IT security firm Sophos recently released a news article stating that the PlayStation website has been infiltrated by hackers. Hackers are reportedly using the infiltration to try and steal important credit card details from users. Phish for more details in the full article.

Do you have a lot of MP3 files stored on your laptops and notebooks? If you do, you might want to be careful on docking removable flash drives on them because there is currently a low-risk malware that goes after music files prowling the net.

One, now, couldn't help but wonder as to why the creators of this worm would come up with such program. Senior technology consultant Graham Cluley from security vendor Sophos PLC had this to say, "The authors of this worm are more likely to be teenage mischief makers than the organized criminal gangs we typically see authoring financially-motivated malware these days".

The technology assistant then reminded the public how viruses spread from computer to computer decades ago through floppy disks. Cluley commented that the objective for having the malware spread using flash drives is probably to "bypass e-mail filters and Web gateway filters that block malicious software".

Furthermore, computer software company Symantec Corporation now refers to this malware as W32.Deletemusic. It added that the program copies itself to all drives on a PC, not to mention it creating an autorun file to start itself whenever a user accesses a drive.

W32.Deletemusic affects PC units running on Windows 2000, 95, 98, Me, NT, Server 2003, XP and Vista.

Sorry everyone, but at the rate that things are going, this might just mean no more LAN parties and/or Molten Core runs from the office from now on. Some employers are starting to call on other companies such as Sophos PLC and Websense Inc. who specialize in weeding out and completely stopping games from getting into the office network. And with the demand for those said game-exterminators, you might want to just consider playing at a friend's instead.

Anyway, the reason for this is basically a barrage of complaints from employers who say that whole networks are getting bogged down by games that are being played using office resources. They have reason to be concerned, too, because of the resulting drop in productivity, to the point that they are starting to treat games like viruses and malware. In fact, there is already a piece of security software out there which, by reading the signature of specific programs, can stop a game from launching.

On the other hand, there are other employers who are comfortable with their workers playing casual games from time to time, as it helps keep morale high, PLUS some games have actually been proven to help with mental alertness, among other things.

But we think that you just really can't blame a company who doesn't want multiple copies of Oblivion (on the highest settings, too) running on the network.

Though at first it seemed that China (including Hong Kong) would topple the US from the top of the spam charts, America has defended its title as king of all spam-relaying nations. China's 20% contribution to the global spam total ended up as being second only to the US's 23.2% output. South Korea got third place with 7.5%.

The figures -- covering the months of April to June 2006 -- from IT security firm Sophos reveal that this is the first time in over two years that the US has failed to cut down on all of its spam. The US accounted for half of all spam sent in the world two years ago. China and South Korea, on the other hand, have managed to reduce their spam output since the first quarter of the year.

In the continental category, Asia was the king of the hill with 40.2%, but Europe seems to be trying to usurp the throne in the near future. Europe collectively accounted for 25% of the world's spam in the first quarter of 2006, a figure that has now increased to 27.1%, overtaking North America in the spam spreading league.

There's no sign of Russia in the spam league's top twelve, but Sophos believes that Russian spammers may be lurking just around the corner, controlling "vast networks" of 'zombie' PCs -- computers hijacked by Trojan horses, worms, and viruses controlled by devilish hackers. These zombie PCs are the source of the vast majority of spam tracked by Sophos.