December 16, 2002 Prestige Spreads E-Mail Bug Sunken Oil Tanker Near Spain Could Muck Up the Net. The threat of massive ecological damage has given the sunken Prestige oil tanker worldwide media coverage. Now, a virus writer hoping to capitalize on the ship's sinking has created a worm distributed via an attachment that promises pictures of the ship. An advisory about the worm issued by security firm Panda Software explains. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/TechTV/techtv_prestigevirus021216.html - - - - - - - Apple sues PowerMac Web leaker It seems that a commercially challenged individual got caught posting some of Apple's secrets on the web and now the company is suing. Surely there's no surprise in that and we wouldn't really care if it wasn't for the fact that Apple does have a history of accidentally leaking its own information. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28584.html - - - - - - - Jury scrutinises DMCA in ElcomSoft case The jury are continuing their deliberations today in the closely watched criminal prosecution of Russian software firm ElcomSoft for offences against the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The jury retired on Thursday following six days in a San Jose federal court during which they heard testimony from Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian programmer at the centre of the case, as well as ElcomSoft managing director Vladimir Katalov and other witnesses. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28587.html - - - - - - - "DVD Jon" DeCSS hacking trial ends The landmark trial of a Norwegian teenager over Hollywood charges of DVD piracy ended Monday with prosecutors urging a suspended 90-day jail term. Jon Johansen, known in Norway as "DVD Jon," is charged with having unlocked a copyright-protection code and distributed a computer program enabling unauthorized copying of DVD movies, angering U.S. movie studios who fear mass piracy and loss of revenue. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-978009.html http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56881,00.html http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978009.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/848173.asp Prosecutors seek Norwegian teen's computers (Nando Times article, free registration required) http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/677158p-5047634c.html - - - - - - - AOL awarded almost $7 million in spam case A U.S. court has granted Internet giant America Online almost $7 million in damages from a company that the Internet giant said sent its users nearly 1 billion unwanted e-mails touting adult web sites, AOL said Monday. The ruling is America Online's second win over CN Productions and its largest reward to date in an anti-spam case, an AOL spokesman said. The unsolicited mass messages known as spam are one of the biggest annoyances for e-mail users. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4752890.htm http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-978019.html - - - - - - - U.S. court says no to Web libel lawsuit Less than a week after Australia's high court issued a ruling suggesting that online publishers are fair game for libel suits anywhere their content appears, a U.S. federal court has veered in the opposite direction. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said two Connecticut newspapers could not be sued for libel in a Virginia court on the basis of allegedly defamatory articles posted on their Web sites. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978069.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/848332.asp? - - - - - - - Feds invoked national security to speed key Internet change The Bush administration sped approval for moving one of the Internet's 13 traffic- management computers after a prominent technology company urged the government to ``declare some kind of national security threat and blow past the process,'' according to federal officials' e-mails. The correspondence provides a window into how U.S. corporations invoke national security to expedite business requests. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4750152.htm http://online.securityfocus.com/news/1827 - - - - - - - RIAA Goes After the Little Guy An antipiracy campaign by the recording industry is threatening lawsuits to try to force stores to pull pirated music from their shelves. The Recording Industry Association of America said Monday it is demanding a halt to illegal music sales at gas stations, convenience stores, groceries and some small music stores that the group has identified as offering illegal copies of music recordings. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56884,00.html - - - - - - - Missing RIAA figures shoot down "piracy" canard Research by George Zieman gives the true reason for falling CD sales: the major labels have slashed production by 25 per cent in the past two years, he argues. After keeping the figure rather quiet for two years, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says the industry released around 27,000 titles in 2001, down from a peak of 38,900 in 1999. Since year-on-year unit sales have dropped a mere 10.3 per cent, it's clear that demand has held up extremely well: despite higher prices, consumers retain the CD buying habit. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28588.html - - - - - - - RIAA in a spin over CD copying bust "Perhaps the truth is less interesting than the facts?" asked Amy Weiss, the RIAA's Senior Vice President of Communications recently in this email to The Register. It's a question which has baffled many of our readers, and us too. Perhaps it's a kind of Zen koan, which needs to be repeated many times before making sense. If so, we can't report any success. But the RIAA seems to be having a few problems with the facts itself. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28574.html - - - - - - - Gilmore Commission raps cybersecurity policy The Gilmore Commission has strongly criticized the administrations cybersecurity policy and called for a merger of cyber- and physical security policy work in the White House. The commissions fourth report, released in full today, repeated the recommendation of its third report a year ago: to establish an independent commission on cybersecurity. We have concluded that the physical and cyber elements of [critical infrastructure protection] are so intertwined that it makes no sense to address them separately, according to the fourth report. http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/20702-1.html - - - - - - - Home user insecurity spurs email virus growth in 2002 The ratio of viruses to legitimate emails has increased over the course of this year. According to a review of 2002 by managed services firm MessageLabs, the ratio of viruses to clean emails is now one in 202, compared to one every 380 emails last year. During 2000, only one in every 790 emails were viral. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/28585.html http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-977935.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2127580,00.html http://news.com.com/2100-1001-977945.html - - - - - - - Nigerian Net Scam, Version 3.0 All those beleaguered widows, complaining chief's sons and yowling high-ranking government officials don't want your assistance in getting a large sum of money out of Nigeria anymore. Now they want to buy your stuff. Yes, there's a new twist in Nigeria's thriving Internet-based scam operations. This time, the scammers pose as potential buyers for big-ticket items, like cars, listed for sale online. The buyer explains that a business associate in the United States will mail the seller a cashier's check for the amount of the item plus the cost to transport it overseas. The seller is asked to wire the transportation fees to the buyer once the check has cleared so the buyer can arrange for shipment. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56829,00.html - - - - - - - Filters, Laws Won't Clean Up Net Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame tells the 15th-century saga of the pitiful yet courageous hunchbacked bell ringer Quasimodo. The story also tells of entrenched powers -- the church that viewed the printing press as a threat to social order. "The book will destroy the edifice!" declared the archdeacon in the novel. Many of today's leaders are still terrified at the prospect of unbridled public communications among the unwashed masses. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56855,00.html - - - - - - - Spam hasn't soured most U.S. workers on e-mail Unwanted e-mail is choking the Internet and harming the productivity of Web users. Or is it? While a number of activists and industry leaders are complaining about spam - messages that seek to lure users to Web sites with promises of anything from virus protection to penis enlargement - some recent research suggests the problem is not that big. (Nando Times article, free registration required) http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/673610p-5027188c.html - - - - - - - IDC predicts strong security app sales Market forecasts made by researchers with International Data Corp suggest that integrated hardware appliances will next year become the primary purchase target for enterprises buying security software. The firewall/virtual private network (VPN) security appliance market maintained a healthy growth rate of 34% from 2000 to 2001 and exceeded the $1bn mark in vendor revenue, the market researchers report. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/28576.html - - - - - - - Microsoft beefs up security on .Net Microsoft on Monday released software tools that it claims will allow developers to create more secure and reliable Web services. The software maker debuted Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 1.0, a package of add-ons to its .Net software that adhere to the latest standards on security, message routing and transmitting file attachments via Web services. Developers can download the software for free and work with it in conjunction with Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net development tool bundle. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-977989.html Microsoft flaws go from bad to verse http://www.vnunet.com/News/1137611 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20251.html - - - - - - - New software may restore erased photos Digital cameras have added new capabilities for photographers, but also new ways to mess up. Press the wrong button and the camera will happily erase the prize-winning image you had captured a moment earlier. Which is why some software from Lexar Media is worth a look. Called Image Rescue, it tries to restore erased JPEG, TIFF and RAW formatted photos from Lexar's USB-Enabled CompactFlash cards. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4750912.htm - - - - - - - New software aims to stop fraud The latest tools from Hyperion are designed to flag up unusual bookkeeping practices to avoid the kind of scandals that rocked Wall Street this year. Accounting software makers are trying to capitalise on a string of high profile scandals by developing computer programs that flag unusual bookkeeping and launch investigations with little human intervention. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2127568,00.html - - - - - - - Can new technology protect our privacy? Why is everyone so surprised that the U.S. government wants to create a Total Information Awareness database with details about everything you do? This is an unsurprising result of having so much information about our lives archived on the computers of our credit card companies, our banks, our health insurance companies and government agencies. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-977946.html http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/1216/web-tia-12-16-02.asp - - - - - - - Web rights break into prisons Prisoner rights groups are cheering a federal court ruling that quashes attempts to halt Web postings that mention prisoners. U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll on Monday put a temporary halt to an Arizona state law that banned prisoners from posting information about their cases on the Web or corresponding using a remote computer service or communication service provider. Under the law, prisoners who kept their information on the Web were subject to penalties including criminal prosecution. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978074.html - - - - - - - Government sees intelligence gains from growth in private satellites On the south end of the tarmac at a British air base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, two portable maintenance shelters for B-2 stealth bombers sit like high-tech cocoons, erected by the U.S. Air Force in anticipation of the possibility of war with Iraq. Although no U.S. reporters have been allowed on the base for more than a year, a think tank in Alexandria, Va., posted a commercial satellite photograph of the shelters on its Web site last week, confirming that they were in place and raising a host of national security issues about the privatization of spy satellite images. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4749718.htm Satellite reconnaissance is getting itself noticed http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2002-12-16-satellites_x.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. 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