October 18, 2002 Bogus Yahoo email picks up credit card numbers Yahoo Inc said Thursday that some of its customers had been tricked into giving their credit card numbers to an unaffiliated third party that had posed as Yahoo in a mass e-mail. Yahoo, which has a billing relationship with more than one million customers who pay for such services as expanded e-mail and online matchmaking, sent out its own mass e-mail Thursday morning advising customers not to respond to the bogus request. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4309655.htm http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/10/18/yahoo.fraud.reut/index.html - - - - - - - - Visa glitch delays trial for Russian software firm The trial date for a Russian software company accused of violating the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was pushed back Thursday after the company president and an employee were denied visas to come to the United States to testify. Trial for ElcomSoft Co. Ltd., set to begin Monday, is now scheduled to start Dec. 2 in federal court in San Jose, California, officials said. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4316545.htm http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4315087.htm http://online.securityfocus.com/news/1323 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2002-10-18-copyright-trial_x.htm - - - - - - - - Terror Turns Real for Horror Site Matt Rexer admits that he was hoping to raise a little hell on his website. But the sudden appearance this week of a message purporting to be from Osama bin Laden, head of the al-Qaida terrorist network, on Rexer's Clive Barker fan site truly spooked the horror film fan. Sweeney said the attack could have easily been performed by someone with no real technical kills using tools widely available online. Rexer said after he discovered bin Laden's message lurking on his website he quickly shut down access to the site, changed his password and informed his Web hostingcompany of the problem. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55848,00.html - - - - - - - - UK plc risks piracy fines over employee file-swapping Four in five UK companies have file swapping programmes in active use on their networks, leaving them at risk from fines as the recording industry cracking down on music piracy. According to Packeteer, the network traffic management firm, many firms are unaware that employee file swapping could land them in legal hot water. Packeteer wants firms to buy its software, root out MP3-swapping action, and then ban it. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27699.html Some truth about copyright http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27687.html - - - - - - - - Privacy Czar: Past Haunts Present A former Clinton administration official in charge of privacy issues warned Friday that the Bush administration risked setting the country back decades on privacy policy if it did not heed the lessons of the past. Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University, evoked the witch-hunt atmosphere of "anti-Communist excesses" to offer a sobering reminder of the dangers of repealing personal liberties in the name of the war on terrorism. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55900,00.html - - - - - - - - Spammers crack through Windows Spammers have co-opted an administration feature in Microsoft's Windows operating systems and are using it to bring up intrusive advertisements on Internet- connected computers. The feature, known as the messenger service, typically lets a network administrator send warnings to users when, for example, a server is scheduled to go down for maintenance. Now some advertisers are using it to send bulk messages to anyone connected to the Internet with an accessible address. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-962483.html - - - - - - - - Cisco Catalyst switches in DoS risk Cisco yesterday warned of a potential DoS risk affecting its popular line of Catalyst LAN switches. Catalyst switches running specific versions of Cisco CatOS software are vulnerable to a buffer overflow in an embedded HTTP server. In an advisory issued yesterday Cisco warns: "If the HTTP server is enabled a buffer overflow can be remotely exploited which will cause the switch to fail and reload. The vulnerability can be exploited repeatedly and result in a denial of service." http://online.securityfocus.com/news/1311 - - - - - - - - The end of passwords is nigh ... Company develops secure system for network authentication. A UK company claims it has developed a more secure system than passwords that is just as simple and cheap. Quizid says its technique uses unique codes instead of user names and passwords. Users have a credit card-sized device that generates a passcode each time they want to log in. The code is only valid for a short time and can only be used once. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1136118 - - - - - - - - Professor's Case: Unlock Crypto Daniel Bernstein seems intent on striking the deathblow to U.S. government regulations on cryptography. The latest chapter in his decade-long battle began to unfold on Friday, when lawyers representing both the Department of Commerce and Bernstein, a University of llinois associate professor of mathematics, statistics and computer science, prepared to ask federal district court judge Marilyn Hall Patel to grant a summary judgment. At stake: the last remnants of a system that once prevented U.S. citizens from releasing software code that creates secure, electronic communications. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55884,00.html - - - - - - - - Secure Linux desktop begins shipping to UK police force A pilot scheme which could see police forces throughout England and Wales switching to Linux desktops has kicked off with delivery of the first systems to the West Yorkshire force. The deployment is taking place under a contract awarded to netproject earlier this year by the UK Police IT Organisation, and if successful will cover over 60,000 desktops. In West Yorks alone the installed base is around 3,500, and a spokesman reckoned that the savings from this would be around PS1 million a year. http://online.securityfocus.com/news/1312 http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27692.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.