Hamburg - Data on a computer is only worth encrypting if that data is actually secure. Unfortunately, some data encryption programs have significant security gaps, according to a study by the Hamburg-based magazine Computerbild.

The magazine tested eight encryption programs, including some freeware releases, in co-operation with experts from the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology.

Four programs received "inadequate" marks due to significant security problems. Those include Free CompuSec, Disc Enryptor, DriveCrypt and Desktop Home. Some of those programs store the password for accessing encrypted data in plain text, which would give thieves easy access.

Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh), Oct 18 : The countdown to the launch of Chandrayaan-1, India’s first unmanned moon mission to be launched on October 22, will start on Monday.

Satish Dhawan Space Centre Associate Director M Y S Prasad said, "The countdown will start on Monday early morning."

On Friday, the spacecraft was moved to the launch pad.

Prasad said that preparatory activities, including checking of various parameters in payloads, to start the countdown are going on.

London, October 18 : U. S. experts are urging cell phone users to exercise the same caution with their mobiles that they do to protect their computers from spam and virus attacks. 

The Georgia Institute of Technology Information Security Center (GTISC) says in its annual Emerging Cyber Threats Report that mobile devices can become targets for hi-tech criminals.

The report suggests that with the rise in the number of smartphone users, more applications will allow financial and payment infrastructure that employs them, and cyber-criminals will try to obtain such sensitive data.

Washington, October 18 : Researchers at the University of Delaware (UD) in the US have discovered that when the leaf of a plant is under attack by a pathogen, it can send out an S. O. S. to the roots for help, and the roots will respond by secreting an acid that brings beneficial bacteria to the rescue.

The finding quashes the misperception that plants are “sitting ducks” - at the mercy of passing pathogens - and sheds new light on a sophisticated signaling system inside plants that rivals the nervous system in humans and animals.

An extraordinary computer circuit that can build itself has been developed by a team of European physicists. This invention can be a step forward towards the creation of self assembling computers. The unique work of developing an integrated circuit is published in this week’s Nature1.

Presently, the computer chips are made by engraving patterns on semiconducting wafers with the help of a combination of light and photosensitive chemicals.

London, October 18 : A NASA satellite, scheduled to be launched on October 19, will study the outermost reaches of our solar system in unprecedented detail.

According to a report in New Scientist, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, satellite is scheduled to be launched from a site at the Kwajalein Atoll in the south Pacific on October 19.

It will operate for two years in high-Earth orbit.