The LulzSec attack on News International’s systems to redirect readers from the Sun to a fake story, and to try to get at its internal email store, appears to have been two-pronged.

Some of the more skilled hackers, including some from the hacker collective Anonymous, had been probing it in detail for about two weeks before the hack. One was to break into its email archive; the other was to hack and “deface” the site itself, by putting up a fake story – the same method LulzSec originally came to attention by doing when it hacked the PBS site to claim that Tupac Shakur was not dead.

However as far back as 2009 a weakness was found in the “Contact us” form of the Sun’s site that meant that it could be used to attack the database holding emails for the system.

Some former News International employees’ names and mobile phone numbers have been given out on Twitter by people affiliated to the hacker collective Anonymous. However, they are not current: some include people who left the company in 2007. But that also implies that they may have access to email archives dating back to when some phone hacking occurred.

Monday night’s hack of the Sun occurred because one of the hackers found a weakness in a “retired” server for the News International “microsites” – used for small or unimportant stories – running Sun’s Solaris operating system.

The most likely candidate for that hack – which would use the weakness discovered in 2009 – is the “mailback” page at http://www.new-times.co.uk/cgi-bin/newtimesmailback, which on Tuesday morning had been deactivated, along with the whole of the new-times site.

The server hosted the outdated “new-times.co.uk” site put up when the Times was building its paywall.

The hacker used that and then ran a “local file inclusion” program to gain access to the server – meaning they had extensive control over it.

That then gave them access across large parts of the News International network, possibly including the archived emails, and to the Sun’s “content management system” (CMS) – which formats news onto pages. That will have included the code for the “breaking news” element of the Sun’s main webpage; changing the entire content on the page would be too obvious.

By including a line of Javascript in the “breaking news” element, the hackers were able to ensure that anyone visiting the Sun’s home page would, as the ticker was automatically refreshed, they would be redirected to anywhere that the hackers chose.

Initially they made it redirect to a fake page they had created at new-times.co.uk/sun which attempted to look and read like a Sun story claiming that Rupert Murdoch had been found dead. That page used a template of another story that first appeared on 14 July, suggesting that the hackers either grabbed an archived story or have had access since then.

After the team at News International tried to regain control, the hackers then redirected the main News International page to the Twitter page for LulzSec.

But the problems for the News International team aren’t over. A number of email addresses and passwords were being tweeted last night on various feeds – implying that the hackers may have gained access to the email archive and be preparing to release it. If that happens, the effects could be titanic.

BT has introduced a controversial service that some say could allow broadband providers to create a “two-tier internet”.

Content Connect, as it is known, allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that use BT’s network to charge content firms for high-speed delivery of video.

It could spell the end of so-called “net neutrality”, where all traffic on the net is treated equally.

Critics say it will also reduce competition for consumers.

“This is a sea change in the way that content is delivered by ISPs,” Jim Killock of the net freedom campaign organisation, the Open Rights Group, told BBC News.

“It is essentially them saying: ‘Rather than delivering whatever content is on the internet as best we can, here are our services that we will deliver through our own network.’”

He said the result could be a “fundamental shift” from consumers choosing what video and gaming services they buy on the internet to “buying services from the internet to bundled services from ISPs”.

“This would reduce competition and take investment away from internet companies – that would be bad for everyone.”

In addition, net neutrality advocates says that allowing large content providers, such as YouTube, to pay for premium delivery could put smaller companies at a competitive disadvantage, reinforcing the gap.

But a spokesperson for BT denied that the offering would create a “two-tier internet”.

“BT supports the concept of net neutrality, but believes that service providers should also be free to strike commercial deals, should content owners want a higher quality or assured service delivery.”

It said that its new service would speed up download speeds across its network – even for those not buying into Content Connect – by easing congestion.

Network neutrality is one of the founding principles of the internet and is meant to ensure that all ISPs treat all web traffic equally – serving merely as a conduit for whatever data is passing from content providers to end users.

But debates have been raging around the world as the explosive growth in internet traffic – and particularly video – has put a strain on the existing infrastructure.

In the US, regulators recently voted in favour of rules that are designed to uphold the principles of network neutrality.

The EU has openly backed network neutrality, but has introduced regulation that allows network providers to manage traffic on their networks, provided what they are doing is transparent.

The UK regulator Ofcom is expected to clarify its stance later this year.

In the meantime, the UK government has already said that it backs a two-speed internet.

Culture minister Ed Vaizey said in November that ISPs had to be free to experiment with new charges to help pay for the expansion in internet services and infrastructure.

“This could include the evolution of a two-sided market, where consumers and content providers could choose to pay for differing levels of quality of service,” he said.

The new offering from BT seems to be the first major step in that direction.

The service, offered by BT’s wholesale division, is based on a new content distribution network built by BT that stores video content closer to the user, reducing congestion on the network and speeding up load times.

BT retail – a separate division of BT – will begin to use the service to deliver BBC iPlayer content on its BT Vision TV service within the next few months.

“It will cache iPlayer content closer to customers on the network, allowing for the content to be delivered to customers in a more efficient and cost-effective way, as well as improving the overall viewing experience,” a BT spokesperson told BBC News.

“The Content Connect service will also be available to all UK ISPs within the same timescales.”

The spokesperson said that BT would not throttle or discriminate against other video services on the network, but did not rule out that ISPs using the network could do so.

“The treatment of content on the network – such as prioritisation of content or bandwidth throttling – is strictly within the domain of the ISP and not the wholesale provider.”

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Intel has bought information security specialist McAfee in a surprise deal valued at $7.68bn.

The chip maker has offered $48 a share in cash for the anti-virus firm, a 62 per cent premium of McAfee’s Wednesday closing price of $29.93 a share. Shares in McAfee leapt 58 per cent on the news while Intel’s stock dipped.

Both boards of directors have approved the deal, which is still subject to McAfee shareholder approval and regulatory approval.

Intel said the deal signalled its decision to put security on par with energy-efficient performance and internet connectivity as a strategic focus area.

“Today’s security approach does not fully address the billions of new Internet-ready devices connecting, including mobile and wireless devices, TVs, cars, medical devices and ATM machines as well as the accompanying surge in cyber threats,” it said.

McAfee is a solid but unspectacular second behind Symantec in the security software market. It booked $2bn in revenues last year.

We have had quite a few customers this month asking if they should take advantage of the Blackberry Enterprise Server Express free download.

We are advising customers to stay with the BES internet service even if they have their own exchange server.

The reason for this is the BES internet service works really well and does pretty much everything most users want.

Reading the myriad of technology blogs and general it support related blurb every day certainly gives me a reasonable snapshot of what’s happening with the world of technology.

Today I discovered that over the last few weeks a lot of technology related companies seem to be doing something they haven’t done in a while – reporting good sales.

Citrix – a firm with a very eclectic taste for applications that make money (and doing it better than anyone else in my opinion) reported a 7 times increase on profit in the first quarter compared to last year.

AMD – Intel’s biggest none threat did ok, but reading their financial report for the first quarter isn’t as easy as looking at the bottom line. In fact it was difficult to understand how they calculated their profit but apparently they did make some.

Microsoft – the evil empire smashed it with their best quarter ever. Now, when you think how much this company makes that is pretty unbelievable and one in the eye for any anti-capitalist penguin t-shirt wearing linux types.

Google – the golden goose up a massive 23% on revenue which is amazing because they did actually grow in 2009 during the same quarter.

The spoils though have to go to Apple who maybe not surprisingly due to the release of the ipad made a staggering 94% increase in profit compared to the first quarter of 2009.

So in summery it’s not looking bad for 2010.

A recent Mcafee update causes the very popular antivirus to delete a core part of Windows (SVChost.exe) because it thinks the process is a virus.  In the computer world we call this a false positive.

Yesterday Smart Info Tech’s  IT support Chester office received calls from 3 separate clients who had been stricken with the fault.  We reacted quickly and managed to rectify their problems.  We have not heard any issues affecting IT Support services in Cheshire, Liverpool, Manchester or Leeds and we have taken the initiative and solved the update problem before it affects any other clients.

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From McAfee -

McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false positive error due to this release. Corporations who kept a feature called “Scan Processes on Enable” in McAfee VirusScan Enterprise disabled, as it is by default, were not affected.

Our initial investigation indicates that the error can result in moderate to significant issues on systems running Windows XP Service Pack 3.

The faulty update was quickly removed from all McAfee download servers, preventing any further impact on customers. We are not aware of significant impact on consumers.

It support North Wales – Smart Info Tech Ltd

Smart Info Tech Ltd – providing IT support North Wales for over 5 years are pleased to announce record numbers of new customers this last 6 months in North Wales.

Smart IT provide IT support Denbigh, IT support Wrexham, IT support Rhyl as well as IT outsourcing services.

“North Wales is becoming a second home to us” says technology guru Sean Connolly “i’m even thinking of buying a house in Holywell”.

To find out more about IT Support North Wales click the link or for Denbigh and Rhyl click the text.

For information about our IT support and IT Outsourcing Services click this link