OVERWEIGHT men who pull their belts too tight could be increasing their risks of cancer. Oesophageal adenocarcinomas have increased 150 per cent in men since the 1970 s and gastric reflux is believed to be a significant factor. The head of the SA Cancer Control Research Centre, Associate Professor David Roder, said reflux of gastric juices into the oesophagus caused changes to the cellular lining. Pressure on the stomach was more common in men because they carried their excess weight across the abdomen. “Tight belts and trying to keep their bellies in — all that could be feeding in to this reflux o esophagitis,” Professor Roder said. have overwhelmed the Microsoft website as they race against time to protect their computers against a virulent worm sweeping the Internet.
So many people have tried to download a patch to protect against the worm that the website servers have struggled with demand. In an ironic twist, this has had the same effect as the denial of service attack the worm will launch against the Microsoft update site tomorrow. Up to 100, 000 Australian computers are believed to have been infected with the virus, which goes by the names of MSB last, Blaster, Poz a or Lov San. Vodafone, Monash University, RMIT, two major media organisations, and one federal and two state government departments are among the higher profile victims of the worm since it first appeared on Monday. Tens of thousands of Australian home computer users have also seen their computers crash or slow down after being infected. Yesterday, the worm continued to infect about 2500 computers an hour around the world.
Australia has the fourth worst rate of infection, behind the US, Britain and Canada. Australian Computer Emergency Response Team senior security analyst Jamie Gillespie said the delay in users downloading the patch to protect against the vulnerability in Windows could lead to it having a longer life. The worm does not erase files or create major damage, but duplicates itself to e-mail addresses in a user’s address book and can cause systems to crash or run slowly. The worm exploits a vulnerability in the way files are shared in Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP that Microsoft discovered on July 16. Computer Associates senior security consultant Daniel Katz said his company had received two thirds of their monthly calls in the past three days. Trend Micro managed services architect Andrew Gordon said the real number of infections would never be known because only a fraction would be reported.
“The largest victim sector will be the home-user market,” he said. “The home-user market is most significant as they usually struggle with keeping their anti-virus software up to date, let alone keeping Microsoft vulnerability patches up to date,” he said. Security experts fear other hackers will tamper with the worm’s code and unleash an even more disruptive worm. “Someone can get this worm, do a slight modification and make it more malicious,” Mr Gordon said. Tomorrow the worm will attack Microsoft’s Windows update website where computer users can download the protective patch..