NewsBits for May 16, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ U.S. Charges 135 With Net Crimes Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday 135 people have been charged and more than $17 million seized in a crackdown on investment swindles, identity theft and other forms of Internet fraud and abuse. U.S. law- enforcement officers arrested 50 suspects this week in an effort to combat the fast-growing online crime that now accounts for more than half of all fraud complaints, Ashcroft said. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,58875,00.html http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/05/16/cybercrime.feds.ap/index.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/914426.asp http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/889665p-6198033c.html http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-1003894.html http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-1003833.html http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/5876738.htm http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/cybercrime/story/0,10801,81305,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Asheville man faces charge of Net fraud An Asheville man is being held without bond after being federally charged with using the Internet to "obtain money by false and fraudulent pretenses." Federal agents have received nearly 200 complaints from across and outside the country about Todd Wilson Short, 32, according to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Stuart M. Kelly. From 1999 until May 2002, Short operated several businesses with an Asheville address. They were called Benton Medical Group International Inc., MedNetPlus Inc., J.C. Morris & Co. or some variation of those names, according to Kelly's statement. http://cgi.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/story/news/34855 - - - - - - - - - - OptusNet cracker is fined on appeal A cracker who broke into the systems of a big Australian ISP and obtained access to hundreds of thousands of customer records was this week convicted on appeal, even after escaping without any punishment at an earlier hearing. Stephen Craig Dendtler, 22, of Bankstown, New South Wales, hacked into OptusNet, gaining access to 435,000 customer records and passwords. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30744.html - - - - - - - - - - Peoria man charged with porn production Authorities say he had sex with preteen, put pictures on Internet. A Peoria man faces up to 30 years in federal prison for allegedly taking pictures of himself having sex with a preteen girl and putting those pictures on the Internet. Michael Hoevenarr Sr., 44, of 801 E. Fairoaks Ave. was charged this week by a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Peoria on charges of production pornography, distribution of child pornography and possession of child pornography. http://www.pjstar.com/news/local/g163446a.html - - - - - - - - - - Active judge hears DVD-copy case The judge in a closely watched lawsuit challenging the legality of DVD-copying software said she was "substantially persuaded" by past court rulings that favored copyright holders, but closed a hearing Thursday without issuing a ruling in the case. Seven movie studios are seeking to prevent 321 Studios from selling its DVD X Copy and DVD Copy Plus programs, alleging that the products violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's prohibition on software that can be used to circumvent copyright protections. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-1003541.html Hollywood makes case against DVD copying software http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/5877313.htm - - - - - - - - - - Teen in Internet Fraud Cases Sues School for $50 Million Mission Viejo teen who paid more than $1.2 million last year to settle federal Internet-fraud complaints is suing his former high school for labeling him an embarrassment and booting him from the varsity baseball team, according to the court filing. Acting as his own attorney, Cole Bartiromo, 18, filed the $50-million civil rights lawsuit this week in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana alleging Trabuco Hills High School administrators barred him from the team last winter because of "personal vendettas" based on their "own jealousy/anger/spite of Bartiromo's local fame." (LA Times article, free registration required) http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-cole17may17,1,4580591.story - - - - - - - - - - 13 states sue company over pop-up windows Wisconsin and 12 other states are suing an Internet firm that allegedly billed people who tried to close pop-up windows for pornographic Web sites, the state's attorney general said Thursday. The suits, filed in conjunction with the Federal Trade Commission, alleges New Jersey-based Alyon Technologies violated advertising and telecommunications laws. Wisconsin's lawsuit claims Alyon connected Internet users to the company's toll phone number when they tried to close Alyon's pop-up windows advertising porn sites. The toll number charges $5 a minute, Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager said, resulting in bills ranging from $14 to more than $1,000. http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/889780p-6199123c.html http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58867,00.html http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/5876123.htm - - - - - - - - - - Internet Dreams Turn to Crime Russian Start-Up Became a Profitable Protection Racket. Vasiliy Gorshkov did not set out to be a thief. Relatives and friends say he had wanted to build a dot- com like those he had read about on the other side of the world -- the Amazon.coms, eBays and Yahoos that were becoming household names even in this industrial expanse of dilapidated tenements and factories. But in the spring of 2000, just three months after he sank his inheritance into a quixotic start-up to build Web sites for corporations, Gorshkov was getting squeezed. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2619-2003May17.html - - - - - - - - - - Mafia use 3G phones for election scam The Italian Mafia were reportedly planning on using video phones to rig the country's regional election results Italian Mafia bosses have been thwarted in their ingenious attempts to use video phones to rig parliamentary elections. The latest generation of mobile phones boast video streaming functionality and inevitably it didn't take too long before people worked out how to put the new technology to a criminal use. The Mafia often play a strong part in influencing election results in Italy and were hoping to use video phones to check up on people who pledge their support to a particular candidate. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2134833,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Fizzer Task Force to the rescue The worm that turned ... The Fizzer worm may be forced to turn on itself after a loose-knit community of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) users gained control of the web page from which the worm automatically updates itself. The IRC community has been the hardest hit by the worm, which uses malicious bots to connect to IRC networks from infected hosts. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1140955 http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-1003894.html - - - - - - - - - - Secure phones no obstacle to wiretapping - US Govt The use of so-called secure telephones presents almost no barrier to wiretapping, according to official US government documents. This interesting revelation is contained in a recent report on Applications for Orders Authorizing or Approving the Interception of Wire, Oral, or Electronic Communications. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30746.html - - - - - - - - - - Giuliani, Netanyahu and Woolsey speak out on terror and technology The three men warned of the dangers of inaction In a series of speeches this week, two well-known political figures and a former CIA director warned of the dangers of inaction and lack of preparedness when it comes to cyberterrorism and homeland security. "We're in a very dangerous century. The power of the few to terrorize the many has grown by leaps and bounds precisely because of technology," former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during an interview broadcast Tuesday as part of the Terror and Technology Online conference, sponsored by IDPartners LLC. http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,81301,00.html - - - - - - - - - - South Korea accuses North of training hackers North Korea, an impoverished communist country suspected of building nuclear weapons, has developed another weapon: cyber terrorism, a senior South Korean military officer said Friday. Maj. Gen. Song Young-geun, head of the South Korean military's Defense Security Command, said North Korea is churning out more than 100 computer hackers a year, and urged the South to boost its ability to fight "cyber threats from the outside." http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/890367p-6202392c.html http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/05/16/korea.hackers.reut/index.html - - - - - - - - - - NIST releases draft security standard The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Computer Security Division today released the draft of a new Federal Information Processing Standard, FIPS 199, which dictates how agencies should categorize their systems based on the security risk faced by each. The standard is the first step in several requirements generated by NIST under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002, all aimed at setting minimum security requirements for all government systems not related to national security. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0512/web-nist-05-16-03.asp - - - - - - - - - - EU considers changes to IP enforcement A European parliamentary committee has said a proposal for EU-wide IP enforcement may need get tougher, due to recording industry concerns. A new EU proposal for harmonising intellectual property law enforcement across member states has come under criticism from the first parliamentary committee to review it, which has suggested that the proposal may need to be modified to better reflect the interests of the music and film industries. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2134834,00.html - - - - - - - - - - EU heeds labels' complaints on piracy law A new European Union proposal for harmonizing intellectual property law enforcement across member states has come under criticism from the first parliamentary committee to review it. The committee has suggested that the proposal may need to be modified to better reflect the interests of the music and film industries. The EU issued the proposal in January, with the aim of harmonizing different systems for enforcing intellectual property laws, including copyrights and patents, across member states. The proposal aims to strike a balance between the needs of rights holders and users, concentrating on the most commercially damaging infringements rather than on individuals who may be breaking the law, such as users of peer-to-peer file- trading services. http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-1003578.html - - - - - - - - - - SCO delivers a warning The mail seems to be the preferred method of delivering a warning. SCO Group, which claims its Unix intellectual property has been illegally incorporated into Linux, sent letters to about 1,500 of the world's largest corporations warning that they could be liable for using Linux. The move dramatically broadens the cash-strapped company's potential legal actions beyond its initial target, IBM. Industry analysts viewed the move as an escalation of the company's intellectual property war and an attempt to put more pressure on companies to acquire SCO. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-1003664.html - - - - - - - - - - Games Prove a Hassle for Web Pirates Video game publishers say piracy costs them billions of dollars in lost sales every year, but the industry is unlikely to suffer the widespread online theft that record labels blame for decimating CD sales. Game and console makers go to extreme lengths to ensure that their wares are tough to crack. Bootleg copies of popular games can be found on file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus. But online "piracy is much lower for games than it is for music," said P.J. McNealy, an analyst with market research firm GartnerG2. "Orders of magnitude lower." http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-gamepirates17may17,1,6461800.story - - - - - - - - - - RIAA rings twice The music industry's antipiracy campaign hit some sour notes this week, as the Recording Industry Association of America sent out retractions for earlier, erroneous notices of copyright infringement. The RIAA apologized and blamed a temporary worker for firing off legal notifications that invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act without confirming that any copyrighted files were actually being offered for download. "We have sent two dozen withdrawal notices--all appear related to this particular temp," the RIAA said in a statement. "We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused." http://news.com.com/2100-1083_3-1003664.html - - - - - - - - - - Telewest to get new email service after spam attacks Telewest punters are set to suffer more disruption to their service next week when the cableco moves its email service to a new platform. The move follows weeks of hassle for Telewest users as the ISP's email service collapsed under a deluge of spam. After a second spam attack last week, which resulted in mail delays of up to four days, Telewest admitted that an underlying hardware failure was to blame for the extended delays in punters receiving email. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30739.html - - - - - - - - - - Firms ignore DSL dangers Users of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) broadband services are five times more likely to be affected by online attacks than those using dial-up connections, according to a recent report from analyst firm the Yankee Group. The firm's research indicates that the number of 2Mbit/s business DSL lines backed by service level agreements (SLAs) in the UK will reach 510,000 by the end of this year, and over one million by 2006. http://www.vnunet.com/Analysis/1140929 - - - - - - - - - - Police turn to security experts at cybercrime conference The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has called information security experts to its own cyber crime conference to help it better investigate electronic offences. The conference is taking place in the Gold Coast, and has immediately followed the AusCERT security conference, which ended yesterday. The head of the high-tech crime unit of the AFP, Alastair MacGibbon, says that hosting the conference after the AusCERT event has helped to attract good speakers and save money. "We were taking advantage of the fact that a lot of people were already in town," he told ZDNet Australia. "We have some experts like Thomas Rude... some of the AusCERT speakers are staying on". http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/security/story/0,2000048600,20274568,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Windows wireless security pack released Microsoft announced to a security mailing list on Friday that it had released its latest set of guidelines for securing Windows operating system products. The documents, which can be downloaded from Microsoft's Web site, tell network administrators how to secure wireless networks using servers based on Windows Server 2003. The set of guidelines follows the Redmond, Wash. company's releases last December. In addition to six documents that describe how to deploy a digital signature-based approach to enhance wireless security, the latest installment includes several scripts to give administrators a starting point for the task. http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1105_2-1003788.html - - - - - - - - - - Cyberterrorism: Terrorism and IT The development of modern information technologies has resulted to occurrence of new kinds of crimes, such as computer crimes and computer terrorism. The computer crime is an illegal intervention in work of computers, systems and computer networks; plunder misappropriation and extortion of the computer information. Today the acts of cyberterrorism are widely shown in the Internet; it is the new form of terrorism which uses computers and modern information technologies for terrorist goal achievement. http://www.crime-research.org/eng/news/2003/05/Mess1601.html - - - - - - - - - - Defense, Homeland officials seek bids on security devices Homeland Security and Defense department officials on a Friday panel discussed the development and acquisition of transportation security technologies. Jeffrey David, a deputy Defense director for anti- terrorism technology, announced that the Homeland Security Technical Support Working Group has issued a new call for ideas on explosives-detection equipment. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0503/051603td1.htm - - - - - - - - - - IBM in first deal to supply digital police cameras Police in Yakima, Washington are installing a first- of-its-kind system of computers in cruisers designed to record and store pictures of every encounter they have likely to end up in court, everything from traffic stops to high-speed chases. Under the deal announced Thursday by the company, IBM will install the "in car" digital video systems in 32 cruisers for the Yakima police department. The price tag is $463,000, said Yakima Police Captain Jeff Schneider. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-05-16-ibm-cameras_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Matrix Sequel Has Hacker Cred The average American moviegoer taking in the Matrix Reloaded this weekend will likely be wowed by the elaborate action sequences and dazzling special effects. But hackers who've seen the blockbuster are crediting it with a more subtle cinematic milestone: it's the first major motion picture to accurately portray a hack. That's right: Trinity uses a 'sploit. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30747.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. 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