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WORLD
JAL seeks to add fuel surcharge

Japan Airlines Corp., Asia's largest air carrier by sales, has sought government approval for a surcharge that it wants to impose on tickets starting Jan. 20 because of the rise in jet fuel prices.

The proposed surcharge will increase revenue by an estimated $9.65 million a month, spokesman Makoto Ando said in Tokyo yesterday. The airline submitted the plan to Japan's transport ministry yesterday.

Jet fuel prices in Singapore, which rose to a 14-year high of $63.95 per barrel on Oct. 14, were traded at $50.97 yesterday, according to pricing service Platts.

Japan Airlines proposes to impose a fuel surcharge of 500 yen on South Korean routes, according to a statement distributed through the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry. It plans a surcharge of as much as 1,800 yen a ticket on other Asian routes, and 2,500 yen on American and European routes, the company said.

NATION
Dollar sinks to low against euro

BERLIN » The U.S. dollar reached an all-time low yesterday against the euro, which hit $1.3548 in extremely light holiday trading with most European foreign exchange markets closed.

Analysts expect the euro to end the year at about the $1.35 level -- which the euro broke for the first time Thursday -- but with activity so thin, small trades can send the currencies careening because there aren't enough other trades to offset the effect.

The dollar was quoted at $1.3519 per euro in late trading in New York.

Beware wabbits and airsnarfs

SAN JOSE, Calif. » Phreaks, spoofers and spammers want to invade your home computer, and the tricks of their trade include airsnarfs, wabbits and fork bombs.

Here are some entries from IBM's "Version 1.0 Online Security Dictionary," an employee reference guide that's published only on Big Blue's internal Web site:

Airsnarf (noun): A rogue wireless device added to a network that steals usernames and passwords from people using public wireless hotspots.

List bomb (verb): Forging messages that cause the victim to unknowingly subscribe to mass mailing lists (such as a subscription to an online newsletter) in volumes that may crash their systems.

Phreaking (verb): Cracking into the telephone network, which has now evolved to include cracking into cell phones and computer communications networks.

Spit (noun): Spam sent over an Internet telephone connection.

Spim (noun): Spam sent over an instant message connection.

Spoofing (verb): Impersonating another host on a network; pretending to be a trusted host.

Wabbit (noun): Any hack that repeatedly replicates itself on a local computer

Fork bomb (noun): A species of "wabbit" that performs a denial of service on a computer system by creating a large number of processes very quickly and overloading the computer.