NewsBits for February 6, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ US and UK arrests in computer worm probe Two UK men were arrested this morning following police raids in the UK and US aimed at dismantling an international hacker group believed to have created a virulent computer worm. Officers from the Durham Constabulary arrested a 19 year-old electrician and a 21 year-old unemployed man after seizing evidence related to computer and drugs offences during a raid on two addresses in County Durham this morning. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/29221.html http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1105-983672.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2130039,00.html http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/articles/tkworm.html - - - - - - - - - - Bloomberg extortion, hacking case opens in New York The trial of a Kazakhstan man accused of attempting to extort $200,000 from the founder of the Bloomberg financial news service began New York this week. Oleg Zezov, 29, allegedly hacked into Bloomberg's computer system, then emailed Bloomberg founder Michael Bloomberg threatening that the financial news service's reputation would be put at risk if he wasn't paid. The alleged threat was made in March 2000, prior to Bloomberg's election as New York's mayor. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/29218.html - - - - - - - - - - Florida man sentenced for counterfeit labels The United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California announced that Joseph Edwin Mitchell was sentenced yesterday to 46 months in prison for trafficking in counterfeit labels for copies of computer programs. The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge James Ware following a guilty plea to 10 counts in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2318. Mr. Mitchell, 45, of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, was indicted by a federal grand jury on January 9, 2002. http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/can/press/html/2003_02_04_mitchell.html - - - - - - - - - - Computer chief is cleared of importing child porn AN entrepreneur who created software to police the internet was cleared yesterday of smuggling indecent pictures of children into Britain. Stephen Whitelaw, 40, a Glasgow businessman, denied the charges after he was found in possession of a CD-Rom containing 16 images of child pornography during a routine check in April 2001 by Customs and Excise officers at Glasgow airport. http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/6-2-19103-0-33-54.html - - - - - - - - - - Houston man's Internet-sex conviction upheld Arkansas' Supreme Court today upheld the attempted rape and pandering convictions of a Houston man accused of traveling to North Little Rock to have sex with a person he met in an Internet chat room and thought was an 11-year-old girl. Bruce Jon Kirwan of Houston, who was sentenced to a total of 25 years in prison, said he was wrongly convicted because the girl didn't exist but was instead portrayed by a North Little Rock police officer, who also posed as the girl's mother. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1758137 - - - - - - - - - - Man Gets Longest Federal Child Porn Sentence A Leominster, Mass., man received the longest- ever federal child pornography-related prison sentence in Massachusetts Wednesday. Christopher Albert previously pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing more than 1,000 images of child pornography. A federal judge also found that Albert engaged in a pattern of activity involving the sexual abuse or exploitation of minors. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and five years of supervised release. During that release, Albert will be required to undergo intensive sex offender treatment. http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/1960464/detail.html - - - - - - - - - - R.C. man arrested in Net sex sting A 34-year-old Rancho Cucamonga man was arrested Wednesday afternoon after he came to a San Bernardino motel intending to have sexual relations with a 12-year-old girl, San Bernardino County sheriff's officials said. The 12-year-old didn't exist. "She" was actually a sheriff's detective who posed as a minor on the Internet as part of a sting operation that ensnared Christopher Joseph Menard, a manager with an office supply company, sheriff's officials said. http://www.dailybulletin.com/Stories/0,1413,203~21481~1161185,00.html - - - - - - - - - - David Malik pleads guilty in child pornography case A 20-year-old North Side man pleaded guilty in federal court Jan. 23 to child pornography charges. Malik faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. He pleaded guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography. According to information in the plea agreement, Malik downloaded digital images from the Internet onto a portable hard drive in October 2001. http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-story/localnews/current/ed/02-06-03-22243.html - - - - - - - - - - Mass. man sentenced in Internet case A Massachusetts man was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday following his December conviction on charges he incurred for participating in three months of sexually explicit messages over the Internet, culminating in an arranged meeting with a city officer posing as a 13-year-old girl. http://www.newbritainherald.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=6955617&BRD=1641&PAG=461 - - - - - - - - - - Ex-cop jailed for kid porn Former Honey Grove police officer Larry Phillips bailed out of the Fannin County Jail on a $100,000 bond after being arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. Chief Deputy Donnie Foster said the six-month-long FCSO investigation ended with Phillips released on bond Wednesday morning. Deputies arrested Phillips at his home. Porter said the pornography was not pictures that Phillips took with a camera, but was Internet pictures found on city computers when he worked there. http://66.220.130.210/cgi-bin/LiveIQue.acgi$rec=96886?news - - - - - - - - - - Internet sex predator gets jail, whipping An assistant engineer who used an Internet chatroom to find young girls to rape was sentenced to 23 years in a Singapore jail and the maximum 24 strokes of the cane, it was reported Wednesday. Raymond Pok, 26, posed as a heartbroken teenager and posted messages on Teen Channel, offering to pay any girl to be his temporary girlfriend, The Straits Times said. Three took up his offer. http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2003/2/6/technology/06sex&sec=technology - - - - - - - - - - Satellite Tracking Spurs Stalking Fears Connie Adams found it impossible to escape her ex-boyfriend. He would follow her as she drove to work or ran errands. He would inexplicably pull up next to her at stoplights and once tried to run her off the highway, authorities said. When he showed up at a bar she was visiting for the first time, on a date, Adams began to suspect Paul Seidler wasn't operating on instinct alone. He wasn't - Seidler had installed a satellite tracking device in Adams' car, according to police in Kenosha, Wis., 30 miles south of Milwaukee. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/5117276.htm http://www.msnbc.com/news/869470.asp http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/02/06/satellite.stalking.ap/index.html http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,57576,00.html http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-02-06-satellite-stalkers_x.htm http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/753099p-5448913c.html - - - - - - - - - - Slammer Update 'Slammer terror' story sent to the, er, slammer http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/29206.html 'Slammer' attacks may become way of life for Net http://news.com.com/2009-1001-983540.html Microsoft releases anti-Slammer tools http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-983603.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2129967,00.html MS Frets Not Over Slammer, Linux http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57567,00.html Microsoft may get 'Slammed' in Korea http://news.com.com/2100-1001-983578.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2130025,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Children Targeted by Online Predators An Internet chat room screen flickers with the message: What is a sweet, innocent girl like you doing in this den of perversion today?" It 's not a wisecrack. The perversion is real. San Jose police officers in the child exploitation detail pose as underage girls to monitor the chat rooms. Almost immediately after logging on, one officer recieves four instant messages. One reads: "Hi, just wondering if you were being a naughty girl today." http://www.kron4.com/global/story.asp?s=1116896 - - - - - - - - - - Cascading Failures Could Crash the Global Internet Could hackers ever shut down the entire Internet? Could terrorists ever cause a blackout so vast it would darken the entire continent? Yes, say scientists at Arizona State University. Cleverly targeted attacks on complex, real-world networks, such as the Internet and power grids, could lead to a virtual cascade of overload failures that would crash the entire system. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20686.html - - - - - - - - - - 'Erased' hard drives can bite you Imagine this chilling scenario: You buy a new PC and donate the old one to charity, knowing you've protected your privacy by deleting all your old files or better yet, reformatting the hard drive and wiping it clean. Yet you later discover you're a victim of identity theft: Your Social Security number, driver's license ID, credit card account information and tax records all were retrieved from the old hard drive. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-02-05-drive_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Europe plans cyber-security agency European Commission to set up centre of excellence for security information. The European Commission is set to announce Europe's first cyber-security agency. Proposals will be published on Monday for a European network and information security agency, which the Commission hopes will raise levels of IT security and act as a central exchange for information on security. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1138546 - - - - - - - - - - Bush Data-Mining Plan in Hot Seat Despite assurances by the Bush administration that the Total Information Awareness program would not violate Americans' civil liberties, a broad coalition of grassroots organizations called Wednesday for greater oversight of the experimental data-mining program. The Pentagon is developing the TIA in an effort to scour the Internet, as well as public and private databases, for suspicious patterns that might indicate a potential terrorist threat. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,57568,00.html - - - - - - - - - - If it's Thursday it must be IE patching day Microsoft yesterday released a cumulative patch for Internet Explorer with rolls up previous fixes with a couple of extra damage limitation measures. Dubbed critical by Redmond, the patch includes fixes for two newly discovered vulnerabilities involving IE's cross-domain security model. The first of these two flaws arises because incomplete security checking means a Web site can potentially access information from another domain through certain dialog boxes. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/29208.html http://www.vnunet.com/News/1138544 - - - - - - - - - - MSN deliberately breaks Opera's browser, claims company Opera Software has accused Microsoft of deliberately engineering the MSN home page in order to make it look as if the Opera browser has a serious flaw in it. And the Norwegian company has published the results of an investigation which it says proves this. Although Opera is convinced it has been deliberately targeted, it seems at least possible that the problem could be put down to some strangely coincidental finger trouble. But if that's the case, Opera has explained how simple it would be to fix it, and one therefore presumes Microsoft will give the matter its immediate attention. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29219.html - - - - - - - - - - SunScreen, Part Two: Policies, Rules, and NAT The first article in this series introduced SunScreen 3.2, which is available as part of the Solaris 9 distribution. SunScreen is Sun Microsystem's firewall product and provides a variety of features that allow system and network administrators to secure their networks as well as provide for remote access capabilities. This article will cover the some of the rudimentary facilities in SunScreen such as adding and removing rules, setting up a remote management station, and network address translation. http://online.securityfocus.com/infocus/1664 SunScreen, Part One: An Overview of the Sun Firewall http://online.securityfocus.com/infocus/1660 - - - - - - - - - - Daily Sport trials porn to mobile phone service Last year we took the mickey out of Unix guru Ray Anderson's new career selling computer games. Now however the shameless hussy mails us intimating he's selling dirty pictures as well. The usual stuff - porn the great enabler, mobile phone networks need to find ways to make money out of GPRS, people will pay for filth delivered to mobile phones, and we are merely the carrier/enabling mechanism, not the content. Nope, he didn't say any of that, he just sent us a link to the discussion thread. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/59/29216.html *********************************************************** Computer Forensics Training - Online. An intense, 150 hour, instructor lead program that teaches you computer forensics and helps prepare you for the Certified Computer Examiner exam. For more information see; www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu *********************************************************** 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. 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