NewsBits for June 2, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ Feds: Mob behind massive Internet fraud In the late 1990s, Richard Martino and other investors made a killing by peddling pornography on the Internet. The problem, federal prosecutors now say, was twofold: Customers' credit cards were billed without their permission. Worse, millions of dollars went to the mob. The $230 million Internet fraud scheme _ believed to be the largest ever prosecuted _ produced a series of recent arrests of alleged members and associates of the Gambino organized crime family in New York and Florida. And it's brought shame on self-proclaimed gangland purists who consider profiting from porn a sin. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--mob-dot-om0601jun01,0,5706314.story - - - - - - - - - - Al-Qaeda threatens to "blow up" the Internet One of Islamic fundamentalists, referring to Osama ben Laden, informs, that Al-Qaeda shows special interest to the Hi-Tech weapon, including the Internet. According to his statement, Al-Qaeda and other Islamic terror groupings plan to use the Internet as the weapon in Jihad against the West. In exclusive interview "Monday with Computerworld" Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, (the founder of Jama'at al-Muhajiran, the Osama ben Laden's representative of International Islamic front "Jihad against Jews and crusaders"), said that all kinds of High Technologies, including the Internet, are studied by "faithfuls" with the purpose of use war against the West. http://www.crime-research.org/eng/news/2003/06/Mess0201.html - - - - - - - - - - Student gets community service in Internet child-porn case A former Ohio University student who took a plea bargain in an Internet child pornography case was sentenced to 300 hours of community service Thursday on a greatly reduced, non-sex-related charge. The attorney for Kevin B. McCance, moreover, claimed in Athens County Common Pleas Court that had the case gone to trial, he could have shown there was no evidence to prove his client downloaded the porn images allegedly found on his dorm room computer. http://www.athensnews.com/issue/article.php3?story_id=13121 - - - - - - - - - - Five to appear on child porn charges FIVE men were due to appear in an Ipswich court today on more than a dozen charges relating to child pornography. Stephen Fiddaman, 41, of Quilter Drive, Ipswich, Anthony Prior, 57, of White Horse Road, Capel St Mary, Jonathan Horne, 34, Beech Road, of Carlton Colville, Anthony North, 34, of Haverhill, are among those charged. Stephen Davison, 39, Howdenhall Court, of Edinburgh, Scotland, but formerly of Suffolk, is also one of the accused. The arrests and subsequent charges are the second batch in the county as part of Operation Ore, the nationwide police crackdown on child pornography on the internet. http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/Content/news/story.asp?datetime=02+Jun+2003+11%3A00&tbrand=ESTOnline&tCategory=News&category=News&brand=ESTOnline&itemid=IPED02+Jun+2003+10%3A01%3A08%3A203 - - - - - - - - - - Man had thousands of child porn pics A CAPEL man today pleaded guilty to looking at 5000 images of child pornography. Anthony Prior, 57, from White Horse Road, Capel St Mary, was one of seven men appearing on charges related to child pornography. Prior was charged with 16 offences under Section One of the Protection of Childrens Act 1978. The magistrates bench were shown 16 sample images on police laptop computers. The images were rated at of a level three and four nature meaning the case will have to be heard at Ipswich Crown Court. http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/Content/news/story.asp?datetime=02+Jun+2003+13%3A40&tbrand=ESTOnline&tCategory=News&category=News&brand=ESTOnline&itemid=IPED02+Jun+2003+12%3A41%3A00%3A250 - - - - - - - - - - BOY'S PORN HELL A HORRIFIED couple were told their son had been abused - and the images broadcast to perverts round the world. Evil Gordon Sheppard had been molesting the boy, now 10, for two years, then posting pictures of the abuse on the internet. But his sick activities were ended when police started a probe after being alerted to the website he used, known as Pretty Boy. They traced the pictures back to Sheppard, 35, and raided his home in Dowan Place, Stirling. Then officers had the painful task of telling the parents, who had trusted bachelor Sheppard to look after their son, that the boy had been repeatedly abused. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=13025538&method=full&siteid=89488&headline=BOY'S%20PORN%20HELL - - - - - - - - - - E-mail virus uses Bill Gates If you find an e-mail from Bill Gates in your inbox, the chances are that the message is a computer virus. Security experts are warning that a mass-mailing worm is spreading widely across the internet, sometimes posing as an e-mail from the Microsoft boss. The Windows virus, called Sobig-C, forwards itself to any addresses found on the infected computer, using several faked addresses such as bill@microsoft.com. This is the second time in recent weeks that virus writers have used messages pretending to be from Microsoft to lure unsuspecting users into opening a malicious program. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2956646.stm http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/30984.html Sobig.C worm on a one-week stand http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-1012016.html http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-1012059.html - - - - - - - - - - Palyh, Fizzer-A Were May's Top Worms A pair of new worms that debuted last month claimed the number one and two spots on anti-virus vendor Sophos' May Top 10 list of viruses. The W32/Palyh worm, which delivered its payload in a bogus e-mail purportedly from Microsoft support, grabbed the top spot in the list by making up nearly 20 percent of all identified viruses. This will be the last month that Palyh, which also goes by Mankx, will appear on such virus lists, since it went dormant at the end of May. http://www.internetweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10100689 - - - - - - - - - - Asia sees May computer virus spike Last month saw a spike in the number of moderately destructive viruses in the Asia-Pacific, while the Nokia phone giveaway hit the top of the email hoax charts globally. Security software firm Symantec said it received an increase in virus submissions and customer reports from the Asia-Pacific region in May, largely as a result of two Category Three (CAT 3) virus outbreaksthe Fizzer and Sobig.B (also called Mankx or Palyh), a variant of the older Sobig worm. http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/security/0,39001150,39134662,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - North Korea's School for Hackers In North Korea's mountainous Hyungsan region, a military academy specializing in electronic warfare has been churning out 100 cybersoldiers every year for nearly two decades. Graduates of the elite hacking program at Mirim College are skilled in everything from writing computer viruses to penetrating network defenses and programming weapon guidance systems. Or so South Korea's government would have the world believe. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59043,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Police concerned over teen game addiction Police are determined to deal with an alarming trend towards children becoming addicted to a violent internet game. An internet cafe has banned two 13-year-old "junkies", who, it was claimed, had broken into 40 taxis over six weeks to pay for habits which culminated in a four-day gaming binge. The 24-hour Wellington cafe, E-Joy, told police the boys had occasionally slept there after falling asleep playing Counter-Strike, one of the world's most popular online tactical war games. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3505220 - - - - - - - - - - IRS rife with security weaknesses Critical information security weaknesses at the Internal Revenue Service demonstrate the importance of moving past the development of an information security program to actually implement the measures outlined in the plan. The General Accounting Office found almost 900 weaknesses across the 11 IRS organizations included in its review, particularly in the areas of access and authorization. All of the weaknesses can be traced to IRS' incomplete implementation of its agencywide security program, according to the report dated May 30. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0602/web-irs-06-02-03.asp http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0603/060203tdpm1.htm - - - - - - - - - - Greedy staff pose security threat Security breaches in the future are likely to be driven by greedy employees, a report has found. According to analyst firm Gartner, a majority of security incidents will be financially motivated by 2005, with most being the work of insiders. But there is some good news. A US survey of computer attacks showed that the losses from security breaches was declining. The study by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI found that losses by businesses and government departments had fallen by half in a year. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2956120.stm - - - - - - - - - - 'Rewards' to encourage legal file sharing Concert tickets, DVDs and even laptops will be used to encourage users of the online bazaar known as Kazaa to swap legal files instead of pirated movies and music. The Peer Points Manager program announced Monday will essentially be Internet file-sharing's version of frequent flyer miles. Kazaa users earn points for making legal files available to others over the Internet. The points can be redeemed for small prizes like computer games or for sweepstakes entries to win larger items. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/5995248.htm http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1011827.html - - - - - - - - - - AOL pulls Nullsoft file-sharing software A day after developers at America Online's Nullsoft unit quietly released file-sharing software, AOL pulled the link to the product from the subsidiary's Web site. The software, called Waste, lets groups set up private, secure file-sharing networks. The product became available on Nullsoft's Web site on Wednesday, just days shy of the four-year anniversary of being acquired by AOL. Waste is a software application that combines peer-to- peer file sharing with instant messaging, chat and file searches. Users can set up their own network of friends and share files between each other. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-1011953.html - - - - - - - - - - Corporate inboxes choking on spam Spam has officially overtaken legitimate e-mail in the workplace, and theres little relief in sight. The month of May marked the first time that commercial e-mail comprised 51 percent of all messages received by workers, according to MessageLabs, a provider of managed e-mail security services. MessageLabs only analyzed 133.9 million messages sent to its global network of business customers. "The volume of spam now facing computer users every day has now far surpassed the point of being a nuisance and is now causing significant productivity losses and (information technology) costs at businesses across the world," MessageLabs Chief Technology Officer Mark Sunner said in a statement. http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-1012418.html - - - - - - - - - - Law school serves spam as main course Law students at Chicago's John Marshall Law School are getting a new dose of spam--on their course schedule. The spam serving comes courtesy of John Marshall associate professor David Sorkin, who's offering what he and his peers say may be the first law school course devoted to the subject of unsolicited commercial e-mail. "This seminar will investigate legal and policy issues raised by e-mail marketing and spam," Sorkin wrote in describing the summer seminar, titled "Current Topics in Information Technology Law: Regulation of Spam and E-mail Marketing." http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1012404.html - - - - - - - - - - Microsoft to introduce security certifications Microsoft will announce its first set of certification credentials for IT administrators and engineers who specialise in security in a Windows environment, at the company's TechEd 2003 conference at the end of the month. Dan Truax, director of business and product strategy for training and certification at Microsoft, noted that the company has offered security courses for years. But he said Microsoft decided to create a formal credential in recognition of the number of customers that now specialise in that type of job. http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=122253 - - - - - - - - - - RSA Security teaming with Thor Technologies RSA Security and Thor Technologies Monday announced a partnership agreement under which the two will work closely to integrate their products. Jason Lewis, director of product management at RSA, said the goal is to integrate RSA's ClearTrust authentication and access management software with Thor's Xellerate provisioning software by the third quarter of this year. Under the agreement, RSA will be allowed to ship RSA ClearTrust with some of Thor's basic provisioning capabilities, such as self-service, self-registration, resetting passwords and profile updates, Lewis said. http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0602rsathor.html - - - - - - - - - - Your life at your (and their?) fingertips Coming to you soon from the Pentagon: the diary to end all diaries -- a multimedia, digital record of everywhere you go and everything you see, hear, read, say and touch. Known as LifeLog, the project has been put out for contractor bids by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the agency that helped build the Internet and that is now developing the next generation of anti- terrorism tools. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/a/2003/06/02/national1444EDT0620.DTL - - - - - - - - - - Paper-based notaries pushed into technology age After centuries of relying on paper, ink quills, and more recently, rubber stamps to verify people's identities, U.S. notaries public are being dragged kicking and screaming into the modern, high-tech era. A group leading 200,000 of the country's 4.5 million notaries recently unveiled an electronic signature, thumbprint and photograph kit that could make their jobs easier. Notaries, also called trusted witnesses, check the identity of people signing documents such as contracts, loans and wills, then give their stamp of approval and record the event in a paper-based journal. The new kit could record the clients' thumbprint, signature and photograph in an electronic system. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-06-02-notaries-public_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Medford considers installing remote surveillance system Medford police are hoping to install a $500,000 communications system that would monitor the most remote areas of Jackson County using high- speed wireless technology. The system would initially require 120 transmitter nodes throughout Medford. The city has received a $25,000 federal grant to determine how the system performs in Jackson County. The study will attempt to determine annual operating costs for the system, which could be expanded countywide. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-06-02-oregon-cameras_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Interoperability is the goal for wireless network First responders may eventually turn to personal digital assistants before their radios in emergencies, tapping into an interoperable wireless network recently developed and tested by federal scientists and engineers. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has completed the first round of tests on a wireless emergency network. Local, state and federal emergency workers have found their radio systems, which use many different frequencies, to be an often-hopeless mode of communication. http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/22298-1.html - - - - - - - - - - Internet emergency alert service designed for government use Fine Point Technologies Inc. of New York is working on a system that would let government communicate with citizens over the Internet, pushing alerts and warnings directly to desktop PCs. This would be a new approach to emergency warnings. Except for a few instances such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Weather Radio system, which broadcasts weather conditions and alerts, government has traditionally depended on commercial media to distribute such information. The Emergency Alert System, for example, is used by government to send alerts via broadcast stations and cable systems. http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/22296-1.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. 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