Friday, November 11, 2005

Computer worm exploits software on Sony's CDs

People who bought music CDs from Sony BMG Music Entertainment may have
exposed themselves to a dangerous new computer worm.

Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail Breaking News Alerts Symantec
Corp., the leading maker of antivirus software, said the worm has
infected computers that played Sony BMG recordings. Two other
antivirus firms, BitDefender Labs and Sophos PLC, also issued warnings
yesterday.

The Sony BMG disks install software that is supposed to prevent the
user from making illicit copies of the music and distributing them
over the Internet. But the anticopying software conceals itself so
that the computer user can't easily remove it.
Now someone has written a ''Trojan horse" program that exploits this
feature of the Sony BMG software. The program, which is spread through
spam e-mails, uses the Sony BMG code to hide itself. Then the Trojan
horse uses the Internet to contact its creators for further
instructions.

''By enabling an infected machine to be remotely controlled, this
threat opens up the user's identity and computer for potentially
malicious purposes," said Vincent Weafer, senior director of Symantec
Security Response.

Attackers could, for example, order the Trojan horse to copy and
transmit personal information. Or they could make the computer send
spam messages to other Internet computers, or launch ''denial of
service" attacks that could put major Internet services out of
commission. Criminals have launched such attacks against businesses,
demanding protection money.

Symantec Corp. said it has received three reports of machines infected
by the worm. The company does not expect it to spread rapidly. Sony
officials say that only about 20 of the company's CDs contain the
software. Sony has also issued a downloadable patch that is supposed
to stop the security software from concealing itself, or any other
programs.

Symantec and other antivirus companies are preparing software that
will clean up both the Sony BMG program and the Trojan horse software
that exploits it.

Sony has faced intense criticism from computer security experts and
consumers for adding the software to popular music titles in an effort
to prevent illegal duplication of copyrighted songs. The company's
critics say the anticopying program is also spyware.

www.boston.com

Brits Urge Caution Regarding Breast Cancer 'Wonder Drug'

The Lancet's chief editor, Richard Horton, said he was "quite angry"
Herceptin had been portrayed as such a wonder drug in The Lancet's
U.S. counterpart, the New England Journal of Medicine. "Study results
are preliminary, inconsistent and raise extremely serious concerns
about safety," he said.

Just three weeks after an editorial in America's most prestigious
medical journal declared an expensive new cancer drug to be
"revolutionary" and "maybe even a cure" for some hard-to-treat breast
cancers, the most prominent British medical journal has come to the
opposite conclusion.

"The available evidence is insufficient to make reliable judgments,"
editors of The Lancet wrote in an editorial published online
Wednesday. "It is profoundly misleading to suggest, even rhetorically,
that the published data may be indicative of a cure for breast
cancer."

In a telephone interview, The Lancet's chief editor, Richard Horton,
said he was "quite angry" Herceptin had been portrayed as such a
wonder drug in The Lancet's U.S. counterpart, the New England Journal
of Medicine. "Study results are preliminary, inconsistent and raise
extremely serious concerns about safety," he said.

Herceptin is designed to treat women with breast tumors bearing a
protein marker associated with aggressive disease that responds poorly
to conventional treatments. About 20 percent of tumors that have
spread beyond the breast have the marker.

The buzz surrounding Herceptin has led patient groups worldwide to
demand the drug from governments and insurers, even though it is not
licensed for early-stage breast cancer. It is approved for use only in
more advanced cancers, where the cancer has spread beyond the lymph
nodes.

Interest intensified last month, when the New England Journal of
Medicine published two preliminary studies concluding that the drug
seemed to be extremely effective, accompanied by a glowing editorial.
Jeffrey Drazen, editor of the journal, on Wednesday defended the
decision to publish, noting that the results were "highly likely to
stand up with time."

He added: "We are not in the business of telling people how to be
treated and government bodies what they should pay for. We just felt
that if you developed this particularly bad form of breast cancer, you
would want to know about this."

The Lancet decided to publish its editorial early and online
Wednesday, Horton said, after the British health secretary, Patricia
Hewitt, publicly demanded that the National Health Service provide the
drug to a patient who had sued to be given the medicine. In France,
pressure to release Herceptin was so intense that regulators bypassed
normal channels earlier this year to make it more widely available to
breast cancer patients.

Many doctors who have used Herceptin defended the fast-track process.
"I understand the importance of caution, but the results of these
studies were so impressive to doctors who take care of women with
breast cancer that we believe the studies should change the standard
of care," said Dr. Ed Romond, an oncologist at the University of
Kentucky who was a principal investigator for one of the New England
Journal of Medicine's articles.

He said tumors bearing the breast cancer marker are "very aggressive"
and that 90 percent of women who had received the new treatment
remained disease-free after four years. "Maybe once the study is
finished we will see that the results are not as strong," he said.
"But statistically they will still be impressive."

With Herceptin costing about $41,000, for a full treatment course,
governments have been hard pressed to pay for the drug. But Horton
said the current debate was simply about whether the drug worked and
was safe. "The last thing we should want is to have a politician
campaigning on behalf of a drug it's a crazy way to make what should
be a scientific decision," Horton said.

Katja Prowald, a spokeswoman for Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical
company that markets Herceptin in Europe, said scientists at the
company had "read the editorial and said that the statements it
contained were not correct." The maelstrom surrounding Herceptin began
earlier this year, when researchers, at a meeting of the American
Cancer Society, presented promising early data on the use of Herceptin
to treat early breast cancer. Two articles with further interim data
were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Oct. 20.

According to the studies, women who received Herceptin along with
standard chemotherapy had half the rate of recurrence after one year
than those who did not receive the drug. Researchers from a consortium
of prestigious international medical centers considered the results
compelling enough that women in the control group, who initially
received no Herceptin, were belatedly offered the medicine. But some
scientists have long had misgivings about the data, or at least about
the drug's golden image, especially in light of its cost. Horton said
the hoopla surrounding Herceptin resulted from a synergy between
desperate patients desiring better treatments and drug companies
looking for profit, creating what he called an "unholy alliance."

www.toptechnews.com

DFC Intelligence Forecasts Video Game Industry to Rival Size of Global Music Business

According to the latest forecasts from DFC Intelligence, the worldwide
interactive entertainment market is expected to grow from about $28.5
billion in 2005 to around $42 billion in 2010.

The interactive entertainment market consists of console video games,
PC games, online games and dedicated portable systems.

"The upcoming launch of the Microsoft Xbox 360 heralds a new
generation of console systems that together should push the worldwide
game industry toward the size of the global recorded music industry by
2008," said David Cole president of DFC Intelligence.

However, DFC Intelligence also stresses that the growth for the
interactive entertainment industry is about much more than video game
console systems.

"There is a growing portable business, and, contrary to some reports,
the top PC games are making more than ever with the growth of online
games and digital distribution," says Cole.

According to Cole, the key for success in the game business is
recognizing the growing diversity among markets, platforms and
business models. Furthermore, as console systems increasingly connect
online, the game industry will become more like a network service
business and less like a packaged goods industry.

"The skill set of today's major players does not necessarily translate
into success going forward and that could open up some opportunities
for new market entrants," says Cole.

DFC Intelligence (www.dfcint.com) is a market research firm focused on
video games, PC games, online games and interactive entertainment.

They offer free monthly research briefs to anyone signing up at
http://www.dfcint.com/mailing_signup.html.

DFC Intelligence reports include Worldwide Market Forecasts for the
Video Game & Interactive Entertainment Industry, The Business of
Computer and Video Games, The Online Game Market, The Game Market in
China, Overview of the Video Game and Interactive Entertainment
Industry and Market Leaders in the Video Game and Interactive
Entertainment Industry.

www.home.businesswire.com