The malware, which BitDefender dubbed “Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.A” sits in Firefox’s add-ons folder. The malware runs when Firefox is started.

The malware uses JavaScript to identify more than 100 financial and money transfer Web sites, including Barclays, Wachovia, Bank of America, and PayPal along with two dozen or so Italian and Spanish banks. When it recognizes a Web site, it will collect logins and passwords, forwarding that information to a server in Russia.

Users could be infected with the Trojan either from a drive-by download, which can infect a PC by exploiting a vulnerability in a browser, or by being duped into downloading it. When it runs on a PC, it registers itself in Firefox’s system files as “Greasemonkey,” a well-known collection of scripts that add extra functionality to Web pages rendered by Firefox.

However, there is one tool that could help you in situations like these. Laptop Alarm.

Laptop Alarm is a free software tool that monitors unusual behavior when you’re away, setting off an alarm whenever it detects a possible theft. Laptop Alarm sounds an alarm whenever your laptop’s power cable is unplugged, the mouse is moved, or the laptop is shut down. This can be enough to deter a thief from running off with your laptop

However, do remember that it is not entirely foolproof and can only act as a deterrent.

Download Laptop Alarm.

Cuil has been founded by the husband-wife duo of Stanford professor Tom Costello and former Google search architect Anna Patterson. Originally called Cuill (Irish for knowledge), pronounced as cool, has now been named Cuil. Summary of Cuil’s features as claimed by Cuil: • Biggest Internet search engine—Cuil has indexed 120 billion Web pages, 3x more than any other search engine • Organized results—Cuil’s magazine-style layout separates results by subject and allows further search by concept or category • Different results—Unlike other search engines, Cuil ranks results by the content on each page, not its popularity • Complete privacy protection—Cuil does not keep any personally identifiable information on users or their search histories Cuil does have some interesting feature to offer. A search for dogs, for example, will return category results for “water dogs,” “crossbreed”, “cocker spaniel” and so on. Some of these related terms do not include the term “dog”. Similarly by clicking on New York, one would get tabbed results for recommended refinements like New York Times, New York City, New York Yankees and so on. Cuil works to understand how words are related to get more relevant results and it tries to categorize and file a web page, even if the category name doesn’t appear on the site.

Will Cuil overtake Google? Though Cuil has the potential to compete with Google, in it’s present form, it lacks certain important features that we have become used to in Google, like the advanced search for one. In Google, you can create queries to search by file types, restrict your search to a particular website and stuff like that.  Cuil lacks any kind of advance search at present. But, Cuil will probably come up with similar or even better features in the future. Anyway, you can expect some good competition in the coming days. Remember, it took Google quite some time to surpass Alta Vista and Yahoo in the search wars.

It was only a few days back that I first laid my hands on a 8GB Microsoft Zune. This is my first post relating Zune. As I use it more, I may write more post on it. Ok, here we go. While playing a video or a podcast, Zune has this ‘Resume’ option, which lets you to continue playing a file from where you stopped last. Unfortunately, in Zune, this feature is enabled only for Videos and Podcast.

Now, say, you have an audio file (mp3 or wma) which is not actually a podcast but runs for about an hour. It would make sense to have the resume option available when playing it. But if you try to just place the file in the podcast folder, Zune may not take it up as a podcast. Instead, it would include it as a music file, without the resume option.

The solution is simple enough. It appears that Zune classifies audio files as music or podcast based on a particular meta tag of the file, viz., Genre. To be categorised as a podcast, the genre must be ‘podcast’.

So just change the genre tag in your audio file to ‘podcast’. You can do this easily using any tag editor software. Mp3tag is a free tag editor that you could use for the task. Once you change the genre to podcast, you should be able to include the files in the podcast category and the resume option would be available to you.

Tryphone.com is a web site that might help you narrow down the field.

Tryphone has these virtual replicas of selected handsets you can interact with. You can actually click on the buttons and activate the screen. You can run through the menus and get a feel of the interface. But do not expect all the options in the menus to work. Right now you can click navigation buttons to reach top-level menus, but if you attempt to virtually type an SMS message or enter a new contact, a video demo using canned input is displayed.

As for the number of phone model available, it is limited to a few of the top models as of now. But you can expect more models to be added.

Tryphone is not intended to and cannot replace an in-person encounter  with handset. But playing with the site’s virtual handset costs nothing, and once more models become available, it could be a useful and fun way to check them out.

Glassdoor.com is a service that collects info on real salaries and company ratings from employees of large companies and displays them anonymously for all members to see.

The idea is to collect as much detailed salary information and feedback for every job title at a company so that job seekers can know how to evaluate an offer, and current employees can see how they are doing relative to their peers. And since Glassdoor displays the information anonymously, people should have no worries sharing the details of their salary as well as writing a true review of their employer.

As an unregistered user, you only get to view limited reviews. The service requires you to post your own review to see other reviews, which means that you need to create an account which you can create freely.

Visit Glassdoor.com

Most people prefer to have a mouse in their laptop bag, as they are not very comfortable with the touch pad on their notebook computer. A regular sized mouse in your laptop bag feels awkward and the smaller ones, designed for portability, aren’t very convenient to handle.

Keeping this in mind a group of Korean designers have come up with inflatable computer mouse called Jelly Click.

‘Jelly click’ is a flat type portable mouse that can be inflated by blowing air into it and then it becomes a regular size mouse. When inflated the mouse feels like touching a soft jelly and hence the name. No matter how soft it might be, it would still be technically called a hardware :). After using it you can deflate it and fold it up.

I am waiting for the day when I can inflate my pocket sized computer to convert it into a full blown desktop PC.

Technorati Tags: Jelly Click,inflatable Mouse,foldable mouse

The second annual McAfee “Mapping the Mal Web” report into the riskiest and safest places on the Web reveals that 19.2% of all Web sites ending in the “.hk” domain pose a security threat to Web users. China (.cn) is second this year with over 11%. By contrast, Finland (.fi) remains the safest online destination for the second year with 0.05%, followed by Japan (.jp).

The most risky generic domain from 2007’s report became more dangerous with 11.8% of all sites ending in .info posing a security threat and is the third most dangerous domain overall while government websites (.gov) remained the safest generic domain. The most popular domain, .com, is the ninth riskiest overall.

The study compared the ratings of sites found in each of the 265 country and generic domains and ranked them by the number of risky Web sites found in each domain that contained adware, spyware, viruses, spam, excessive pop-ups, browser exploits or links to other red-rated sites.

Other key findings from McAfee “Mapping the Mal Web Revisited” report 2008 include:

• The chance of downloading spyware, adware, viruses or other unwanted software from surfing the Web increased 41.5% over 2007
• Sites which offer downloads such as ringtones and screen savers that are also loaded with viruses, spyware and adware increased over the last year from 3.3% to 4.7%
• The Philippines (.ph) experienced a 270% increase in overall riskiness
• Tokelau (.tk) and Samoa (.ws) were notably safer in 2008 dropping to 28th and 12th
• In Europe, Spain (.es) experienced a 91% increase in overall risk.

The latest attempt is to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. No prize for guessing what the software is. It’s Firefox 3.

The beta version has been around for quite a while but the final version is slated to be released on the ‘Download Day’. The exact date will be announced shortly, but it will be in June.

You too could become a part of the Guinness Record. All you have to do is download Firefox 3 when it goes live on Download Day.

For more info check out Download Day Headquarters.