A "critical" flaw in Kaspersky Lab’s antivirus software could let an attacker commandeer systems that use the products, a security researcher warned Monday. The problem lies in Kaspersky’s antivirus library, security researcher Alex Wheeler wrote in an advisory. The vulnerability likely affects multiple Kaspersky products on various platforms because the library is used throughout the company’s consumer and corporate software, he said.

A Florida man who collected nearly $40,000 over the Web for Hurricane Katrina humanitarian relief was indicted on fraud charges Monday. According to the indictment, Florida resident Gary Kraser allegedly used email and the Web site AirKatrina.com to dupe nearly 50 people out of their money over a two-day period. He claimed to be flying medical supplies to Louisiana and helping to evacuate children and sick people in his plane, the indictment said. Kraser is the first person that the United States has charged with Internet fraud linked to Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. Internet security experts have warned of numerous online scams designed to exploit charitable giving in the aftermath of the catastrophe.

On Friday last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 into law. The first-of-its-kind bill makes Internet phishing a punishable offense. The new law will permit victims to seek recovery of actual damages or up to $500,000 for each violation, whichever is greater. Under the Anti-Phishing Act, any attempt "to solicit, request or take any action to induce another person" to divulge personal information on the Internet via "a Web page, electronic mail message or any other electronic means" while representing oneself as a business without the permission or authority of that business is a civil violation. The new law seeks to protect personal information, such as bank account numbers, driver’s license records, and Social Security numbers. It also covers automated and electronic signatures, account passwords, unique biometric data, and "any other piece of information that can be used to access an individual’s financial accounts or to obtain goods or services."

Caelo Software, an email productivity software company, announced the release of a brand new product–NEO Free. Now everyone can experience the power and productivity of NEO for free. This free downloadable software (for Outlook) has the best features from NEO Pro. NEO Free implements "wordwheel" functionality that will not be available in Microsoft products until the release of Vista, automatically organizes email into correspondent folders, which display both sent and received email for all correspondents, and separates bulk subscription mail from correspondent mail for better prioritization.

Last month, Microsoft celebrated its 30th anniversary as the company built of, by and for developers. That is how Microsoft Corp. officials have long described the company, and it is an apt description, as developers continue to be a primary focus for the software giant. No other company has been able to amass an ecosystem of developers as large as or as committed as Microsoft has, analysts say.

Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2 contains significant security enhancements, in addition to stability and performance improvements. Some of the fixes included with SP2 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one update.

Chinese authorities have shut down a popular online news and discussion forum that gave prominent coverage to a campaign by villagers in the southern province of Guangdong to remove their elected chief amid corruption allegations, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports. The Yannan forum, known in China as a BBS, carried an announcement dated Sept. 30, 2005, announcing that the Web site had now closed. The site, popular among academics, journalists, and rights activists, had previously had all Taishi-related news reports and discussions removed from public view.

Microsoft will build into its Office 12 desktop suite a "save to PDF" capability, according to Office program manager Brian Jones. Jones communicated word of Microsoft’s PDF plan for Office 12 on his blog on Saturday afternoon. He posted that Microsoft will add native support for PDF in Word 12, Excel 12, PowerPoint 12, Access 12, Publisher 12, OneNote 12, Visio 12 and InfoPath 12.

Microsoft is revealing, piece by piece, some of the new features that will be in the next versions of the products that comprise the Office 12 family. Company officials are sharing a surprising amount, via their blogs, especially about the note-taking program, OneNote. One of the biggest changes that can be expected in OneNote 12 is support for multiple notebooks, allowing the program to be used by small and medium groups, not just individuals. Tentatively called "shared notebooks," the new SharePoint-based OneNote 12 feature will be designed to allow users to come and go as they please; work by themselves; or work with a limitless number of people in a group.

The code for Blogbot, an Outlook add-in that aggregates RSS and Atom feeds and delivers them into Outlook folders, has been open-sourced. Blogbot’s domain is also up for sale, according to its Web site. The motivation behind the open-sourcing is unclear, as no reasons for the code release were given on Blogbot’s site.