eWeek Newsbreak Jan 20 2010

Join eWEEK reporter Ashley Daley for a rundown of this weeks headlines. Google, Microsoft and other IT companies are donating their money and skill sets to help Haiti in the wake of a massive earthquake that devastated the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, on Jan. 12. Google collaborated with GeoEye to make satellite imagery of the earthquake’s aftermath available to users of Google Earth; Attack code targeting the Internet Explorer vulnerability used to hit Google and other companies has hit the Web. According to McAfee, researchers have seen references to the code—which exploits an unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer—on mailing lists and have confirmed that the code was published on at least one Website. The code was used to attack Google and others in a spate of cyber-attacks believed to have originated in China. The attacks have sparked controversy and prompted Google to threaten to pull out of China altogether. Officials at the U.S. State Department have stated they plan to get answers from China as to what happened in the coming days; A small amount of cocaine was discovered in a restricted shuttle hangar, outside a bathroom at NASA. NASA has since ordered a safety review of the Shuttle Discovery, which is scheduled to depart March, 18th, to check for any mistakes made to the spaceflight hardware. All of the nearly 200 persons who have access to the facility will be receiving a drug test as well; Google recently slashed $100 off the price of the phone for existing T-Mobile subscribers. The Nexus One will now cost all existing T-Mobile subscribers $279.