NewsBits for April 28, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ Copyright Battle Now Turns to Other Fronts A judge's ruling may force the industry to widen its strategy against online pirates. In their wide-ranging fight against online piracy, the music and movie industries have relied on a combination of carrots and sticks. But on Friday, a federal ruling threatened to take away one of their sticks. And so far, fans have mostly turned up their noses at the carrots. http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-swapside26apr26,1,1613174.story Music, Movie Companies Rebuffed in File-Sharing Suit http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-swap26apr26003432,1,4420664.story http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-04-28-kazaa-battle_x.htm Will file traders be the next target? http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-998419.html http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-04-27-swap-crackdown_x.htm Kazaa applauds P2P ruling--heads back to court http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1104-998577.html Colleges aggressively cracking down on downloads of music http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-04-27-download_x.htm Can the DMCA be Fixed? http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/view.html?pg=3 Legal Blip in Digital Piracy Fight? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47853-2003Apr28.html - - - - - - - - - - Child Porn Case Raises Free-Speech Issues A lawyer for a Lebanon man charged with possessing child pornography says he may use a free-speech defense. Louis Joseph Longo is accused of using a computer to put photos of a child's face onto adult bodies. Though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that computer simulations of children having sex are protected as free speech, some have argued that it's unclear where the law stands on pornography created by altering innocent pictures of real children. http://www.thewmurchannel.com/news/2162525/detail.html - - - - - - - - - - Internet predator gets 10-to-20 years A college student accused of preying on girls and women he met online drew a maximum sentence of 10-to-20 years in prison for raping a 16-year-old girl and having sex with three other underage teens. James Comfort, 28, targeted gullible youngsters who were poorly supervised by their parents "without caring one iota" about their ages, prosecutor Douglas Randall said at sentencing. "This defendant has robbed these girls of their childhood." http://www.fox23news.com/news/regional/story.aspx?content_id=73A278B5-104B-4FCB-9376-275BE9C68832 - - - - - - - - - - Child porn man escapes jail sentence A former Stourbridge pub landlord today escaped a jail sentence after admitting downloading child pornography from the internet. The former licensee of The Shovel pub in Lye was instead given a three-year community rehabilitation order when he appeared at Wolverhampton Crown Court. Kevin Mulrooney, 47, of Albert Street, Lye, Stourbridge, was also ordered to be placed on the sex offenders register for five years after pleading guilty to 20 charges of making indecent photographs of children in July and October last year. http://www.expressandstar.com/artman/publish/article_30714.shtml - - - - - - - - - - Ohio Police Chief Busted On Internet Sex Charges A former police chief from southwestern Ohio appeared in court Friday to answer to charges that he tried to arrange sex with a 15-year-old girl. Jeremy Alley, 26, chief of the Elmwood Place Police Department, was arrested Thursday at the village's offices, Cincinnati TV station WLWT reported. Alley is charged with five counts of importuning. According to the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, Alley engaged in a series of Internet chat room conversations what he thought was a 15-year- old girl. The teen was actually a Cincinnati police detective, WLWT reported. http://www.newsnet5.com/news/2159071/detail.html - - - - - - - - - - Chat Room Discussion Leads To Arrest A 72-year-old Peterborough (New Hampshire) man has been charged with sending child pornography over the Internet to a detective in New York State. John Scott was indicted by a Hillsborough County grand jury this week on 40 counts of possessing child porn. Police say Scott and a detective from Rockland County, New York, had a conversation about child porn in an Internet chat room and that Scott then sent the detective several pornographic images. http://www.thechamplainchannel.com/wnne/2160927/detail.html - - - - - - - - - - PAEDOPHILES HIJACK BECKS PHONE CAMS PAEDOPHILES are using the latest in mobile phone technology to peddle hardcore child porn. Picture messaging phones with indecent images of children have been found by Scots cops. The phones, popularised in TV ads by Manchester United ace David Beckham, are being used by perverts to transmit sickening images. They have been linked to suspects in the Operation Ore inquiry, the investigation into 7000 suspected child abusers in the UK. http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=12894468&method=full&siteid=86024&headline=PAEDOPHILES%20HIJACK%20BECKS%20PHONE%20CAMS - - - - - - - - - - Child porn can be made anywhere Under the electronic cloak of cyberspace, serious Internet child-porn crime can take place anywhere. A digital camera, a computer and a phone line can become a secret center for illegal skin trade. A run-down, pale yellow house in north Madison Township was the core for that kind of network, federal authorities say. U.S. Customs agents and Madison police contend that Robert Noda's ranch-style home with the sun porch and two-car garage on Meadows Road was a child-pornography production studio. http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/lake/1051522543143931.xml - - - - - - - - - - eBay goof leaks snitch data Private info on message board revealed. A software flaw in eBay message boards exposed some private information about eBay users, the company confirmed on Friday. The leak, which occured on Wednesday evening, exposed a complaint database that eBay members use to snitch on each other for alleged breeches of the auction sites terms of service. http://www.msnbc.com/news/905279.asp - - - - - - - - - - Chinese court jails two people for operating an Internet cafe A Chinese court sentenced two Internet cafe operators to prison Monday for running the Beijing business without a license last June when arsonists torched the shop and killed 25 people, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The blaze at the Blue Speed Cyber Cafe prompted a nationwide safety crackdown on Internet cafes -- many of which were operated illegally. Iron bars over the windows trapped the screaming victims in the packed cafe in the northwestern Haidian university district. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/5736362.htm - - - - - - - - - - Public/Private Security Partnership Gets Rocky Companies want guidance on where responsibility lies. The changing of the cybersecurity guard at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), coupled with complacency on the part of some corporate executives, has put a higher premium on information- sharing and cooperation between the private sector and the government. "The two words to focus on are cooperation and coordination," said Richard Davidson, CEO of Omaha-based Union Pacific Corp., which combats more than 80,000 probes on its networks daily. "That all adds up to partnership and information-sharing, and that is our best form of protection during these challenging times," said Davidson, who also serves as chairman of the President's National Infrastructure Advisory Commission. http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,80706,00.html - - - - - - - - - - DARPA funds TIA privacy study The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding a contract to examine privacy protection in the use of terrorist tracking applications, such as the DARPA-led Total Information Awareness (TIA) program. The Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate awarded the 42-month contract to the Palo Alto Research Center April 10. The contract is worth more than $3.5 million. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0428/web-afrl-04-28-03.asp - - - - - - - - - - Hackers have fun with Madonna decoy It all started when Madonna literally lent her voice to a popular antipiracy technique. Warner Music Group had audio files purporting to be her new songs uploaded onto peer-to-peer file-sharing services. Anyone who downloaded the decoys, however, heard nothing but the pop star swearing at them. But since then, the pithy profanity has taken on a life of its own. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/04/28/hackers.madonna.reut/index.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/906269.asp - - - - - - - - - - E-mail titans join forces against spam The top three e-mail service providers are pooling their resources and technical expertise to reduce unwanted commercial solicitations, or spam, that is inundating their systems. America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft on Monday sketched a broad outline that calls for technical changes to e-mail to make it more difficult to send the widely reviled messages. Among the steps are plans to hinder spammers from creating multiple fraudulent e-mail accounts in bulk and to determine the real identity of the senders. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-998511.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30422.html http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-04-28-spam_x.htm http://www.msnbc.com/news/906132.asp http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45816-2003Apr27.html - - - - - - - - - - New weapon for spam: bounty Spammers beware. Larry Lessig wants to put a price on your head. The Stanford law professor will team with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, on Monday to unveil a bill that would require unsolicited commercial e-mails to be identified as advertising -- and then put a bounty on anyone who breaks that law. If the law passes, citizens could be eligible for rewards of thousands of dollars or more if they're the first to provide the government with proof and the identity of offending spammers. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5725404.htm A modest proposal to end spam http://news.com.com/2010-1071-998513.html N.Y. Sen. Schumer to introduce do-not-spam list legislation http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,80767,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Rise of the Spam Zombies Pressed by increasingly effective anti-spam efforts, senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail are resorting to outright criminality in their efforts to conceal the source of their ill-sent missives, using Trojan horses to turn the computers of innocent netizens into secret spam zombies. "This is the newest delivery mechanism," says Margie Arbon, director of operations of anti-spam group MAPS. "I've been looking for it for a year, and in the last couple of months people have actually found Trojans that are doing it... They're carrying their own SMTP engines. Failing that, they install open proxy software." http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30414.html - - - - - - - - - - Teen Has No Regrets on Insult Web Site Creator of shut Internet rumor mill says his original intent was to expose scandals in public education. But he defends nasty postings. A San Fernando Valley high school senior who ran a now-defunct Web site that gave Southern California middle and high school students a forum for mean-spirited gossip and rumors said Friday that he did not regret the emotional pain it caused but was upset only that free speech had lost out to the "rule of the mob." http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-scandal26apr26,1,2892787.story - - - - - - - - - - MS security patch slows XP systems to a crawl Microsoft last week attached a health risk to one its own security patches, following widespread complaints that the fix slowed systems to a crawl. The problematic patch, designed to fix a flaw in the way the kernel passes error messages to a debugger, was issued on April 16. The vuln affects Windows NT 4.0, NT 4.0 Server, Terminal Server Edition, Windows 2K and Windows XP) and is - potentially - very serious. However the vuln is also difficult to exploit, hence Microsoft's designation the problem as "important" - and not critical. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30426.html - - - - - - - - - - Biometric chips in passports by 2005 UK Passport Service plans six-month trial with systems integrator. The UK Passport Service (UKPS) has confirmed plans to put biometric chips into passports by 2005. In its Corporate and Business Plan 2003-2008, the agency said that developing a passport card, improving electronic application channels and rolling out new databases to improve security are some of its key tasks. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1140510 - - - - - - - - - - Secure by Default With Windows Server 2003, Microsoft has finally produced an operating system that isn't begging to be hacked on the first boot. One of the biggest criticisms of Windows 2000 was its "everything on" default installation state. For a consumer operating system, it made sense: people wanted specific functionality, and Microsoft provided it for them. For example, IIS installation was enabled by default with all possible mappings and sub-services enabled. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30425.html - - - - - - - - - - Indie ISPs Fight for Survival Internet service providers are under attack -- not by malicious hackers but, they say, by the U.S government and big business. The Federal Communications Commission and Congress have proposed new rules that could put almost every ISP out of business in the next year, according to Bruce Kushnick, chairman of TeleTruth, an ISP advocacy organization. If they don't fight for their right to exist, independent ISPs soon will be replaced by huge cable television and telephone companies supported by misguided FCC regulations, according to Kushnick, who addressed an audience Friday at ISPCON, an annual gathering for Internet service providers. Extinction is not the only trouble bedeviling ISPs. Owners and workers say they are being forced to turn into Net nannies, cops and snoops by the cavalcade of anti-terrorist and copyright-protection legislation that's been passed in the last two years. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,58628,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Spread of buggy software raises questions on methods, regulation When his dishwasher acts up and won't stop beeping, Jeff Seigle turns it off and then on, just as he does when his computer crashes. Same with the exercise machines at his gym and his CD player. "Now I think of resetting appliances, not just computers," says Seigle, a software developer in Vienna, Va. Malfunctions caused by bizarre and frustrating glitches are becoming harder and harder to escape now that software controls everything from stoves to cell phones, trains, cars and power plants. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/4240 http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/04/27/buggy.software.ap/index.html - - - - - - - - - - A dearth of dollars for technology has many police in the dark Madison Police Chief Paul D. Jakubson sees a not-too- distant future in which police officers can look up a suspect's criminal, prison and driving records, review his court attendance and restraining orders, and find out whether he is a registered sex offender or a resident alien. All from the side of the road, and all with the touch of a button. The technology exists, and officers say it's the future of law enforcement. But it's not cheap, and despite all the talk of homeland security, the technology grants that traditionally paid for such upgrades are harder to come by. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-04-25-police-tech_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Proposed site would help with search for missing children Agencies from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia are developing a Web site to help publicize Amber Alerts for missing children. "Our vision is this will become the nationwide model," said Nancy Jackson, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Information Systems, which is heading the Amber Alert Web Portal Pilot Project. "There's no one place where other members of law enforcement, the media and citizens can go to get information about a child who has been abducted." http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2003-04-28-amber-web_x.htm *********************************************************** Computer Forensics Training - Online. 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