Government certified security software: the French government's Hadopi wants to spy on everything on your computer, every time you log on, otherwise you cannot defend yourself against breach of copyright allegations.

The measures appear to be 'belt-and-braces' in that the software will be required to monitor all traffic through the Internet access as well as all files on the user's computer and the router configuration.

Sun's Zettabyte File System (ZFS) now has built-in deduplication, making it probably the most space-efficient file system there is.

The deduplication is done inline, with ZFS assuming it's running with a multi-threaded operating system and on a server with lots of processing power. A multi-core server, in other words.

The beauty of ZFS dedupe is that you don't need special storage arrays to deduplicate data. Ordinary arrays are quite acceptable, and its applicability at a data-set level means that you need only to deduplicate the datasets with redundant data and not the others.

China is coming under scrutiny as the possible source of malicious software and Internet attacks directed at foreign governments and other institutions.

Completed separately, both reports--"Tracking GhostNet," from the Munk Centre for International Studies in Toronto, and "The snooping dragon," from the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory--address the Chinese government's efforts to monitor the activities of the Dalai Lama and the governing of Tibet.

An electronic spy network, based mainly in China, has infiltrated computers from government offices around the world, Canadian researchers say.

They included computers belonging to foreign ministries and embassies and those linked with the Dalai Lama - Tibet's spiritual leader.

There is no conclusive evidence China's government was behind it, researchers say. Beijing also denied involvement.

A fired Fannie Mae contract employee allegedly placed a virus in the mortgage giant's software that could have shut the company down for at least a week and caused millions of dollars in damage, prosecutors say.

The virus was set to execute at 9 a.m. Jan. 31, first disabling Fannie Mae's computer monitoring system and then cutting all access to the company’s 4,000 servers, Nye wrote. Anyone trying to log in would receive a message saying "Server Graveyard."

From there, the virus would wipe out all Fannie Mae data, replacing it with zeros, Nye wrote. Finally, the virus would shut down the servers.