April 23, 2002 Police arrest 25 members of child porn ring Police have arrested 25 members of a Net child porn ring in 10 countries. The haul includes proven real-life abusers as well as traffickers of pornography, which is very unusual, according to the Danish police who led the investigation. Thirty five children have also been identified, all of whom had been sexually abused. The case kicked off last November, when Danish police arrested a couple, after a tip-off from Swedish police who had found pictures of a man raping an 11-year old girl posted on a Web site. The man was wearing a shirt with the logo of a Danish company. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/24986.html - - - - - - - - Rumbled Russian hackers banged up Five-year sentences for $1m ATM fraudsters The ringleaders of a Russian hacker group that misappropriated almost $1m from foreign bank accounts have been put behind bars. Russian newspaper Kommersant reported yesterday that Zviadi Beria and Vladimir Medvedov had been sentenced to five years in prison. Between 1999 and 2000 the duo, along with a number of other hackers, fraudulently manipulated ATM machines around Moscow and stole almost $1m from foreign accounts. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1131176 http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/373274p-3003779c.html - - - - - - - - Norwegian jailed for Web racism A Norwegian extremist has been jailed for posting racist and anti-Semitic propaganda via a server based in the United States. It is the first time anyone in Norway has been jailed for racist Web postings and campaigners say there could be repercussions beyond Norway's borders. Tore Tvedt, 59, was sentenced to 75 days in jail with 45 days suspended and two years probation after being convicted on anti-racism charges. http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/04/23/norway.web/index.html - - - - - - - - Porn star debuts vicious virus 'Jenna Jameson' worm sucks, say experts. A "highly aggressive" virus using the name of a well known porn star to aid infection has been spotted in the wild. Antivirus firms have warned that the 'Jenna Jameson' virus has a "large potential for spreading" because it tricks users into executing the code by tempting them with links to free pics of the porn star doing the nasty. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1131174 - - - - - - - - Over 4,500 Domains Point Users To Webcam Porn Site Ben Edelman just wanted to find a good bicycle repair shop nearby. Instead, he stumbled onto one of the biggest schemes on the Internet for generating traffic to pornography sites. According to Edelman, a senior at Harvard College, 4,525 Internet domains currently funnel unsuspecting visitors to an adult entertainment site called Tina's Free Live Webcam. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176060.html - - - - - - - - Vermont Child-Porn Monitoring Law Struck Down Free-speech advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have convinced a federal judge to hobble a Vermont law that prohibits the online transmission to children of certain sexually oriented images and text. U.S. District Court Judge Garvan Murtha, in a ruling last week from Brattleboro, Vt., agreed with the ACLU and groups that included the publishers of sex-education Web site SexualHealth.com, that the year-old Vermont law trampled on First Amendment rights with a broad definition of nudity and sexually explicit material summed up as "harmful to children." http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176086.html - - - - - - - - Start-up defends DVD-copying software In a pre-emptive strike to stave off the wrath of the movie industry, a small software company is asking a federal judge for permission to sell and market its product for copying DVDs. In a complaint filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, 321 Studios asked the court to declare that its DVD Copy Plus program does not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "This lawsuit involves the ability of a small Internet company to market and sell an instruction manual and bundled computer software that teaches legal owners of DVD movies to make legitimate backup copies of the contents of a DVD for their own personal use," the suit states. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-889915.html http://news.com.com/2100-1023-889455.html http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176080.html - - - - - - - - Europe plans to jail hackers The European Commission has unveiled new proposals that could send Internet hackers and spreaders of computer viruses to jail for years. Industry and security experts welcomed the proposals, but said more needed to be done to get companies, cautious of bad publicity, to report Internet attacks and to boost law enforcement resources in the fight against cybercrime. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-889332.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2108982,00.html - - - - - - - - Law officials say job will be more difficult The Virginia Attorney General and area police say the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a federal ban on "virtual child pornography" will make their jobs much harder, but so far there is little evidence that computer-generated kiddie porn is a widespread problem in the state. "This throws an awesome burden on the prosecution," said Jerry Kilgore at a gathering of about 50 law officers at Liberty University. Kilgore joined U.S. Attorney John Brownlee, Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown and members of Operation Blue Ridge Thunder and other law enforcement agencies Monday for the strategy session. http://www.newsadvance.com/MGB9LL96D0D.html - - - - - - - - Brute force card thieves attack Hackers just dial through account numbers until they find one. You might call it the least creative way to steal credit card numbers but it works, and its costing merchants thousands of dollars. In the past several weeks, computer criminals have taken to running thousands of nickel and dime charges through merchant accounts, picking credit cards numbers at random. Most are declined. But the few that are authorized mean the criminal has struck gold. http://www.msnbc.com/news/742677.asp - - - - - - - - Ignorance of IT laws threatens UK firms Companies in the UK lack policies to deal with many IT-related laws, leaving themselves, their employees and their customers at risk. Less than a quarter of UK companies have policies in place to ensure compliance with key parts of the Human Rights Act that directly affect them, and less than half have documented procedures to ensure compliance with the Data Protection Act. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2108977,00.html - - - - - - - - Computer Forensics Lab Teaches High-Tech Sleuthing Methods 'Just because something is deleted from a hard drive doesn't mean that it's gone. It just means that the pointer to it is gone,' assistant professor David Dampier told NewsFactor. 'The first thing you want to do is freeze the system, so no one has the opportunity to attempt to destroy evidence.' At Mississippi State University (MSU), college students will be learning to investigate crime using advanced computer forensic techniques. MSU faculty members recently equipped a lab designed to teach students to track the activities of computer-based criminals -- such as hackers, embezzlers and child pornographers. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17398.html - - - - - - - - IE 6 Privacy Features Open Users To Attack Security flaws in privacy features added to Microsoft's Web browser could enable attackers to perform several privacy-robbing attacks, including hijacking victims' MSN Messenger accounts, a security researcher warned. According to Thor Larholm, a developer with Denmark-based Internet portal Jubii.dk, "severe" bugs in the "Privacy Report" feature in Internet Explorer version 6 can be exploited "in effect removing all privacy." http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176077.html - - - - - - - - Anti-Spyware Program Targeted By Multimedia Player Calling the tactic "malware at its worst," Lavasoft said its privacy software is being silently deleted when users install a third-party multimedia player. Newsbytes has confirmed that installing RadLight version 3.03 deletes Lavasoft's Ad-Aware program, as promised in a warning in the software's 1,100- word license agreement. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176075.html - - - - - - - - Musician to Napster judge: Let my music go A 1960s-era recording artist says he can't get Sony to pay royalties, so his psychedelic pop might as well be free. Joseph Byrd recorded a pair of experimental psychedelic albums for Columbia Records in the late 1960s. Since then, he says he's earned a few thousand dollars in composer's fees but hasn't received a single penny in artist's royalties. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/04/23/copyright/index.html Kazaa steps out of the shadows http://news.com.com/2100-1023-890197.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/742287.asp - - - - - - - - Nokia Unveils New Security Appliances Nokia, a prominent manufacturer of security appliances, on Monday introduced new products addressing the security needs of small or home offices and an enterprise/service provider system. The company introduced the Nokia IP30 Firewall and Nokia IP30 Tele, a desktop security system for small offices and telecommuters. http://www.internetwk.com/story/INW20020422S0002 - - - - - - - - The Devil Is in the E-Mail Once, brokerages could bury prosecutors in mountains of irrelevant paper. Now, as Merrill Lynch is learning, e-dirt is much easier to dig. In computer-security circles, Wall Street is considered a premier customer. Each major brokerage and investment-banking house spends huge sums to ensure that no one, but no one, breaks into its computer systems. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2002/tc20020423_1104.htm - - - - - - - - Your worst security threat: Employees? More than a third of the worst computer system security breaches at U.K. companies are from employees, according to government-backed research released on Tuesday. The Information Security Breaches Survey 2002 found that in small companies, 32 percent of the worst incidents were caused by insiders, but in large companies this figure climbed to 48 percent. he survey was sponsored by the U.K. government's Department of Trade and Industry and prepared by consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-889542.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2108940,00.html - - - - - - - - How "smart" is your ID card? Allies of "smart cards"--credit card or ID cards with small computer processors--are improving the technology in hopes of hastening its broader use. Smart cards offer advantages such as better security to identify their carriers and incentives to keep customers coming back to the same store, but getting consumers and companies to switch to the new technology has been an uphill struggle. Tuesday at the CardTech/SecurTech conference in New Orleans, advocates announced a host of improvements. http://news.com.com/2100-1001-890129.html - - - - - - - - National laboratories accelerate counterterrorism efforts The military's spectrum pitch: 'Our calls must go through' The military will need more spectrum to complete its transformation to a network- centric organization and to keep the nation safe from attack, officials from all branches of the military told a House panel on Tuesday. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0402/042302td1.htm - - - - - - - - Coast Guard official warns of gaps in information systems The Coast Guard must bridge "significant gaps" in its information and communications capabilities in order to fight terrorism abroad, protect maritime commerce and prevent high-risk cargo from entering U.S. ports, a top Coast Guard information official said Monday. "We have a significant challenge in building information systems that support our operational assets ... so that these people can make decisions right on the spot," Chief Knowledge Officer Nathaniel Heiner said during a "knowledge management" conference sponsored by E-Gov. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0402/042302td2.htm - - - - - - - - Technology industry must innovate in fight against terrorists, Ridge says. The technology industry must invent and invest in new ways to undermine terrorists targeting the United States, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Tuesday night. And the country's leading high-tech firms must also make sure they are watching their own backs, Ridge told members of the Electronic Industries Alliance attending a conference at a Washington hotel. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/3124954.htm - - - - - - - - Maryland posts info about sex offenders on the Web Marylands Public Safety and Correctional Services Department yesterday officially launched its first Internet sex offender registry. The site lists the names, addresses, photos and offenses of 2,282 people convicted of sex crimes in the state, said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., the departments director of public information. The list includes anyone who committed a sex offense, dating back to October 1995. http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/18438-1.html http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176073.html - - - - - - - - FCC approves plan for sharing satellite airwaves The Federal Communications Commission said Tuesday it has approved a plan that would let companies share spectrum used by satellite television services as long as it does not create interference. The agency plans to auction off the spectrum that could be used by bidders for a variety of services, including pay television, similar to those offered by EchoStar Communications Corp., as well as high- speed Internet access. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/3123949.htm http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/04/23/defense-airwaves.htm *********************************************************** Search the NewsBits.net Archive at: http://www.newsbits.net/search.html *********************************************************** The source material may be copyrighted and all rights are retained by the original author/publisher. The information is provided to you for non-profit research and educational purposes. Reproduction of this text is encouraged; however copies may not be sold, and NewsBits (www.newsbits.net) should be cited as the source of the information. Copyright 2000-2002, NewsBits.net, Campbell, CA.