BetaNews Staff

Sophos, the anti-virus firm, has warned that PC/Internet users should
be on alert for possible malware e-mail now that Valentine's Day,
Feb. 14, is almost upon us.

The IT security company said that companies should be aware of the
risks of electronic Valentine cards, as staff who exchange
lovey-dovey messages could end up harboring dangerous computer
viruses.

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If and when rogue music-sharing Napster is
reincarnated by its new corporate benefactor Bertelsmann AG as a
tamed service that is fee-based and limited in its musical
selection, will a successor be ready to leap into the void? Up to
now, the prevailing wisdom has said no - nothing on the market is as
simple and reliable to use as Napster.

However, a new product called BearShare, introduced in early
December and now undergoing improvements, just might change the
prevailing wisdom.

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Anti-virus company McAfee.com Corp. is warning America Online (AOL) users to be on the
lookout for various incarnations of a password-swiping program that
is making the rounds attached to e-mail messages.

McAfee.com, largely owned by security company Network Associates,
said it has logged an increasing number if such "Trojan" programs -
part of a family labeled "APStrojan" - among AOL users over the
last 30 days. However, AOL says any evidence of an increase may be
a matter of perspective.

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Web protection software maker eEye
Digital Security said today it has released Retina 3.0, a
network guard for the Microsoft Windows NT platform.

The company said in a statement that the Retina network security
scanner is the first such software application with
state-of-the-art artificial intelligence features that allow it
to think like a hacker, a trait the company described as CHAM
(Common Hacking Attack Methods). The feature lets the scanner
look for both known and unknown vulnerabilities.

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Corel Corp.'s new WordPerfect Office 2002
suite will improve Web integration and compatibility with Microsoft
Office formats.

Corel officials said they want to maintain their suite's dominance
among federal users at the Labor and Justice departments and the
Library of Congress.

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The Walt Disney Co. said today
it is giving up on running its Internet affairs as a separate business
and will bring its Walt Disney Internet Group back into the
fold. Holders of the Internet business's tracking stock - worth now about
20 percent what it was a year ago - will receive Disney common
stock instead.

Disney said the move also spells the end of its GO.com portal site,
the closing of which will result in the loss of some 400 jobs.

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In a bid to prevent a repeat of last week's crippling Web
site outages, Microsoft Corp. has retained Akamai
Technologies Inc. to host backup severs to which Microsoft can
default in the event of a hacker attack or technical failure.

"Our primary (Domain Name Server) network is still hosted at
Microsoft, but Akamai is now hosting some of our secondary servers,"
Microsoft spokesperson Rick Miller said. "What this means is that if
for any reason a customer does not get an answer from Microsoft's
primary network, there will be another network to point them to our"
Internet sites.

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Privista has launched a privacy protection service called
ID Guard. In return for $19.95 a year, the service allows users to be
kept aware of changes to their credit profile, as well as alerts
them to any changes to their personal profile.

ID theft is now a growing problem in the US credit industry, with
several hundred people a month discovering that their identity has
been "borrowed," usually for thieves to rack up large debts on credit
cards and personal loans.

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Microsoft Inc. says a distributed denial of
service
(DDoS) attack brought down several of its Web sites Thursday, and access
remained blocked early today.

The software giant said in a statement that it has notified the FBI. The
Bureau
headquarters in Washington, D.C. referred a Newsbytes call to the
Seattle office, which had no comment.

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Hard on the heels of Mitsubishi's $25 million investment in
the firm late last year, LizardTech has started shipping a consumer
and small office version of its DjVu software.

DjVu, which is based on the technology of the same name that the firm
acquired from AT&T early last year, is billed as a highly compressible
alternative to PDF, JPEG and GIF file formats.

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Digital Airways has taken the wraps off the first Java-based WAP
(wireless application protocol) microbrowser for Palm
PDAs and Palm operating system-based compatibles.

Known as Wapaka, the full microbrowser builds on earlier technology
of the same name that is downloadable to users' PDAs as a Java
applet.

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Digital music distribution will send the CD to the audio
graveyard, alongside such former stalwarts as the vinyl record and the
eight-track tape, within the next two years.

So says Rob Reid, CEO of Listen.com, who delivered a keynote address
at the Upside Events "Showcase" conference, at the La Quinta Resort just
outside Palm Springs, Calif. Showcase is designed to demonstrate the
latest technologies, products and services in the Internet, personal
computing
and communications industries.

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Microsoft Corp. will pay rival Sun
Microsystems Inc. $20 million as part of a settlement
to Sun's three-year-old lawsuit over Java technology, the companies
announced today.

The settlement grants Microsoft limited use of Java technology
for seven years, bars the software giant from displaying the Java
compatible trademark and cancels a 1996 licensing agreement.
Microsoft said in a statement that it has not used the trademark
since 1998.

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IBM is planning to announce an enhancement to
its Electronic Media Management System that will prevent unauthorized
music distribution over the Internet.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the enhancement will be
offered to record companies and others later this quarter, and will
stop unauthorized music distribution via the likes of Napster Inc.

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Kaspersky Lab, the Russian anti-virus specialist, has warned about a
new Internet worm that attacks Linux-based computers.

The worm, which executes under Red Hat Linux, is called Ramen, and
represents a surprise for what had been considered to be one of the
most protected platforms available today.

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