Technology Briefs

Judge Awards $873M Fine for Spamming FacebookA Canadian citizen was slapped with an $873 million fine Friday for sending approximately four million spam e-mail messages to Facebook users - the largest judgment ever handed down for a violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act.
In March and April 2008, Adam Guerbuez and his company, Atlantic Blue Capital, used Facebook login information obtained through phishing schemes and third parties to send spam advertisements for marijuana, male enhancement drugs and sexually oriented material to users' Facebook "Walls" and e-mail inboxes.
The messages would appear to be from a user's friend, but were actually placed there by autobots controlled by Guerbuez.
"The voluminous and illicit nature of defendants' advertisements has tainted the Facebook experience for affected Facebook users," Facebook wrote in its initial complaint.
Facebook also said it lost money monitoring, reviewing and attempting to prevent similar spam e-mail and wall posts - about $5,000 in a year.
Internet worm exploits windows

A worm dubbed Win32/Conficker.A is making the rounds on Windows machines, exploiting a security hole that Microsoft released a patch for in October, Microsoft said on Wednesday.
The number of attacks have increased over the past couple of days, exploiting a critical vulnerability that was addressed by security update MS08-067.
The malware mostly was spreading inside corporations, but also hit several hundred home PCs, Microsoft said in a posting on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center Blog.
"Once the remote computer is exploited, that computer will download a copy of the worm via HTTP using the random port opened by the worm. The worm often uses a .JPG extension when copied over," the posting said.
"It is also interesting to note that the worm patches the vulnerable API in memory so the machine will not be vulnerable anymore. It is not that the malware authors care so much about the computer as they want to make sure that other malware will not take it over too," Microsoft said.
Most infections are in the US but there have also been reports from Japan, China and Canada.
Endeavour returns to Earth safely

Space shuttle Endeavour landed safely Sunday afternoon at California's Edwards Air Force Base after NASA waved off two opportunities for a Florida landing because of poor weather.
After determining Monday's weather forecast at Kennedy Space Center was equally unpromising, flight controllers decided they would try to land the shuttle and its seven astronauts at Edwards AFB on Sunday, about 100 miles from Los Angeles, California, where Sunday's forecast was sunny.
Flight controllers prefer landings at Kennedy Space Center because of cost and schedule. NASA has estimated it costs about $1.7 million to bring a shuttle home to Kennedy Space Center from California.
It also takes at least a week to get the shuttle ready for the trip, but schedule is not a major factor for the Endeavour; it is not scheduled to fly again until May.
Endeavour's mission to the international space station began on Nov. 14, and included four spacewalks.