The Sasser worm began to spread on Saturday, and unlike a virus does not travel through emails or attachments. Spreading by itself to any unprotected computer linked to the Internet, it attacks through a flaw in recent versions of Microsoft’s Windows and causes the computer to shut down, then rebooting it, repeating the process several times, but appearing to do no lasting damage.

In response to the spread of the Sasser worm, Microsoft has released this removal tool to rid your system of the nuisance.

WebMethods announced that it has joined the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP). WebMethods for Microsoft Package is integrated into Visual Studio. The package enables developers to access any Web service on any platform as a native .NET service from their Visual Studio environment.

Visual Studio 2005 will include Whitehorse, a modeling engine and set of framework tools for SOA as part of Microsoft’s SOA plans.

Microsoft announced that it’s rethinking beta testing of patches by outside parties to reduce risk of hackers getting the code before the patch’s release.

Several security programmers released some code that might allow an attacker to take control of an unprotected Windows computer. Experts are warning that another MSBlast-type worm could be in the future.

Federal authorities say they have filed the first criminal charges under the government’s new "can spam" legislation. Officials at the Federal Trade Commission told U.S. postal investigators they had received more than 10,000 complaints about unwanted emails sent by the defendants.

In this interview on Netcraft, Ximian and Mono Project co-founder Miguel de Icaza compares .NET and Mono. He also talks about Novell’s acquisition of Ximian and the company’s interest in desktop Linux.

The new Bagle worm is gaining ground in the US, while the new Netsky variant proliferates in Asia and Europe.

Analyst Jonathan Spira of SearchWin2000.com takes a look at the pros and cons of Microsoft Office System 2003.