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Retail mania, IE woes, EU charges

27.11.2009
As in years past, this was a traditionally slow IT news week, especially in the U.S., where Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday was a primary focus, followed by the annual retail extravaganza known as . For the uninitiated, the day after Thanksgiving is spent by many in wild throes of consumerism with some stores opening at the stroke of midnight to admit hoards of bargain hunters, while others , on what we're told is the start of the holiday shopping season. While it may seem that the "black" refers to how woeful many will feel when their credit-card bills arrive, it's actually a reference to retailers moving into profitability because of holiday shopping. Our trivia lesson for the week over, we also should note that there was some real news that occurred, what with the ongoing IE exploit and the larger world not sidetracked by holidays, real or imagined.

1. : A zero-day attack on Internet Explorer has been improved upon and therefore is more likely to be used, security experts said. They have been worried about the flaw for a week or so, but they had previously deemed it unreliable and had not found it was being used.

2. : Manufacturers of cathode-ray tubes are running cartels in the computer monitor and TV markets, the European Commission charged Thursday. Although it did not name any of the companies involved in the alleged cartels, Philips said in a filing to the Euronext stock exchange that it has received a formal statement of objections from the Commission.

3. : A computer worm making the rounds in China is an updated version of the Panda Burning Incense virus, which hit millions of PCs in that country three years ago. The new variant has a malicious component that is aimed at making it harder to detect, a security researcher warned.

4. : There are no grounds to keep confessed hacker Gary McKinnon from being extradited to the U.S. to face a trial on long-standing charges against him, said U.K. Home Secretary Alan Johnson.