“Once, hackers were happy to develop a virus that would get onto user’s computers and either cause problems, or just announce their presence,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Jerusalem Post during a recent computer security seminar Symantec held in Israel. “Spyware was very generic before, and the hackers were happy to catch anyone in their snare. That’s changed, though; now the hackers are interested in you, and your information.”

Symantec, for those who don’t know, is the world’s largest computer security software publisher, best known for its Norton suite of anti-virus and security programs. Salem has been involved in Symantec in one capacity or another for nearly the past two decades, so if there’s anyone  on “our side” who knows how hackers think, it’s him.

And what he has to report doesn’t bode well. “Instead of putting a destructive virus on your computer, hackers are more likely to try and grab your data. Once, hackers were trying to get their wares on as many PCs as possible, but today they are more selective,” Salem says. “About 90% of attacks now are attempts to seek information, such as your credit card number, etc.” Instead of a destructive virus, hackers are more likely to send you something like a keytracker – a program that will keep track of all the keystrokes you enter into your computer. The program sends all your keystrokes back to the “mother ship,” where the hackers run analysis tools looking for the “golden number” – the string of digits that is your credit card.

Even if they don’t get your financial information, you’re still important to hackers; your name, address, and any other identifying information is worth money on the open market (at least $10 or $20, Salem says). Hackers snatch your identity and then sell them online to criminal syndicates, who then use your name to get their own credit card, courtesy of you. You, of course, know nothing of this, until the day you apply for a loan, and discover that you’ve been rejected because you owe tens of thousands to Visa or Mastercard.

Who would be dumb enough to fall for such scams? You, me, and everyone we know, says Salem. “The days of general, poorly written messages that look like a bad translation from some foreign language are over. Hackers seeking your data will send you messages that you are much more likely to respond to.” For example: Most of us are probably knowledgeable enough not to click on links that claim that our bank account has been suspended, even if we happen to have an account in that bank.

But what about this? A hacker reads that your company is up for merger with another company. Trolling their database, they search out all the names of people whom they’ve identified as working for your company, and send them a specific message that seems to concern the merger. You’d be likely to open a message like that and click on a link, Salem says. And many do.

As a result, says Salem, a new paradigm is needed to fight today’s good fight – and, he says, Symantec has the weapons you need. Until now, most anti-virus programs have checked programs and downloads for specific virus-y patterns in their code, or their signature. The problem with signature-based detection, says Salem, is that if an anti-virus program doesn’t have the hacked program’s signature, or cannot figure out the pattern in advance (a tactic known as heuristics), the bad code will get through. While that might have worked once – and still does, in many cases – the hackers have gotten sophisticated enough to beat traditional anti-virus programs.

Instead, the newest edition of Norton’s protection suite takes a different approach. Drawing on the “wisdom of crowds,” the program doesn’t look at signatures, but at reputations; any program used by many others that has proven to be reliable and bug-free makes it onto the list, and onto a computer protected by the product (known as Norton Internet Security). Safe applications exhibit common attributes, such as having a known origin, produced by known publishers. Conversely, new malware may have an unknown publisher, among other attributes. Using the data a “reputation score” is calculated and can be used to infer the likelihood of an unknown application being safe, or malicious. Users are invited to update the database, informing Symantec of whether the programs they’re running are righteous or rogue.

There are various versions of Norton Internet security, for consumers, small business, and large enterprise. But the bottom line, says Salem, is that Symantec knows security. While he acknowledges that there is plenty of competition out there – some of it in the form of free downloads – none come close to providing the protection Symantec can.  “We have the largest network of users, and anyone who works on the internet is going to want as much protection as possible these days. We see a third of the world’s e-mail in our filters, and we have over 2 million probes out there seeking out the bad guys.” It’s those odds, says Salem, that gives him confidence – or at least hope – that you, I, and all the other innocent “internet civilians” have a fighting chance of surviving our online experience intact.

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Note that I said “some” of the class-action suits. Nobody (except lawyers, of course) ever got rich off a class-action lawsuit – the class tends to be too big. But if you join a bunch of such lawsuits, you can get more than one piece of the pie. It’s like getting on the gravy train!

Class-action suits (in Israel, the concept is known as a teviah yitzugit) are generally complaints that a large group of people have in common – usually over a substandard product or service (http://tinyurl.com/2olctv). The idea behind such suits is, among other things, to make the legal process smoother and more efficient, as judges or juries only have to consider and decide on a single complaint.

Attorneys like them too, because, the thinking goes, the bigger the suit, the more of an impression it makes. In addition, the damages done to each individual plaintiff may not be enough of an incentive for a court case, meaning that defendants can continue to get away with whatever it is they are doing wrong. With a class-action case, complainants who feel ripped off are more likely to demand justice.

But not everyone is a fan of class-action suits; the settlements are usually very small and disproportionate (the settlement is spread out equally among those with greater and lesser claims of damage). On the other hand, a class-action suit is often the only way a lowly consumer is going to have a chance to get justice from a business giant like Microsoft.

But if you picked up a “Vista-ready” laptop or PC on a recent trip to the US, you may have a chance to recoup some of your money (and/or other restitution; I wouldn’t expect a check). The firm of Gordon Tilden Thomas & Cordell LLP is at your service, presenting a class-action suit against Microsoft for misrepresenting the capabilities of computers to run its new Vista operating system.

“Consumers paid for Vista capability (the computers were priced higher because of their Vista capability), but allegedly did not receive ‘real’ Vista capability,” reads a US District Court decision from several weeks ago, certifying the case as a class-action suit.

The computers, many of them low-end, were labeled as being “Vista-ready,” but customers found that they were incapable of taking advantage of many of the features of Vista, because their video cards were not able to use the Aero display, Media Center PC interface or Flip 3D window-switching. In addition, many of the peripherals that work with Windows XP won’t work with Vista, because drivers are not available or don’t work.

The lawsuit was first brought last year by a Washington State woman, but the law firm successfully argued that many consumers have similar complaints – opening the way for the suit to be certified as a class-action suit.

Apparently, the issue is one of either a misunderstanding between customers and Microsoft, or over-enthusiastic sales on the part of salespeople. Any new computer sold with Vista is capable of running Vista – in its basic version, that is. It would seem that many people got or were given the impression that even cheap computers were capable of running Vista Premium, with all its bells and whistles.

Should Microsoft have known better or been more careful in the way it presented Vista? That’s for the court to decide, but if you want to get in on the action, check out http://tinyurl.com/28rjuy to see if you qualify. It appears that Microsoft is going to have a hard time contending with this action; apparently Vista’s “dog” status was well known to Microsoft insiders (http://tinyurl.com/2tcnc9), who in a series of e-mails (released for the trial) apparently knew all about the problems with Vista – and went to market anyway, with what the plaintiffs contend was deceptive marketing.

If you were one of the early adopters who bought a Samsung Blu-ray DVD player, you’re in luck – you, too, can sue! Now that Toshiba’s HD-DVD has more or less thrown in the towel, with Sony’s Blu-ray standard the winner in the next-generation DVD format war, Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray DVD owners (other models have issues as well) have an extra reason to be hopping mad; their “victory” has been marred by the fact that their machines can’t play several popular movies (http://tinyurl.com/2ty4mt).

Samsung may just be the tip of the iceberg, industry insiders say, with the company likely to claim that it cannot be at fault, since standards for Blu-Ray were still in development when the machines in question were sold (June 2006). Purchasers of Blu-ray DVDs from other makers have also had their share of complaints, but this is the first certified class-action lawsuit against a Blu-ray DVD maker (other manufacturers in the industry have been sued over patent or other issues).

Because of the standards argument, and being that Samsung has issued several firmware updates to ensure full compatibility for players, the company has a better chance than Microsoft of surviving the consumer onslaught.

Then there’s the scam Network Solutions has apparently been running, according to yet another lawsuit. The company would automatically buy domain names that potential buyers searched for, and hold onto them for at least several days (http://tinyurl.com/ytu67u). Anyone who wanted to buy the names had to buy them from the company – for $35, instead of the eight bucks it would have cost you at a service like Godaddy.com.

Network Solutions has a story, of course, but a lawsuit is in the works, and may be granted class-action status as well.

If you’ve ever been a customer of Verizon Wireless in the US and had to pay an early termination fee to get out of your contract, you could get a piece of a whopping $1 billion that the company is being sued for in a class-action suit (http://tinyurl.com/2slx6u).

And if you own a Treo 600 or 650 PDA and have had to repair it two or more times, check out http://www.palzasettlement.com/ and file for a cash rebate ($50 or $75) in a recently settled case. It may not solve all your financial woes, but like I said, if you can get in on a bunch of these suits, you’ll be riding down Easy Street in no time!

Well, guess what else is responsible for 2% of air pollution: Your computer! Yes, you read that right: According to the Gartner computer industry analyst group, the total amount of electricity used to power PCs, servers, office telecommunication systems, printers, etc. – and the air conditioning units used to keep them from overheating – is the same as that consumed by big, bad jet airliners! And the problem is just getting worse: the amount of energy used in IT environments doubles every five years!

That unfortunate fact doesn’t sit well with Yisrael Katzir, HP’s national Israel technology solutions group presales manager – and he, along with the HP Israel presales team intends to do something about it. Actually, the efforts by Katzir and HP Israel to increase awareness of the negative energy implications of large scale “computer pollution” is just a part of Hewlett-Packard worldwide’s attempts to raise consciousness about reducing emissions resulting from computer use and support, Katzir says in an interview.

While “green computing,” the moniker given this new concern for IT systems’ impact on the environment, extends to all levels and aspects of the industry – from energy saving monitors to low consumption printers – the biggest and fastest energy saving yields come from working with large corporations with numerous server installations. There’s a lot that can be done on that front, says Katzir – cutting emissions for the environment by cutting energy use, and saving some hefty sums to boot, he says.

Howso? Well, Katzir says, there are a number of strategies – using efficient hardware, innovative software, and clever data management techniques – to reduce energy use in large server farms and IT installations. Sometimes it’s a matter of something as simple as repositioning the way servers are set up in a server room – called “best practices” in the HP green philosophy book – to enable more efficient server room cooling, reducing the amount of juice being drawn by the a/c. Other strategies consist of consolidation of servers in different parts of the building or city, utilizing the resources of a single room more efficiently (server racks in many companies are often half empty, HP studies have shown, so if a company is doing serious cooling in numerous half empty server rooms, it can easily and simply save power by consolidating its servers into one room). In fact, says Katzir, many of the actions that companies can take to save energy – and money – are easy, logical, and are likely to be implemented anyway.

Then there are the more active steps companies can take – steps and procedures that Katzir’s team helps companies around the country to implement. One strategy that saves not only energy but also outlay on hardware is server virtualization – running two or more servers on the same hardware, thus reducing the physical number of servers used by an organization and saving on the power required to run both systems. Between virtualization and its first cousin, consolidation – packing more data onto single machines – companies can reduce their IT department energy use by as much as 25%, Katzir says Remember, it’s not just about making do with less hardware – it’s about bringing everything together, preferably in a single location, thus reducing the area of the building that needs to be cooled. Then there are the blade server systems that, where modular components come together under a managed energy policy, another electricity saver even midsized businesses can take advantage of.

“Dynamic power throttling” is yet another innovative technology. Using this system, software determines whether or not max power is needed to run the currently active application. Applications that don’t require a lot of processing power, for example, would be run with less power coming into the server, as it may need only one of the several processors in the server. Why not turn them off when not in use?

And then there’s the “crown jewel” in HP’s stable of energy saving techniques – dynamic smart cooling. One of the biggest power drains in the server room is air conditioning; keeping the machines from melting down is one of the most challenging tasks for server system managers. With standard a/c systems, the cold air blows around the room, with some parts of the room cooler and some parts warmer – another enormously inefficient energy waster. The dynamic smart cooling system saves energy and money by regulating the flow of air inside a server room, ensuring a uniform temperature in all parts of the room.

While it’s very sporting of companies to care about the environment, you would think that, with all they have on the their plate, green computing would not be at the top of many corporate executives’ agendas. Wrong, says Katzir – the response to his team’s efforts in this area have been met with great interest among many mid and large sized companies, he says. “With the environment becoming such a major issue for governments around the world, companies have become much more aware of the problems of excessive energy consumption,” says Katzir. “Their stockholders demand it, and in many places, governments are going to begin demanding it as well.” In fact, he says, more and more requests for proposals for computing systems – especially for new facilities – include requiring provisions for green computing. It’s not just about energy, Katzir says – it’s about money, too, and during these days of mounting oil costs, that counts for a lot.

And HP practices what it preaches, Katzir says. The company aims to reduce its total energy use by at least a quarter within the next two years – and will consolidate what was once over 300 data centers into just three, with each providing all services and backup for each other. If the company is putting its money where its mouth is, there can be no doubt about it – green computing is here to stay.