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The target of attacks has shifted from traditional infrastructure to mobile users and endpoint devices. As the security of mobile networks has improved, mobile devices are increasingly the target of attacks, while social networking sites are quickly becoming cybercriminals' platform of choice to expand and propagate destructive botnets. Anti-virus software is losing the battle against malware - the new breed of malware is virtually undetectable by current scanning software.

The Free Software Foundation announced today that it will be supporting the WebM project. As Brett Smith, license compliance engineer for the FSF, said in a press release: "Google has been working to bring together a broad coalition of organizations to support WebM, which will go far to help it become the video codec of choice with HTML5. e want the world to know that we also support WebM: with its developer-friendly patent license and free software reference implementation, it's a good choice to help ensure the Web fulfills its promise of providing a free way for the world to communicate."

A new wrinkle in the update and fragmentation story emerged today. AndroidSpin is quoting an unnamed T-Mobile employee as saying that the carrier is being told not to release the Android 2.2 update (Froyo) to customers that own the Samsung Vibrant. The reason: to increase sales of the new Vibrant 4G.

"At the end of 2010, the 'open-source' software movement, whose activists tend to be fringe academics and ponytailed computer geeks, found an unusual ally: the Russian government. Vladimir Putin signed a 20-page executive order requiring all public institutions in Russia to replace proprietary software, developed by companies like Microsoft and Adobe, with free open-source alternatives by 2015."

InfoWorld has released its list of the top 20 IT tools of 2010, based on extensive testing from its Test Center analysts. From IDEs, to virtualized desktop infrastructure kits, to parallel-processing CPUs, to mobile platforms, and workstations, 2010's best hardware and software products belie a distinctive shift in IT, one in which conflicting pulls on computing platforms are "drawing them to the far ends of the spectrum: more applications and services being delivered from virtual servers and large clouds, while on the other end, ever-smaller client endpoints taking a larger role in business and in the daily lives of consumers. Systems near the midpoint - workstations, desktops, and laptops - are becoming page two news, whereas they used to represent the key cradles of innovation."

From scent-replication devices to miniature candy, CES had its share of unexpected announcements. InfoWorld's Ted Samson wraps up the more offbeat innovations of this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, including keyless keyboards, Trojan's Vibrating Twister, dynamic credit cards, and the smallest Reese's peanut butter cups ever.

AMD CEO, president and director Dirk Meyer has resigned, effective immediately. Senior Vice President and CFO Thomas Seifert has been appointed as interim CEO. A search for a permanent replacement is underway. In other news, Microsoft's Bob Muglia, head of the Server and Tools business, is also leaving sometime over summer, and Microsoft is also trying to find a replacement.

"On the same day that we learn VIA's Linux support is basically dead and after a troubling week for Intel with regards to open-source graphics support for their new Sandy Bridge CPUs, Advanced Micro Devices has come forward and released open-source graphics driver support for their AMD Radeon HD 6000 series of graphics cards."

Google sued the U.S. Interior Department late last year and a judge has sided with Google. The WSJ reports that the judge of the case ruled the USID violated the Competition in Contracting Act by requiring all bids to include Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. No word if the USID will appeal the ruling.

After years of mixed signals, Apple has apparently opened the kimono on its enterprise intentions, announcing a "Mac in the Enterprise" campaign to help large businesses integrate Macs, iPhones, and iPads into their IT ecosystems, InfoWorld reports. "Apple's Mac focus here is particularly striking, unlike that on the iPhone, which has already made obvious inroads in the enterprise market thanks to Apple's delivery of business-class management capabilities. By contrast, the Mac's presence in the business world has been remarkably understated - despite the fact that the Mac population therein reportedly doubled between 2006 and 2008 and looks to grow even more this year."

In the last year there have been a number of organisations offering rewards, or 'bounty' programs, for discovering and reporting bugs in applications. Mozilla currently offers up to $3,000 for crucial or high bug identification, Google pays out $1,337 for flaws in its software and Deutsche Post is currently sifting through applications from 'ethical' hackers to approve teams who will go head to head and compete for its Security Cup in October. The winning team can hold aloft the trophy if they find vulnerabilities in its new online secure messaging service – that's comforting to current users. So, are these incentives the best way to make sure your applications are secure?

Linux 2.6.37 has been released. This release includes several SMP scalability improvements for Ext4 and XFS, complete removal of the Big Kernel Lock, support for per-cgroup IO throttling, a network device based in the Ceph clustered filesystem, several Btrfs improvements, more efficient static probes, perf support to probe modules and listing of accesible local and global variables, image hibernation using LZO compression, PPP over IPv4 support, several networking microoptimizations and many other small changes, improvements and new drivers. You can read the full changelog as well.

It's been a long time coming, but a brand new release of VirtualBSD is out: "VirtualBSD 8.1 is a desktop ready FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE based on the Xfce 4.6 Desktop Environment and, being distributed as VMware appliance, it makes dead easy to take FreeBSD for a test drive." The best part? Not only are the most common aplications available out of the box, this is a genuine FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE, which means that if you go past the desktop you'll be dealing with The Real Thing. You can take a look at the screenshots, go to the download page or, if you're impatient, just grab the torrent file.

To understand what the BeOS and Haiku operating systems are, we first must remember that BeOS was developed with the multimedia user in mind. BeOS wanted to be what OS X has become today: an easy to use, attractive operating system. However, BeOS was a niche OS, destined for the media-hungry user. The percentage of audio and video applications available for Haiku is greater than the one in Linux, OS X or Windows, and the inner workings of the operating system were created in such a way, that the same multimedia passionate would find it easy to work with the user interface and files. Each application can interfere with other applications of its kind. A WAVE file selection can be dragged from a sound editor and onto the desktop, to create an audio file. Audio applications can interfere with each other via the Haiku Media Kit -- the corespondent of a Linux sound server. Applications like Cortex are a perfect example of how BeOS and Haiku deal with multimedia files: you can have more than one soundcard and use each one of those soundcards independently or separately. You can link one soundcard to the Audio Mixer, start a drum machine application and link that software to the Audio Mixer. If you want to output whatever you create with the audio application, all you have to do is drag the microphone and link it to the application's icon in Cortex.