INTERNET

Anti-virus specialist Symantec has unmasked a new malware that exploits a function of Google Docs to secretly communicate with its command and control (C&C) server, likely infecting even new machines running on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

In the past week we have seen Instagram now offer profiles and also Pinterest offer business pages. Instagram is an overwhelming popular app that allows - via mobile devices like iPhone and Android, the user the ability to take average photos and make them look a whole lot better and Pinterest is a social media website where you can share photos and videos of things you like from fashion, devices to applications to architecture.

Due to the growing popularity and higher demand for its use, Instagram just launched a PC version called Instagrille. This free desktop app provides all Instagram experience from the mobile to the PC.

Australian retailers better be prepared with the influx of shoppers in the lead-up to the holiday season and its best that they configure their online stores to accommodate the expected traffic surge in Q4 2012, a new report said.

Activision’s ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 2’ will hit global store shelves on Nov 13 and this early the highly-anticipated game title is projected to quickly breach the $1 billion mark, easily breaking the record sales set in 2011 by its immediate CoD predecessor.

Cyber Monday is the traditional post-Thanksgiving shopping mayhem in the United States. Australian retailers are planning to adopt the trend.

China is unfairly portrayed as the epicentre of global piracy, a top Chinese official said on Sunday, insisting that there was a misconception and Western media firms are to blame.

The famous pizza restaurant chain, Pizza Hut, reported a website-hacking incident where customer’s names, email addresses and contact information were leaked. Despite Pizza Hut’s claims that the customer’s credit card information was not affected, the unpleasant incident should serve as a lesson for the business to keep strict protection of its personal and financial records.

Smart devices will be the norm of the future with three dominant platforms – Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows – all competing to meet the mobile computing demands of general and business consumers, a new report said.

Reelected president Barack Obama won over pop sensation Justin Beiber in Twittersphere tweeter with the most retweeted tweet in the history of the internet.

To indicate the growing use of Instagram among social networking sites, in the Tuesday election in the U.S., over 100,000 photos taken with the photo application was tagged with #iVoted and 150,000 with #election2012.

While the role of Facebook and Twitter in helping elect and celebrate the Wednesday poll victory of U.S. President Barack Obama has once more been emphasised, the newbie social networking site Google+ appears quiet and out of the political equation.

If 18-year-old Kristen Neel of Georgia were a quiz bee contestant, she probably would easily lose if the questions were on current events.

The Wednesday U.S. presidential election proved that a face-off looms between social media networking sites Facebook or Twitter similar to the tight battle between Democrat candidates Barack Obama and Republican bet Mitt Romney.

Microsoft is fully embracing the $USUS8.5 billion internet communication technology that came with its Skype acquisition in 2011, disclosing on Tuesday that the messaging client would be its sole application for hundreds of millions of global users to connect via PCs or mobile devices.

The Anonymous hacking spree on Symantec and PayPal is apparently just the inauguration of defacements and document dumps on the 5th of November that is marked as the Guy Fawkes Day or a day of protest.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg along with two other key decision makers at the social-media giant took part in Facebook Inc. share sale amounting to millions of dollars this week following the expiry of the restrictions on insider trading.

Africans are making a bid to be a major hub of mobile gaming. With more than 700 million mobile broadband subscribers in the entire continent, a growing number of young entrepreneurs are going digital and creating innovative and interactive content in their own home market.

Local telco subscribers were being ripped off on current data plans offered by the country’s three major players, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) said on Monday.

Flava Works, creator of gay pornographic films which feature black and Latino men, has been awarded $1.5 million by a federal court in Illinois due to the damage caused by Kywan Fisher, who uploaded copyrighted gay porn movies using BitTorrent. The penalty is believed to be the biggest awarded in file-sharing cases.

Kim Dotcom announced on Friday plans for Mega, a service which will replace the file-sharing site MegaUpload.

Gmail is the world's most popular email service, according to a report from an Internet analytics company. There are at least three reasons why Gmail users "hang out." From being an invitation-only service in 2004, Gmail had drawn a solid number of regular users. Google's mail service had 287.9 million unique visitors in October.

Microsoft’s global marketing blitz is in full swing, deliberately gunning for every possible market to realise the target numbers earlier set by company CEO Steve Ballmer for the newly-unveiled Windows 8.

Australia's federal government has teamed up with Facebook and Headspace and Project Rocket, a youth mental health group, to battle cyber bullying. They launched on Friday, Nov 2, the new campaign Be Bold and Stop Bullying.

A Melbourne man had asked Google to remove images of him alongside a convicted druglord in the search engine's results page. Google should have not ignored his request. When Google's lawyers said the search engine was merely indexing web pages, a jury at the Victoria Supreme Court said Google should have responded to a defamation notice.

People Devising Looting Sprees via Twitter in Wake of Hurricane Sandy May Find Armed Resistance Waiting For Them

The Australia Post announced on Tuesday the launch of its digital mailbox, which would serve as a digital storage vault for Australians and would connect consumers with banks, utility companies and government agencies.

WikiLeaks’ founder Julia Assange is reportedly sick and Ecuadorian embassy officials in London have appealed to British authorities to grant the Aussie whistleblower safe passage so he can be brought to a hospital.

Australia has joined forces with government cyber warriors from the United States and the United Kingdom to increase nations’ capabilities of thwarting attempts by unscrupulous hackers to breach the security protocols of computer systems maintained by public and private entities.