Criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted emails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips. The number of "spam" messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of ten emails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini. As Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer.

Just about everyone has expressed an opinion on the Novell-Microsoft patent agreement–except, that is, for the 800-pound gorilla of Linux: IBM. Scott Handy, IBM’s VP of Worldwide Linux and Open Source, decided that enough was enough and it was time to state IBM’s position. In an interview with Linux-Watch.com, Handy opened by saying that, "IBM has long supported interoperability between Windows and Linux."

The MayFlower DocViewer is a really simple but cool piece of software. Take any Notes document, even from a design locked database, and paste it into the DocViewer database. All fields in the document are listed alphabetically, with the field type and content of the field.

Two key e-commerce leaders–Wal-Mart and Macy’s–found themselves shut out of the online portion of the holiday sales rush for much of Friday, as their sites slowed to a crawl. This was especially troubling as it happened on the so-called Black Friday, where major retailers hope to see their financial ledgers go from being in the red to being in the black. This trend, however, may be changing, as online sales start to challenge brick-and-mortars for market share and as the day after Thanksgiving starts to become a much less significant day for e-commerce players. The most important date for e-commerce players may instead be late in December. One industry report placed the new date as Dec. 18.

Acunetix has launched Acunetix SiteAudit–a new on-demand Web site security audit service aimed at simplifying the Web site security process whilst eliminating the total cost of ownership associated with Web application security software. Businesses require an inexpensive but highly rigorous auditing service of their Web sites. Acunetix SiteAudit is an immediate and comprehensive Web security audit allowing organizations to benefit from extensive expertise, accuracy, and flexibility to meet their security requirements.

Web sites that publish inflammatory information written by other parties cannot be sued for libel, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday. The ruling in favor of free online expression was a victory for a San Diego woman who was sued by two doctors for posting an allegedly libelous email on two Web sites. Some of the Internet’s biggest names, including Amazon.com, America Online, eBay, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, took the defendant’s side out of concern that a ruling against her would expose them to liability.

Mozilla’s Firefox 2 and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 are vulnerable to a flaw that could allow attackers to steal passwords. Dubbed a reverse cross-site request, or RCSR, vulnerability by its discoverer, Robert Chapin, the flaw lets hackers compromise users’ passwords and usernames by presenting them with a fake login form. Firefox Password Manager will automatically enter any saved passwords and usernames into the form. The data is then automatically sent to an attacker’s computer without the user’s knowledge, according to the Chapin Information Services site.

Just in time for the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that take effect on December 1, InBoxer announced the first fast, comprehensive, easy-to-use, and affordable system for internal investigations and discovery involving email. The InBoxer Anti-Risk Appliance V2 enables companies to quickly identify relevant messages and monitors new emails in real-time to ensure on-going compliance. Executives, corporate counsels, CFOs, HR professionals, audit committee members, and compliance managers can identify potential compliance risks and responsive emails right at their desk using an ordinary Web browser. Companies can easily and accurately find potential violations of a broad range of compliance issues, including Sarbanes-Oxley, hostile work environment (harassment) suits, privacy/identity theft laws, HIPAA violations, and email abuse, as well as lawsuits. It also speeds up the initial discovery process when a lawsuit is filed.

Three laptops containing payroll details for London’s Metropolitan Police have been stolen from LogicaCMG, a British IT services company. The burglary took place on Thursday evening, but was discovered by staff at Logica’s London offices on Friday morning. Approximately half of the Metropolitan Police’s employees are thought to have been affected. The police force is in the process of notifying its workers of the theft.

Hewlett-Packard is getting a boost from one its processor partners–AMD. Advanced Micro Devices is purchasing more than 700 HP ProLiant BL465c blade servers, a Hewlett-Packard spokesperson said. These servers, which use HP’s Blade System c-Class architecture, already use AMD’s dual-core Opteron processors.