursday.

A computer virus has made use of storms sweeping across Europe to infect email systems and spread rapidly before dying down, a Finnish IT security company has said. The virus appeared in emails with the subject line "230 dead as storm batters Europe" and attachments bearing names such as "Full Clip.exe," "Full Story.exe," "Read More.exe," and "Video.exe." The program infects computers when users click on the message.

Teamstudio CIAO! software API featuring support of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and composite applications. The CIAO! API will reduce development costs through support of SOA.

Teamstudio has released version 1.5 of Policy Manager with four major enhancements that improve security of Lotus Notes applications and support industry best practices for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. New access reports in Teamstudio Policy Manager take a significant step forward in allowing developers and administrators to easily provide auditors with detailed information on who has access to specific applications.

Teamstudio has released version 3 of Build Manager with seven major enhancements that make it easier and faster for Lotus Notes developers, administrators and users to develop new Lotus Notes applications and to conform to industry best practices. Build Manager users may now specify and sign individual design elements in a Notes database ensuring security and traceability of design changes to support best practices and Sarbanes Oxley compliance.

Research by FaceTime Communications has found risky Internet activity by employees poses an increasing threat to network security for corporate enterprises. While the number of unique malware instances was down last year when compared with the 2000 identified in 2005, FaceTime researchers warn today’s malware is stealthier, more complex and harder to identify and defend against. According to an analysis of threats tracked or identified by FaceTime Security Labs, 1,224 unique threats on "greynet" applications–programs that network users download and install on their computers, usually without the knowledge of their IT department–were reported in the past year, with attacks over peer-to-peer networks increasing by 140 percent over 2005 levels and multichannel attacks jumping to 29 percent of all attacks in 2006 from 18 percent the prior year.

TJX Cos, which operates the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls chains, said on Wednesday that the computer systems that process its customer transactions had been breached and customer information had been stolen. The off-price retailer said it discovered the intrusion in mid-December, but it does not yet know the full extent of the theft or the number of customers affected.

Google has patched a cross-site scripting vulnerability in one of its Web-hosting services. If left unpatched, the cross-site scripting vulnerability could have allowed hackers to modify third-party Google documents and spreadsheets and to view email subjects and search history.

Systems management platform provider uXcomm will launch a new architecture and products based on it that are designed to be to management applications what SOA is to business applications. The new SOMA (Service-Oriented Management Architecture) and follow-on uXcomm XManage Server Edition and XManage Information Appliance Edition products based on SOMA are aimed at reducing the time it takes manufacturers to develop deep-dive management applications for their products and at easing the integration headache for enterprises trying to link together disparate point tools.

CertFX has released six new practice tests for Apple, Dell, Lotus and Workplace, with volume packages now available via the Web.