September 25, 2002 China denies hacking Dalai Lama computer Responding to accusations that China's government tried to break into the Dalai Lama's computer network, a government spokeswoman said Wednesday that Beijing opposes all computer hacking. The spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry's press division said she had no details on the accusation by the computer manager for the Tibet Buddhist leader's government in exile in India. http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/09/25/dalailama.hacking.ap/index.html http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55382,00.html http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/549754p-4339602c.html - - - - - - - - Greece lets the games begin again Its game on again for Greek computer buffs who ad been banned by the government from playing electronic games. The government, in an effort to curtail illegal gaming, passed a law earlier this year banning the use of electronic games that included popular football and motor racing simulators. It arrested bar and arcade owners for illegally converting machines to pay out cash instead of bonus playing time. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-959365.html http://news.com.com/2100-1040-959365.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/812907.asp http://www.vnunet.com/News/1135368 http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27288.html - - - - - - - - Slapper worm takes on new forms The Slapper worm, which draws infected machines into a network that can be used to attack other omputers, has mutated into two new forms, and is proving surprisingly difficult to kill off, according to antivirus companies. Several virus vendors reported variants of the original Slapper.worm.A, called Slapper.worm.B, or "Cinik", and Slapper.worm.C, or "Unlock", appearing this week. The variants have slight differences to the original worm, but all use basically the same method of propagation. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-959385.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2122846,00.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/27290.html - - - - - - - - Lucent fires researcher for allegedly fabricating data Bell Labs, the renowned research arm of Lucent Technologies, has fired a star researcher after an independent review committee found the man falsified and fabricated experimental data. The committee determined that Jan Hendrik Schon made up or altered data on at least 16 occasions between 1998 and 2001, the first such fraud ever at the Nobel Prize-winning laboratory, Lucent said in a prepared statement released Wednesday. The committee cleared about 20 other researchers from Bell Labs and other institutions who worked on the research or helped write reports on it published in scientific journals. http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/550372p-4343192c.html - - - - - - - - China web author arrested A Chinese author who posted essays about politics on the Internet has been arrested on subversion charges, a police official said Wednesday. Chen Shaowen was detained in August in Lianyuan, a city in the central province of Hunan, after posting "a lot of reactionary articles and essays" online, said the official contacted by telephone in Lianyuan. He wouldn't give his name. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4149635.htm http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1105-959486.html http://news.com.com/2100-1023-959409.html http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55382,00.html http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55384,00.html - - - - - - - - Accusation that hackers used a pirate broadcast is `farfetched' China's accusations that a Taiwanese broadcast operation was used by Falun Gong to hack into China's top TV satellite systems seemed "farfetched," a Taiwanese official said Wednesday. Beijing on Tuesday alleged that the banned spiritual group used the pirate broadcast operation in northern Taiwan to replace regular TV programing in China with the meditation sect's images earlier this month. After an emergency meeting Wednesday morning, Taiwanese telecom official Lin Ching-chich told reporters, "This type of accusation is a bit farfetched." http://online.securityfocus.com/news/824 - - - - - - - - We WANT Uncle Sam to help defend cyberspace While almost half of all companies believe that individuals and corporations should defend their own part of cyberspace, many businesses want the government to take an active role in protecting the nation's vast information-systems infrastructure, according to a new survey conducted by CNET Networks. What's more, the survey found that a majority of companies think they are still unprepared to deal with major cybersecurity-related threats or disruptions. http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2881394,00.html - - - - - - - - Sharing called key to cyber plan The sharing information and responsibility is key to the success of the public/private partnership envisioned in the Bush administration's draft National Strategy to Secure Cyber Space, experts said Sept. 24. Security experts came together at a forum sponsored by the Cato Institute to share their views on how government and industry should share responsibility for securing the Internet, information technology products, and networks across the country and around the world. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0923/web-cato-09-25-02.asp - - - - - - - - Junked PCs Offer Data for Taking Who is Bob Knowles and why does he claim that "if the right terrorist got the right 10 or 15 or 20 (surplus) computers, this country could be bankrupt?" Among other things, Knowles is the founder and CEO of Technology Recycling. And he would much rather people pay him $37.50 per component to break their old PCs down to tin, glass and molten hard drives than have them sell the machines intact to someone else. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54986,00.html - - - - - - - - Spears, Madonna, other stars in TV ads on piracy Pop princess Britney Spears, the bubbly dancing spokesgirl for Pepsi, will soon be hawking again but on a more serious note in a commercial to warn people of the evils of online piracy. Spears, rapper Nelly, hip-hop diva Missy Elliott and other pop stars will be featured in coming weeks in TV spots funded by the world's biggest record labels to educate people about illegal downloading of music, which the music industry blames for a protracted sales slump. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4150932.htm http://news.com.com/2100-1023-959537.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2894-2002Sep25.html Study: Labels should turn to tech http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-959377.html - - - - - - - - Amazon to revamp privacy policy Online retail giant Amazon.com plans to revamp its privacy policy in an attempt to address concerns raised by customers, consumer advocates and state regulators. As part of its revision of the policy, which it plans to post "in the next few weeks," Amazon plans to clarify the circumstances under which it might sell or share customer information, the company said in a letter sent to state regulators Monday. The company also plans to list the companies with which it offers joint or co-branded services and to provide more information on the types of customer information it collects from other sources, the company said in its letter. http://news.com.com/2100-1017-959571.html - - - - - - - - FrontPage flaw puts servers in jeopardy Microsoft warned Web site administrators on Wednesday that a flaw in its FrontPage extensions could allow an attacker to take control of their servers or cause the computers to seize up. In its 53rd advisory for the year, the software giant said a vulnerability in the SmartHTML interpreter could be exploited to cause a denial-of-service attack on the Web server if the computer had FrontPage Server Extensions 2000 running. For FrontPage Server Extensions 2002, the flaw could result in the attacker running the code of their choice, essentially taking control of the server. http://news.com.com/2100-1001-959577.html - - - - - - - - Cisco enhances WLAN security As expected, Cisco Systems Inc. has beefed up security for its wireless LAN product line to help prevent hackers from hijacking a user's identity during an authentication session. Cisco today will start offering a free software patch that will allow users to add Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP) protection to existing 802.11b or WiFi wireless LAN systems. PEAP helps defeat intruders by making it hard for hackers to run a "man in the middle" attack during an authentication session. http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,74545,00.html - - - - - - - - 'T0rn' Arrest Alarms White Hats, Advocates A raid on the alleged author of a well-known hacker toolkit is raising eyebrows among electronic civil libertarians, and putting security researchers on guard. It could almost pass as a routine computer crime case -- a year-long probe leads Scotland Yard cybercops to a home in the upscale London suburb of Surbiton, where they seize computer equipment and arrest a 21-year-old man under the UK's 1990 Computer Misuse Act. http://online.securityfocus.com/news/813 - - - - - - - - Shredding the Paper Tiger of Cyberterrorism Political posturing about cyberterrorism is a red herring that takes attention away from the real issues of information security. Over the past several months weve seen a rise in the amount of media coverage devoted to the concept of cyberterrorism yet, despite the hype and hysteria, nobody can describe exactly what constitutes an act of cyberterrorism even though, according to a recent TechWeb article, college campuses in America are breeding grounds for such people. http://online.securityfocus.com/columnists/111 - - - - - - - - Remote Management of Win2K Servers: Three Secure Solutions It's a common scenario: your company has an IIS Web server sitting 300 miles away at a high- bandwith, air-conditioned and power-regulated co-location center. The network is stable and the price is right, but you must completely manage the server remotely; you can't just go sit down at the console whenever you want. Remote management presents several problems, the most obvious being that the traffic between you and the server is travelling across the public Internet, available for others to sniff. http://online.securityfocus.com/infocus/1629 - - - - - - - - Solving security's not mission impossible Federal and state officials are paying close attention to border control and airport safety, and rightly so. But we are overlooking one of the secrets to terrorist success:Driver's licenses are easily forged "source" documents that breed key documents like passports and visas. Consider that seven of the 9/11 terrorists had fake driver's licenses. Could we have averted disaster had they not been so easy to get? We don't want to ask such a question again. http://news.com.com/2010-1074-959259.htm - - - - - - - - FBI Unable to Connect 9/11 Dots The two leads arrived at FBI headquarters weeks apart in the summer of 2001. The first, from a Phoenix agent, warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists may be learning to fly at U.S. schools. The second described a suspicious student pilot in Minnesota named Zacarias Moussaoui. But the leads weren't put together until after terrorists crashed four hijacked airliners at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a rural Pennsylvania field. At a hearing Tuesday, lawmakers asked what would have happened if someone had linked the two earlier. Could the attacks have been prevented? http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55380,00.html *********************************************************** 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.