January 9, 2003 Man sought teen, police say The Colorado Springs man read the 13-year-old boy's profile online and shot him an e-mail. Is he really 13? And what was he looking for? The boy said he wanted a friend he could do stuff with. The man replied he was "an older guy that likes guys your age! " He said he wanted to perform oral sex on the boy, that he never tried it before. "Would you let me? " he asked the boy. The man, who said he was 28, actually was e-mailing undercover Colorado Springs police detective Rick Hunt, according to an arrest affidavit, a document signed by a judge authorities use to outline evidence supporting an arrest. http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=152530 - - - - - - - - Two men nabbed in Net teen sex sting Two area men face attempted assault and endangerment charges stemming from separate incidents in which each tried to use the Internet to arrange sex with minors, police said. Both men believed they were communicating online with underage teens, authorities said. In reality, they were dealing with detectives from the county Prosecutor's Office who posed as girls younger than 16. http://www.thedailyjournal.com/news/stories/20030109/localnews/735292.html - - - - - - - - Feds enlist hacker to foil piracy rings Federal prosecutors will tell a U.S. District Court in Tampa today of a plea deal with a man they call one of the most skillful pirates of DirecTV and EchoStar signals. The deal includes his agreement to help them crack several international computer-chip-hacking groups. Steven Woida has yet to be formally sentenced on his guilty plea to charges of conspiracy to steal satellite services, and the government will ask at a bond hearing that he be kept jailed for now. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-01-09-hackers_x.htm - - - - - - - - New variant of 1999 worm spotted Anti-virus software maker F-Secure has issued an advisory about the discovery of a new variant of ExploreZip, a worm which was first found in 1999. The variant has been named ExploreZip.E. This variant differs from the old in that it is compressed with the UPX file compressor. It has all the functionality of the original worm. The advisory said the original version (ExploreZip.A) spread all over the globe within days of initial discovery, becoming the first of the really widespread Internet worms. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/09/1041990034495.html - - - - - - - - The return of the celebrity virus A worm written in apparent tribute to Canadian singer/skater chick Avril Lavigne is spreading across the Net today. Avril-A (Lirva) is pretty much your bog standard Windows worm. It spreads mainly as an infectious attachment within emails and takes advantage of a year-old exploit in Outlook that permits its execution without a user double clicking on an infected attachment. The worm also tries to disable AV and security software. Oh and this is a Windows only virus - Mac and Linux users are, as usual, immune. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/28797.html http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-979992.html - - - - - - - - Web Site Warns eBay Users About Scams A New Jersey man has turned his own bad eBay experience into a Web site intended to steer others away from scams on the online auction site. Stephen Klink, a Paramus police officer who lives in Hillsdale, founded http://www.ebayersthatsuck.com after spending $60 on wireless-based speakers advertised as "brand new" by their Canadian seller. When the speakers arrived, the packaging looked ratty, the speakers dirty and the cord chewed, Klink told The Record of Bergen County. http://www.wnbc.com/technology/1879246/detail.html http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2002/12/30/daily34.html Read This Before Buying on eBay Teresa Smith discovered Internet auctions in a big way about two years ago, selling $800,000 worth of Macintosh computers through sites such as eBay and AuctionWorks. Like thousands of other small-time entrepreneurs, Smith found that online auction sites could expand her reach and connect her with customers from Hawaii to Switzerland. Soon she was hiring employees and tooling around Boston in a new Ford Mustang convertible. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,57153,00.html - - - - - - - - Bush To Name Tech Security Leaders The White House is planning to nominate a former intelligence agency chairman and a high-ranking Commerce Department official to shape the way information technology is used in the fight against terrorism, according to government and technology industry sources. The nominees will be key players in the new Department of Homeland Security and would be profoundly influential on a range of technology issues, including protecting the nation's online infrastructure, directing the development of new surveillance and defense technologies and preserving the privacy rights of ordinary citizens. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34171-2003Jan9.html - - - - - - - - White House tech officials race to build security system As the top information technology officials in the Bush administration are racing to build an integrated computer system for the new Homeland Security Department by Jan. 24, they face some obstacles, a top administration official said on Thursday. Lee Holcomb, the White House Office of Homeland Security's director of information infrastructure, told government tech executives that the administration is facing a huge challenge to integrate disparate databases and systems into one or two civilian and military networks. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0103/010903td1.htm - - - - - - - - A Plan to Stop Online Kiddie Porn Joan Irvine knows she's preaching to the choir, and she tells her audience as much. But she's talking to an unusual group -- pornographers who want to stop Internet kiddie porn. Granted, at the moment her audience is small. Irvine, the new executive director of Adult Sites Against Child Pornography, sits on a dais in Las Vegas before maybe 50 listeners. Only 15 minutes earlier the same hall at the Internext convention was jammed with entrepreneurs listening to another panel on how to make money off peer-to-peer piracy of adult online content. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,57136,00.html - - - - - - - - Virus companies fire back at naming accusations Anti-virus companies have defended themselves against accusations that the fragmented naming system for viruses causes confusion amongst computer users, and may leave them exposed to danger. The charges were made in a report published by e-mail services company MessageLabs, which claims that the recent release of three different strains of the Yaha in the space of 11 days, causing havoc with the naming conventions used by the anti-virus industry. http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/security/story/0,2000024985,20271080,00.htm - - - - - - - - Unions: Publish snooping code of practice Unions are calling for the code of practice on monitoring employees' email and Internet use to be published as a top priority. Union chiefs in the UK are today urging the new information commissioner to resist employer lobbying and publish the delayed code of practice on the monitoring of staff email and Internet use. The new information commissioner, Richard Thomas, took over the role in December, and this week laid out his plans for 2003. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) believes that publishing the final document governing 'snooping' in the workplace should be a top priority. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2128397,00.html - - - - - - - - TurboTax Anti-Piracy Code Spurs Backlash A new anti-piracy feature on Intuit Inc.'s popular TurboTax software has triggered a consumer backlash. Intuit says the criticism stems from misconceptions about the product activation code, which customers must obtain to use the tax preparation software. The activation code essentially ties the software to a single computer to prevent buyers from sharing. Customers can use TurboTax on other computers, but printing and electronic filing of tax returns must be done from the original computer. (LA Times article, free registration required) http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-rup9.2jan09,0,2230453.story - - - - - - - - Postal Service simplifying privacy The U.S. Postal Service has reorganized how it collects and shares information on customers and is working to make its privacy notices more clear. In keeping with the obligations of the Privacy Act of 1974, USPS has streamlined the collection of customer information by ensuring that each of its programs gathers the appropriate personal information, according to Zoe Strickland, USPS' chief privacy officer. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0106/web-priv-01-09-03.asp - - - - - - - - Members rally round Liberty Alliance ComputerWire logo More than half of Liberty Alliance Group members will implement version 1.1 of the organization's specifications for federated network identity within the next 12 months. That's according to a recent internal poll of Liberty's founder and sponsor-level members. Liberty said 59% either plan to implement the specifications, issued for public review in November, within the next year or have already implemented them. There are 41 founder and sponsor members of Liberty. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/28787.html - - - - - - - - Norway piracy case brings activists hope The acquittal of a teen who axed copyright protections on a DVD has activists hoping views toward code crackers are changing. Current views, they say, stifle rights and research Internet and technology activists are hoping the acquittal of Norwegian programmer Jon Johansen in a digital piracy case signals a change in attitudes about copyright in the digital age. The acquittal in Oslo, Norway, of 19-year-old Johansen, one of the creators of the DVD-cracking code known as DeCSS, is one of several recent setbacks for intellectual-property holders seeking to exert more control over the digital versions of their products. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2128390,00.html RealNetworks leaps into anti-piracy fray http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2128385,00.html Illegal DVD copies put Hollywood on offensive http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/2003/01/09/dvd_pirates.html - - - - - - - - Brit cracks Microsoft's e-book software Another piracy confrontation is on the cards as a programmer posts code that removes the copy protection from Microsoft Reader. A British programmer has released software online that is said to dismantle the anticopying technology in the Microsoft Reader e-book software, setting up another potential confrontation in the digital piracy wars. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2128396,00.html - - - - - - - - Xbox hackers get cracking again Game back on as Neo Project resumes. Reports of the death of the high-profile Neo Project Xbox digital rights cracking effort have been greatly exaggerated, it has emerged today. It had been widely reported that the attempt to break the encryption algorithm used in Microsoft's Xbox game console had been abandoned because of "legal reasons". But the distributed group of Neo code hackers has announced that the game is back on. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1137916 http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,108587,00.asp - - - - - - - - Microsoft adds security layers to ISA Server ComputerWire logo Microsoft Corp will start to foster use of two-factor user-authentication and application-layer firewall defenses with the Feature Pack 1 upgrade to its Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000 firewall and web-caching server, intended to strengthen security across Microsoft Exchange Server email and Internet Information Services (IIS) web server deployments. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/28790.html - - - - - - - - Strong authentication tool certified Secure Computing Corp.'s SafeWord PremierAccess solution recently became the first strong authentication tool certified by the Defense Information Systems Agency's Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) as interoperable with the Defense Department's public key infrastructure (PKI). http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0106/web-secure-01-09-03.asp - - - - - - - - The View From Symantec's Security Central An ordinary office building on Route 1 in Alexandria offers a rare window into the Internet hacker wars and a few clues to why Uncle Sam wants more monitoring capabilities in cyberspace. Inside a cavernous room on the first floor there, security analysts for Symantec sit in long, curved rows 24 hours a day, working on computers and facing a wall of theater-size screens. Information displayed on the screens helps them keep tabs on whether any attacks are underway at any of the company's more than 600 corporate clients. http://online.securityfocus.com/news/2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28625-2003Jan8.html - - - - - - - - Hotmail: A Spammer's Paradise? If so many spam offers weren't totally bogus, Hotmail users would be incredibly well-endowed, slim people with plenty of hair who make big money working at home when they aren't having great sex provoked by free porn and herbal Viagra. Many users of the free e-mail service offered by Microsoft's MSN.com say that within a day of creating a new Hotmail account the spam starts flowing in, almost as if spammers have sunk a tap directly into Hotmail's user database and are slurping up a free-flowing torrent of e-mail addresses. http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57132,00.html - - - - - - - - MoD 'spams' firms ahead of Iraq call-up If you've received an email from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) concerning the mobilisation of volunteer reserve forces ahead of any possible conflict in Iraq - don't panic. You're not alone. It seems the MoD sent out 100,000 of the blighters after enlisting the help of a company specialising in aggregating email lists. The emails - from the MoD-run organisation SaBRE (Supporting Britain's Reservists & Employees) - provide general information and advice about the call-up of military reservists. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28799.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 2000-2003, NewsBits.net, Campbell, CA.