There’s good news about phishing: The growth of new attacks has slowed. But that’s only because attackers are building more sophisticated traps and using advanced technology to perpetrate online fraud, researchers say. Last week, the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an online fraud watchdog, reported that the number of phishing emails it tracked between January and February grew by only 2 percent. That figure seems to mark a significant lessening of the threat, given that the average growth rate has been 26 percent per month since July 2004. But during the January-February period, phishing attacks also became dramatically more complex, experts said.

Tech work will be generated both onshore and offshore this year, according to a recent study by Merrill Lynch. A March survey of 50 chief information officers from U.S. organizations found that 74 percent plan to hire internal information technology staff in the near term. That figure is up from 48 percent in the previous quarter. Even so, IT head honchos are planning to push more of their tech tasks to low-wage countries, according to the survey.

Microsoft said late Tuesday that it has pushed back the expected launch of a version of Windows designed for high-performance computer clusters. A Microsoft programmer said last month that the company was aiming to have Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition ready in time for a launch at the SC2005 supercomputing conference in November, with a beta, or test, version coming this summer. However, Microsoft said Tuesday that the launch will be delayed as the company responds to early customer reactions.

GFI’s MailEssentials version 11 improves on the product’s existing spam filtering techniques–which include Bayesian filtering–and introduces new features that guarantee a maximum spam detection rate, while drastically reducing false positives. The latest version includes SURBL checking, to detect spam based on URLs in the message body; enhanced protection against directory harvesting attacks; a users’ instant view of emails from people who have never emailed them before and the ability for administrators to configure custom RBL servers.

The Mozilla Foundation has developed a beta patch for the Firefox browser that it claims improves the blocking of pop-up ads. The popular open-source browser already contains a pop-up blocker by default, but this doesn’t handle pop-ups launched by plug-ins such as Flash and Java. Mozilla employee Asa Dotzler wrote in his blog last week that Mozilla developers are responding to the increasing number of advertisers that are using plug-ins to launch pop-up ads.

Sun Microsystems has tapped a founder of the successful open-source Apache software project to join a new advisory board governing the OpenSolaris operating system project, the software and server maker said Monday. Roy Fielding, who helped write the original Apache software now used to host most Web sites, is one of the five members of the OpenSolaris Community Advisory Board. Fielding, now Day Software’s chief scientist, helped to found the Apache Software Foundation that now includes several other server software projects.

The Florida Attorney General’s office has filed its first claims under the state’s antispam law, charging two men with masterminding a scheme that marketed fraudulent online businesses via email. The office of Attorney General Charlie Crist has filed civil claims against Scott J. Filary, 25, and Donald E. Townsend, 34, representatives said on Monday. The Tampa residents are accused of running an operation that generated over 65,000 deceptive emails since 2003, including 48,000 messages sent after the Florida Electronic Mail Communications Act took effect on July 1, 2004. The defendants face up to $24 million in fines.

Microsoft has offered the European Commission about 20 concessions over the EU executive’s order that it share data with rival makers of servers. In a letter sent late last week, the world’s largest software maker tried to bridge the gap with the Commission on the sharing of data protocols, or software rules of the road, one of three major disputes between the two sides. "Of the 26 areas where the Commission had concerns, we have accepted and offered proposals to address the concerns on 20 of these issues," a Microsoft spokesman said.

Most U.S. businesses say there is very little difference between the cost of maintaining a Windows versus a Linux-based corporate computing environment, according to a new Yankee Group study released on Monday. The main cost difference, said Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio, is determined by the amount of time it takes to develop applications or ensure the security of servers, the networked computers that store data, crunch numbers and serve up Web pages. In the independent study, 88 percent of respondents said that the quality, performance and reliability of Windows was equal to or better than Linux.

Privacy protection is sure getting a black eye. First it was a security breach that left ChoicePoint’s personal information vulnerable to prying eyes. Less than a fortnight later, Bank of America backup tapes containing data on 1.2 million accounts went missing. More recently, someone hacked into a confidential database containing as many as 32,000 records at Seisint, a company owned by LexisNexis. Bad guys are targeting corporate databases because, obviously, that’s where the money is. But the bigger concern is that many of these confidential "bet the business" databases (and other critical systems) still remain woefully insecure.