Technology news

Solar plane makes record flight

In today's technology roundup: Solar plane makes record flight, Home Office suspends consulting contract, Brazilian botnet herder faces extradition, and another patent infringement suit for Nintendo.

Kirsten Doyle
25 August 2008 11:25

A UK-built solar-powered plane has set an unofficial world endurance record for a flight by an unmanned aircraft, says The BBC.

The Zephyr-6 stayed aloft for more than three days, running through the night on batteries it had recharged in sunlight.

The flight was a demonstration for the US military, which is looking for new types of technology to support its troops on the ground.

UK Home Office suspends consulting contract

The Home Office is to suspend its three-year contract with PA Consulting following the loss of a memory stick containing data on 84 000 criminals, says Computing.co.uk.

PA Consulting was contracted by The Home Office last year to track prolific offenders through the criminal justice system.

The JTrack program is aimed at providing law enforcement agencies with tools to compare offenders' data. PA Consulting provided application support and trained users on the system.

Brazilian botnet herder faces extradition

A Brazilian man who allegedly sold access to a huge network of compromised PCs has been charged with computer hacking offences in the US, reports The Register.

Leni de Abreu Neto, 35, of Taubate, Brazil, allegedly maintained and leased access to a 100 000-strong botnet network of compromised PCs that he subsequently attempted to sell, according to an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in New Orleans. If convicted, Neto faces up to five years of imprisonment as well as fines and restitution payments of more than $250 000.

Neto allegedly conspired with Netherlands resident Nordin Nasiri, 19, to sell access to a network of compromised PCs and supply botnet code to a third party for around €25 000. These zombie PCs provided a platform to distribute spam, or launch distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Another patent infringement suit for Nintendo

Chicago-based Hillcrest Laboratories has filed a patent infringement suit against Nintendo and its Wiimote controller, reports TG Daily.

The patent at the core of this suit was filed seven months after the Wii was introduced and legal action was filed one day after this patent was confirmed.

While Nintendo already had to pay $21 million earlier this in a patent suit that involved its Wii Classic controller, this time it is the Wiimote that is in question and attacked by Hillcrest. It claims it has the patent rights to "three-dimensional pointing devices and techniques for tilt compensation and improved usability associated therewith".

This story was first published on ITWeb at http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/2008/0808251030.asp