I was going to write about two great new technologies, the Asus Eee PC laptop, and the Excel Green PC Desktop computers, which are selling for around $500 AUD. Great cost effective computers, which are shaking up the market. That article will just have to wait.

I decided it was more important to get you up to speed on a major new security threat, that has become very wide spread, and growing.

Half a million websites have been compromised by script hacks in the last couple of weeks. Scripts are used in web pages to enable some fancy stuff, like drop down menus, short videos/animations, selection/login boxes, animated ads etc.

Hackers are focusing more and more on web browser security holes, to break into computers, as people visit websites.

This poses a serious threat to all operating systems, Windows, Apple and Linux. One of these script hack techniques can use your web browser to transfer a malicious script from one site to another.

As I said in a previous blog, pornography, software cracks, copy violated music sharing and movie sites etc are the most dangerous sites to visit.

Script hacks are now so widespread, it means any website you visit can be dangerous. The way to defend yourself against this sort of threat is to turn of all scripts. I mention this in another previous blog of mine.

Unfortunately, the use of scripts in web pages is now so wide spread, that if you turn off scripts, you will lose a lot web page functionality. Alternatively, you can use the the Mozilla Firefox web browser, downloadable from here, www.mozilla.com and install an ad-on called “NoScript”. This will effectively block all scripts in pages you visit.

You then use NoScript to choose which scripts you wish to allow. (One advantage of turning off scripts is that your internet browsing will be a lot faster, because your browser is not loading all that fancy web page stuff you're not interested in.)

Once Mozilla Firefox is downloaded and installed on your computer, and you are connected to the internet, click on the menu item “Tools”, and in the pop down box, click “Add Ons”.

When an “Add-On” box appears, click on the “Get Extension” link at the bottom right-hand corner of this box.

This will take you the extensions website, where you can find and install Firefox extensions. In the search box at the top right of this page, type in “NoScript” and click the “Search” button, then navigate to the page where the green “Install Now” button appears.

Click the install button and the NoScript extension will be installed.

Once it is installed, you will need to shut down and re-open the Firefox browser before NoScript will become active.

The first time you reopen Firefox, it will take you to the NoScript web site. Here you will get information on how to use it.

I suggest you look in the column down the right hand side of this page, and read the info on anti-CSRF and anti-XXS to get some idea on how dangerous these script hacks can be. You may not understand the technical detail, but you will get the idea.

From now on, as you visit websites, a yellow bar will appear at the bottom of the Firefox web browser window, showing how many scripts are blocked, plus an “Options” button on the far right.

Clicking the Options button will allow you to choose which scripts are allowed for that site.

You will need to make executive decisions on whether to allow scripts for a particular site or not.

Unless scripts are allowed on some sites, you will not be allowed to log in, or see the drop down menu to navigate the site. Simply leave all scripts off, unless you really need a feature, and feel the site is safe.

There is a system I have developed which can bypass all this virus, spyware, rootkit and script checking, and make using the internet a lot safer, but this will have to wait until my next blog.