NewsBits for July 29, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ Extortionists taking advantage of crackdown on video piracy A crackdown on the widespread use of illegal video discs in Malaysia has prompted a new type of crime -- impersonating enforcement officers to extort money from disc owners. Officials are looking for four men who have been going house-to-house in southern Johor state claiming to be officers of the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry, said state director Sulaiman Salam. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/6409239.htm - - - - - - - - - - Ex-PC jailed in child porn case A FORMER police officer who downloaded scores of child porn pictures on his home computer has been jailed for six months. Police raided the Talconeston home of Martin Parsons in October last year after carrying out an investigation into a website where users could share such images. Norwich Crown Court heard that Parsons, 32, was found to have downloaded about 120 pornographic images - including one featuring a child of five. Parsons, of Knipe Close, Tacolneston, admitted 12 charges of downloading indecent pictures of a child and possessing images for distribution. As well as being sent to prison, he was also placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for seven years. http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/content/News/story.asp?datetime=26+Jul+2003+10%3A35&tbrand=ENOnline&tCategory=NEWS&category=News&brand=ENOnline&itemid=NOED26+Jul+2003+10%3A35%3A53%3A050 - - - - - - - - - - School governor on net porn charges A school governor from Leyton who trawled the internet for child sex images has been given a two-year community rehabilitation order. Gregory Vincent, a former Labour councillor in neighbouring Newham, was caught with pictures of children as young as eight. He was given a two-year community rehabilitation order by Southwark Crown Court. The court heard was told that the 32-year-old would use the internet from his office at the University of London using the log-on name Heebee Jeebee. He was caught when police used specialist computer software to recover files from the computer, even ones Vincent had deleted in a bid to cover his tracks. The prosecution said Vincent had shared the child porn images with others via an internet paedophile network. http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/topstories/display.var.397407.0.school_governor_on_net_porn_charges.php - - - - - - - - - - FBI Investigates Child Porn Allegations FBI agents have launched an investigation after a former church employee allegedly found child pornography on a laptop computer once owned by a Roman Catholic priest, it was reported Saturday. Ex-church employee Fernando Guido, who allegedly found the child porn in 2001, went to the FBI this month leading to an investigation of the Rev. Cesar Salazar of St. Joseph Church in Santa Ana. Guido said he found the images, which police estimated numbered about 100, while testing a used laptop computer that a friend had bought in September 2001. Though Salazar was the original owner of the computer, according to a diocesan statement, it had been used by Guido's friend and someone else. http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/news/072603_nw_porn_allegations.html - - - - - - - - - - Camden Funeral Director Faces Child Sex Charges A suburban Philadelphia funeral director is charged with sexually assaulting a New Jersey boy he met on the Internet. Charles Murray of Ambler, is being held without bail. Federal prosecutors say Murray met a Logan teen twice at a Wawa and sexually assaulting him. The boy and his father called authorities. The 47-year-old Murray, who owns a funeral him in Flourtown, faces up to 15 years in prison. A bail hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/07272003_nw_camdenfuneral.html - - - - - - - - - - Child Porn Battleground Cyber cops are armed with a law that some say is too broad, sparking a legal fight that may put Knoxville in the spotlight Nets designed to protect swimmers from sharks also ensnare dolphins and whales. So what do we do? Tear down the nets, exposing innocent bathers to danger to save a few nonpredatory sea creatures? Keep the nets, declaring the threat posed by the sharks greater than the risk of capturing innocuous marine life? Or, do we modify the design, crafting nets that trap the dangerous without entangling the harmless? http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_2138760,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Security group furthers plans to combat cybercrime Countries need to pass wide-ranging laws, cooperate openly. Countries that want to be able to tackle cybercrime need to pass wide-ranging laws and be prepared to openly cooperate with other countries, delegates of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) group said Monday. The statement came at the end of a conference organized by the APEC e-Security Task Group in Bangkok, Thailand, last week which sought ways to develop comprehensive legal frameworks to combat cybercrime and to build law enforcement units capable of investigating cybercrime. http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/07/29/HNcombatcrime_1.html - - - - - - - - - - FBI wants to tap Net phones Internet telephone calls are fast becoming a national security threat that must be countered with new police wiretap rules, according to an FBI proposal presented quietly to regulators this month. Representatives of the FBI's Electronic Surveillance Technology Section in Chantilly, Va., have met at least twice in the past three weeks with senior officials of the Federal Communications Commission to lobby for proposed new Internet eavesdropping rules. The FBI-drafted plan seeks to force broadband providers to provide more efficient, standardized surveillance facilities and could substantially change the way that cable modem and DSL (digital subscriber line) companies operate. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5056424.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39115339,00.htm http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5056424.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/945608.asp Cybercrime criminological researches http://www.crime-research.org/eng/library/Polivan0703eng.html Broken Window Theory http://www.reason.com/links/links072803.shtml Lawmaker wants limits to spyware http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5057094.html - - - - - - - - - - Feds help local police fight ID fraud Stolen credit card and Social Security numbers. Check fraud. Drained bank accounts. Ruined credit. Nightmares for victims, identity crimes also can be vexing to local police departments trying to unravel the crimes. To help local police officers better understand and investigate these crimes, an electronic package is being mailed out Tuesday to more than 40,000 police departments and other law enforcement authorities, the Secret Service said Monday. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/29/identity.crime.ap/index.html - - - - - - - - - - Secret networks protect music swappers They are the country clubs of the file-sharing world, exclusive Internet networks that require knowing the right people and having a wealth of content on your hard disk to get into the clique. These private file- swapping networks have surfaced just as the music industry has been granted dozens of subpoenas seeking the names of those who trade copyrighted material on popular services such as Kazaa, Imesh, and Gnutella. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/29/private.fileshare/index.html - - - - - - - - - - Windows exploit code posted on internet Several independent coding groups have posted code on the internet which allows hackers to exploit a previously disclosed vulnerability in Microsoft's Windows operating system. The Windows flaw, which was rated "critical" by Microsoft when it was disclosed earlier this month, allows a hacker to gain control of a Windows system through a security hole in the DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) interface. http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=123801 http://www.vnunet.com/News/1142663 - - - - - - - - - - RIAA will take 2191.78 years to sue everyone READER MICHAELA STEPHENS says that if the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is right and that 60 million US folk are file sharing, it's going to take the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) a mighty long time to get round to them all. She said: "I pulled out my calculator to see just how long it would take the RIAA to sue all 60 million P2P music file traders at a rate of 75 a day. 60,000,000/75 = 800,000 days to subpoena each person or 800,000 days/365 days in a year = 2191.78 years to subpoena each person". http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10733 Internet song swappers say legal threats won't stop them http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-07-29-jupiter-survey_x.htm RIAA prepares hundreds of lawsuits http://www.vnunet.com/News/1142677 - - - - - - - - - - Firewall Evolution - Deep Packet Inspection Firewalls provide a variety of services to networks in terms of security. They provide for network address translation (NAT), virtual private networks (VPN), and filtering of traffic that does not conform to the network's stated security policy. There are many forms of firewalls from simple packet filters to circuit-level gateways to proxy firewalls. Firewalls are being asked to fill a larger and more varied role in network security these days than several years ago. http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1716 - - - - - - - - - - Biometric passports coming soon With travel to all corners of the globe accessible by nearly everyone, tracking terrorists has become a daunting task. So imagine a document that contains personal data from a digital fingerprint to an electronic iris scan. Theyre called biometric passports, and they may soon be a reality. http://www.msnbc.com/news/945555.asp - - - - - - - - - - Justice to create regional data store When sniper shootings took place last October in the Washington, D.C., area, law enforcement officials asked the Justice Department to use mapping techniques to predict the shooters' next target areas. But gathering special data from the police jurisdictions involved proved to be almost insurmountable. Officials only obtained the necessary information after the two suspects were arrested. "Out of this came a need to develop a special data repository," said Ronald Wilson, a senior research associate at the University of Michigan working with Justice's National Institute of Justice. "Nobody had [data] all in one place. There was a lot of data." http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0728/web-gis-07-29-03.asp *********************************************************** 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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