worm

In Death Worm, you play the role of gigantic, man-eating mutant worm, hell-bent on creating as much destruction as possible. Your abilities include burrowing through the ground with frightening speed, jumping above the surface, Nitro bursts (essentially temporary turbo speed-ups), and shooting fireballs.

The game play is simple: ram your worm into anything you can catch. There are human soldiers running about as well as animals, tanks, helicopters, even UFOs. Some enemies are stronger than others, so they may require multiple hits before going down, and of course, you're under attack as well.

In Campaign Mode, you progress through … Read more

Cyberattacks from Anonymous and LulzSec and breaches against everyone from Sony to Lockheed Martin turned the second quarter into "one of the worst on record," according to a new report from Panda Security.

Released this week, Panda's second-quarter report (PDF) examined the security landscape from April to June and highlighted a string of alarming incidents.

Pointing to the attacks by Anonymous and LulzSec against the likes of Sony, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Spanish police, and several government sites, Panda said that the line between "hacktivism" and criminal behavor has gotten fuzzier.

Panda clearly questioned the methods of the new breed of hackers, saying that Anonymous calls its actions "peaceful protests," even though such actions are illegal. Also mincing no words with LulzSec, Panda said that "if you took the most irresponsible and brainless members of Anonymous and put them all together, they would be considered the most refined gentlemen compared to LulzSec."

Though LulzSec recently announced that it would be ending its attacks, the group urged other hackers to carry on the fight via operation Anti-Security, or AntiSec.… Read more

This week on our roundup of best BOL moments, Lockheed and PBS join the roster of recent victims as hackers motives expand, World Health Organization says cell phones may cause cancer and 'Worms From Hell' unearth possibilities for extraterrestrial life.

On today's show, "worms from hell" a mile or more underground. We get a look at Windows 8 and we dig it, a lot. Google says a Chinese hacker got into hundreds of Gmail accounts, which China (not surprisingly) denies. Plus, Molly gets a new boyfriend to take to the bunker (which gets grilled cheese sandwiches in addition to its chicken and Gaga), and we get schooled on matters of space shuttle transportation.

Legitimate Android apps are being compromised by phony versions that masquerade as the real thing but deliver a payload of malware, according to a Symantec blog published yesterday.

Found on unregulated third-party Android markets, malicious versions of legitimate apps like Steamy Window are difficult to distinguish except for their tendency to request permissions that are more excessive than usual, says Symantec. But once installed, these apps carry a new piece of Android malware dubbed Android.Pjapps.

Even running the app doesn't raise a red flag to the user as the fakes closely look and act like the legitimate versions. … Read more

Super Mega Worm is the Mac version of the retro-looking iOS arcade game of the same name, in which you control a giant bloodthirsty worm that's out to wreak some (cartoonishly) gory eco-vengeance.

You control your mega worm ("Wojira," in classic megamonster-movie style) as you navigate back and forth across a horizontally scrolling landscape, burrowing into the earth and then emerging to feast on eco-unfriendly humanity (pressing Z to pick up speed, or to spit acid when you're above ground). Your game ends when your ever-shrinking energy bar is depleted, so you have to keep eating … Read more

The Conficker worm may have been squashed, but this nasty piece of malware is still squirming around millions of computers around the world.

Those were the findings of the Conficker Working Group, a collection of antivirus vendors and several other parties that joined forces in 2009 and 2010 to try to stomp out the worm.

Releasing a "Lessons Learned" document (PDF) yesterday, the CWG claimed success in ultimately stopping Conficker from communicating with its creator, thus preventing it from updating into newer and more dangerous variants. The group seemed especially proud of the way the various organizations and … Read more

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have announced that, using inexpensive components from ordinary liquid crystal display (LCD) projectors, they're able to control both the brains and the muscles of tiny organisms such as worms.

Until now, the field of optogenetics (combining optical and genetic techniques) had been limited to larger animals, with manipulation achieved only by placing optical fibers into animals' brains or illuminating an animal's entire body.

The experiments out of Georgia Tech, however, demonstrate that it's also possible to control brain circuitry using the red, green, and blue lights from a projector. By … Read more

Microsoft yesterday quietly released the latest version of its Security Essentials anti-malware software.

Security Essentials 2.0 is available as a free download with several changes over its predecessor. A Microsoft representative today confirmed the release.

Microsoft said the updated anti-malware engine makes the software faster and smarter at detecting security hazards. The software also now ties in with Windows Firewall, giving you the option of turning the firewall on or off. When I installed the 2.0 edition, it detected that Windows Firewall was not running and asked if I wanted to enable it.

The new version integrates with … Read more