HaX Factor: Cowell gets hacked

What would you do if you had the contact details of quarter of a million Americans who can't really sing as well as they think they can?

SyCo's servers have been hacked, and details of a quarter million US X Factor entrants have been copied.

The producers have sent out a warning email:

‘This week, we learned that computer hackers illegally accessed information you and others submitted to us to receive information about The X Factor auditions.

It is possible that the information you did provide to us, which included your name, email address, zip code, phone number (which was optional), date of birth, and gender, may have been accessed.

We are taking this matter very seriously and are working with federal law enforcement authorities to investigate this illegal action.

The X Factor will never ask you to email personal information such as financial data, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers or the user name or passwords you use to access other websites.

If you receive an email that appears to be from Fox.com or The X Factor asking for personal information, please delete it, as it did not come from us.’

Some contestants on Cowell's programmes have a tough time of it once they're on screen, with not very much care shown towards them. Who knew the twist for the X Factor's US launch would be you'd get poorly treated and exposed to christ-knows-what even before you audition?

Courtney Love has something to share

That noise? That's the internet spasming as Courtney Love checks into MySpace again:

regarding billy and the glow of my dearest friend Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband Chris Martin

I would like to start off with the whole Billy thing that was posted on Perez by apologizing to Billy Corgan, I had a shared computer that has been comprised, my AOL account and my daughter's account, i had to get rid of all my computers in the house, and the AOL accounts.

someone broke into my AOL account, and sent that letter to Perez although some of the writing was writing that I had wrote but never posted, However as the KR weasels people know that there is a :live site: that has a own ring tone that lets people know when I am online and when I am writing a email before i hit the send button. EVEN IF I DON"T SEND IT these people can steal it and then it twist my words around, I never write in all CAPS, you can read most my blogs on myspace, yes I have typos but it's because I type very fast, it does not make me a "TARD" Anyways,I did not send, half of it and I am apologize to Billy Corgan and to my daughter, this is a personal matter between Billy and my family. My Daughter's privacy is very important so I wanted to clear that up so I can tell you about this lovely adventure about my two good friends. Billy please give me a call, We love you and I am sorry, Marie can give you the number. Okay, here's a good story I want to share with all you guys: It's amazing Gwyneth Paltrow and her amazing husband Chris and I have reconnected. She has always been a very close friend of mine, regardless of what people's perception of Gwyneth, compassion is her middle name and I am not going to sit here and write a public love letter to GP but I do have a great story to share with you that leads to a great song! So people might think oh blah, GP and her husband, who cares right? But the fact is one night in New York at the Pig, we were all hanging out and having a ball. Chris told the most hilarious joke that had literally had me on the floor laughing so hard. Over the years Gwyneth has always invited me out to London and I have always procrastinated, I kept telling myself, Go out to London Courtney, Gwyneth is such a dear freind of mine, and you should not take friends for granted.I was like what if i come out to hang out with her and Chris Martin who is a genius and me being such the opposite of who they are, My "What if" worries started to kick in.

God forbid, I start talking about the financial stuff, I start going cuckoo bananas, not that any of it isn't the truth and then some.. Hell I might blow the sucks off truth but lets not go there!

You know I would like to patent the phrase" cuckoo bannanoos, thats hot stylee" as the Hamlet 2 film clip I saw contained the phrase Cukoo bananas, what if cuckoo cherry comes out and plays with Cukoo bananas WOW, anything can set her off, my alter ego cherry you guys should all know cherry by now! Imagine if someone brought up a plumbing bill...you would have to shut me up and perhaps drive my ass to the looney bin,I have heard these days Electro Shock Therepy the new black? Humm, I have had two friends that have had shock therepy in the last two months Ellen Burstyn Requeim style ...they say it helps but they are fucking nuts!!anyways, my anxiety is kicking in and I am terrifed i am not good enough for GP for their beautiful lovely home, and lovely lifestyle and lovely family, This woman could be in a terrycloth tracksuit, and she would look like a goddess!I cannot compete with the clothes that GP has even though I have the best damn wardrobe in Hollywood. From Fortuny in the box with the white winter belt and the spring belt to Porite' 1901-1910 to a Persimmon vionette to the punk rock dress which British Vogue called the best dress of the decade and there is there is only one AND IT'S MINE BITCHES!" evil cackle" , I also am in love with my fuck me oh so sexy hysteric jeans, once you put on a pair of Hysteric jeans, you will never take them off untill mine comes out.

It goes on and on and on and on in a similar vein. We think the key phrase, though, is that she had to "get rid of all the computers" because her AOL account was "compromised" - she does realise that it wasn't little men in the computers doing the compromising, doesn't she? And that her AOL account wasn't actually in the computers? Doesn't she?

Never mind being cuckoo bananas. If you think Chris Martin is a genius, you should be kept away from keyboards forever.

Sony caught installing rootkits again

You'd have thought after its record company dibision got into a lot of expensive trouble including a nasty piece of rootkit (software which installs itself and hides from the operating system) on its CDs, Sony might have learned its lesson.

Apparently not: it's started to include them on USB drives now, too. Oh, and is adopting the usual, blase attitude:

CNET reported that a Sony spokesperson said the fingerprint reader product is no longer for sale and no other versions of the MicroVault stick contain the rootkit.

So, erm, that's alright, then.

As James P points out when he sent us the link, it's probably the surest sign so far that Sony-BMG is taking the USB single format seriously....

Look out! Your mp3 files are being deleted

NME reports a worrying development in the world of malicious computer software, a virus that will eat your music files:

The worm - called W32. Deletemusic - goes through an infected user's hard drive deleting all the MP3s it finds.

It also looks for any MP3s on any external drives and memory cards attached to the machine.

The memory card can then spread the worm to any other computer it is put into.

Frightening stuff. After all, you haven't gone to all that trouble pinching music off the peer-to-peer networks ("ripping your CDs to your hard-drive") in order to have your efforts wiped out, have you?

Only thing is, this virus isn't really any different to the thousands of others out in the wild - so, providing your virus protection is up to date, you should be fine. Also, amongst all the panic, NME fails to mention the somewhat less-frightening aspects of the virus which the Register covered when it reported the virus over a week ago:

The worm is spreading, albeit modestly, causing a small number of infections. Anti-virus vendors such as Symantec rate it as a low to no-risk threat.

Malware capable of zapping MP3 files is rare but far from unprecedented. The Klez-F worm, for example, which was widespread in 2002, overwrote MP3 files (and other file types) on certain days of the month. The Scrambler worm was programmed to scramble MP3 files to sound like a scratched record while the Mylife-G worm overwrote MP3 files with the words "my lIfE".