Many developers and companies are providing free software to thousands of people and are contributing to the open source community. Now, malware developers have decided to step in by going open source to make their malicious software more useful for any budding fraudster. Malware developers are giving free access to malware that will help criminal coders steal financial data and personal details. This in turn will help the developers to expand the capabilities of old trojans.

This open source model is helping criminal coders to add extra features to their malware with the help from other developers. "The advantages are that you have more people involved in developing it, so someone who is into cryptography could add a cryptographic plug-in or somebody who does video streaming could add remote streaming of the desktop," said Candid West, Threat Researcher, Symantec to CNET. He also claims that around 10 percent of the trojan market is now open source.

The process of releasing trojan as an open source started in 1999 when the Cult of the Dead Cow group released the source code for its trojan called Back Orifice. Many trojan developers go for open source so that more fraudsters use their malware. In 2007, the developers of the Limbo Trojan published its source code in an effort to attract more fraudsters to use it. Soon after offering as open source, the Limbo trojan became the most widely used trojan in the world. In 2008 a more sophisticated Zeus trojan was released which affected Limbo's popularity. "At the beginning of it going open source it was big news but people have since stopped investing in it. It is not the best trojan any more but because it's open source you can try it as your first trojan and it is still used in some places," said Uri Rivner Head of New Technologies, RSA. Before it went open source, Limbo Trojan kit was previously sold to fraudsters for $350 per time while the Zeus trojan today sells for between $1,000 to $3,000.

Open source is boon as well as curse for coders as it is also picked up by security companies, and the trojan is quite predictable. "If you make (the trojan) open source, that means that a security company can find the source code and it is easier to make a general heuristic detection for it, as they know what could be in it," said West.

Nowadays, majority of trojan infections occurs through downloads, where the malware is automatically downloaded after browsing an infected website, or messages sent via social networking sites that encourage people to download a trojan masked as a legitimate security update, according to RSA's Rivner. RSA analysts say these new methods have increased the growth rate of infection, with the security firm detecting 19,102 trojan infections in August 2009 compared 613 to in August 2008.

Google is still the leader in search engine market, but in terms of appearance there is a huge difference between Microsoft Bing and the plain-simple Google. Google does make many changes to the homepage during festivals or important news event, but there have not been any major change in the total layout and design. Now WebMynd, a startup that was launched in early 2008, has offered Google a helping hand to make its search engine look better.

WebMynd is launching a contest called RedesignGoogle.com where designers from around the world can submit their work to give Google a makeover. The information on WebMynd blog says "If you're a designer, this is your chance to revamp the most widely used service on the web. Anything that can be manipulating using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be changed with RedesignGoogle. We offer a web-based CSS editor for creating and previewing your designs, but you're free to use your preferred tools." The contest will be judged by Paul Graham, WebMynd team and few others will soon be announced. The winner of the contest gets a new MacBook Air.

Currently, RedesignGoogle is already available for Firefox. RedesignGoogle lets users completely customize the look of Google search by installing user-submitted designs. A stripped-down version of the WebMynd add-on applies user's installed stylesheet whenever they are on a Google search results page.

AN INDIAN company has sued Google over what it claims is trademark infringement as it accused the search engine giant of using it's trademark to to divert business to the competitors.

Consim Info, which runs a number a portal including the popular BharatMatrimony.com has stated that when a user searched for Bharatmatrimony on Google, the search engine dishes up advertisements of the competitors.

The company has objected to the Consim trademark being used for bidding as it meant a loss of business. It also said that trademarks are also shown by Google in links from competitors and as such demanded that advertisements of competitors are not shown when words similar to its trademarks are searched.

A case has been filed by the company in the Madras High Court in Chennai, which granted an interim injunction to Consim last week, claimed the company. While not denying that Bharatmatrimony might also be benefiting, when users searched for the competitors, Consim said it wants this practice to be stopped.

Imagine chatting with an online friend about a great video that is on the Internet and trying to describe the video to the best of your ability through the chat window, but it just doesn't work. Yahoo!'s latest application, Zync can be an eagerly awaited solution to such a scenario. The application developed by the Yahoo! Research Group, lets a person watch a video with an online friend and discuss about it through the same window using Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.

A plug-in for Yahoo!! Messenger for Windows, Zync allows users to watch videos together. With Zync, users can watch a video, pause it at that right moment and chat about it with their friends. It has been created by David Ayman Shamma of the Internet Experiences Group, part of Economics and Social Systems at Yahoo! Research.

Yahoo! started this project at Yahoo! Research in Berkeley, a facility that explores and invents social media and mobile media technologies. Videos from Yahoo!, YouTube and Google, can be played in the browser between friends in sync, with the users, also having a control of the playback of the video and they can chat about it instantly. Zync and other similar prototypes are developed by Yahoo! Research after studying the user behaviors. Further, Yahoo! Research will analyze the behavior of Zync users to develop newer applications.

It is estimated that around 24.7 percent of the world's population uses Internet, but the question stands at what all these people do with the information they collect? In a quest to find an answer for this, the Yahoo! Research team carries out several field studies, prototypes, activity log analysis, surveys and data mining. "With the growth of social networking sites and mobiles, the interaction of users with technology has become of prime importance and we at Yahoo! want to find how applications work in people's life," said Elizabeth F Churchill, Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo!, in an exclusive with Siliconindia.

Elizabeth was in India recently and talked about Zync and other such widgets during the company's annual Big Thinker's conference. A psychologist by training, for the past 15 years, she has involved her self in studying people - especially how they adopt and adapt technologies into their everyday lives. According to Elizabeth, there are individual differences, cultural norms and human characteristics that determine the kind of application that needs to be designed. "Technology is part of our everyday landscape," she says. "We either connect with it and collaborate to get things done or don't. It is very interesting as well as challenging to understand what a user needs. An application might be handling multiple tasks for one but unless the user emotes with it, there is no use for the application in the user's life." As the head of research at Yahoo!'s Internet Experiences Group, it is quite challenging for Elizabeth and her team to understand the psyche of the users who use Yahoo's different services. Since the company has a global audience for itself, the greatest challenge is to design a product with such an interface that it easily attracts users across geographies, communities, gender and age group.

According to her, the number of people sharing their personal information online has been increasing, which prompts companies like Yahoo! to create applications to involve more interactions between users. "Some of the sites in which people post photos and videos can provide information on different cultures, which helps in learning those cultures and also parents teach their kids through this shared content," says Elizabeth on the use of content sharing sites today. Yahoo!, with its position in the Internet market wants to be a part of this trend by creating applications that lets more social networking happen online.

As a researcher Elizabeth is excited to be a woman in a field, which is mostly dominated by men. "I get to observe different environments and love doing it and as a gender we have to take challenges," says Elizabeth. According to her, technology is a good way to encourage women, by creating forums and communities that are designed specifically for women.

India with 32.1 million internet audience is also on the Yahoo! Research's radar and the team is studying the trends to design applications to the cultures present here. "India is like a mythical wonderland for me, it is overwhelming to be here," she concluded on her experience of being in India.