NewsBits for September 22, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ Alleged hacker grounded at home Accused of breaking into N.Y. Times' system, he faces his fate with Zen serenity. Adrian Lamo is facing prosecution for allegedly breaking into the New York Times' computer network in February and accessing personal information of famous opinion contributors as well as running up a tab on its computer research service. But Lamo, a.k.a. "the Homeless Hacker," said he's not distraught. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/22/BUGR11R7L91.DTL FBI Seeking Reporters' Notes http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,60538,00.html - - - - - - - - - - City man sentenced in Internet sex case A 41-year-old Cumberland man was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Albany, N.Y., for traveling in interstate commerce for the purpose of engaging in sexual acts with a 15-year-old. Robert M. Parker entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to a five- year term of probation which includes a six-month term of home detention, according to the U.S. Attorney's Northern District of New York Office. http://216.15.229.16/news/full_story.cfm?story_id=16062 - - - - - - - - - - Predator threatened to kill two Georgia girls An alleged Internet predator from West Castleton has denied charges he tried to lure two Franklin County girls into having sex. At Vermont District Court Monday, Gary M. Anderson, 28, pleaded innocent to using electronic communication to lure a child -- a felony -- and two misdemeanor counts of threatening conduct by phone. http://www.samessenger.com/SEP03/predator0919.html - - - - - - - - - - Man indicted for luring girl for sex over Internet An Oahu Grand Jury has indicted a 50-year-old Mililani man for allegedly using the Internet to try and lure a 13-year-old girl for sex. State authorities say Armando Sierra was indicted last week for first-degree electronic enticement of a child, a law created by the 2002 state Legislature. According to the state attorney general's office, Sierra allegedly used the Internet to arrange a meeting for sex with a person represented to him to be a 13-year-old girl. http://www.kpua.net/news.php?id=631 - - - - - - - - - - Cleveland man arrested in alleged Web sex tryst Police arrested a Cleveland man yesterday after he allegedly arrived in town to have sex with someone he thought was a 14-year-old child. Steven Shomon, 23, was nabbed at 3 p.m. on the city's east side. Members of the Lima Police Department's P.A.C.E. unit said Mr. Shomon allegedly solicited a police officer for sex over the Internet, thinking the officer was a teenage girl. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030920/NEWS03/30920005 - - - - - - - - - - Algonquin man charged with sex abuse A 22-year-old Algonquin man was charged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse in the assault of a 14-year-old Wheaton girl, whom he met in an Internet chat room, police said. Police said Ryan T. Henrickson of 740 Mulberry Court set up a meeting with the girl at the Brunswick Zone bowling alley at 170 W. North Ave in Carol Stream. The arrest was not the result of a sting operation, which has become a common tool to catch Internet predators. http://www.dailyherald.com/search/main_story.asp?intid=37883199 - - - - - - - - - - Prosecution: Troubled girl perfect target for pedophile The mother of a Mobile teenager testified Thursday in federal court that her daughter has struggled to cope with more than her share of growing pains -- bulimia, depression, attention-deficit disorder, a sexual assault and her father's death at a relatively young age. Those problems, prosecutors allege, made the 15-year-old a perfect target for the a doctor accused of driving from Maryland to Mobile for what he thought would be a weekend of sex with her at the beach. Dr. Alex Sherzer, 32, faces charges of using the Internet to entice a juvenile to engage in a sexual act and crossing state lines for the purpose of having sex with a juvenile. http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/1063962998180620.xml - - - - - - - - - - Swen virus could infect millions of computers worldwide: expert The Swen computer virus has infected at least 200,000 computers worldwide and could spread to millions more when office workers return to their desks after the weekend, an anti-virus expert in Finland said. "This virus has the technical potential of infecting millions of computers," Mikael Albrecht, a manager at Helsinki- based anti-virus software firm F-Secure, told AFP on Monday. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1212&e=2&u=/afp/20030922/tc_afp/finland_internet_virus&sid=96001018 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/22336.html Worm Wears A 'Patch' For Disguise The latest virus to hit the Web poses as a security update from Microsoft and takes advantage of a two- year-old weakness in Internet Explorer. Disguised as an official e-mail from Microsoft, the file comes attached to a note asking the recipient to install a "September 2003, cumulative patch" to protect against vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser and Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38195-2003Sep20.html Viruses: Keep your wits about you, says Sophos Anti-virus company Sophos has warned against alarmist responses to disparities between reported numbers of virus infections and the number of interceptions. In the case of Swen (or Gibe), the latest worm masquerading as a Microsoft support mail, security firm iDefense reports that the number of actual infections is far higher than the number of reported interceptions. But Sophos distributor Netxactics advises users not to overreact. http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/internet/2003/0309221221.asp - - - - - - - - - - FBI Searches Computers at Caltech in Hummer Probe FBI agents searched computers at the Caltech library Friday in their investigation of last month's vandalism and arson fires at four car dealerships in the San Gabriel Valley. Authorities are seeking the identity of a self-described member of the Earth Liberation Front who in three e-mails and two telephone calls told The Times this week that he had participated in the attacks. The man, who did not give his real name or say where he lived, said he had spray-painted a math theorem on one of the SUVs, one of several details that authorities said were known only to investigators and the perpetrators. (LA Times article, free registration required) http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-hummer20sep20,1,4861145.story - - - - - - - - - - Privacy group calls for JetBlue prosecution A privacy-rights group asked U.S. regulators on Monday to prosecute JetBlue Airways for secretly giving the names of more than a million of its passengers to an antiterrorism screening program. JetBlue violated a promise to maintain customer privacy when it gave passenger information to a military contractor last year, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said in a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission. http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5080334.html http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/internetprivacy/2003-09-22-epic-vs-jetblue_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Norton Antivirus product activation cracked Software giant Symantec last month announced that it will add product activation technology to all of its consumer products, starting with Norton Antivirus 2004. The idea is to prevent large-scale piracy operations from thieves who counterfeit Symantec programs and offer them to customers on the Web. The company estimates at least 3.6 million bogus copies of its programs are sold annually. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/32955.html - - - - - - - - - - NIST issues security drafts The National Institute of Standards and Technology last week released drafts of two security publications to help agencies define the levels of security necessary for different types of information systems and establish or fine-tune processes for handling security incidents. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0922/web-nist-09-22-03.asp - - - - - - - - - - MPs head to US on anti spam mission MPs from the UK are to meet with Senators and officials in Washington DC next month to discuss what can be done about spam. It's the first time that a UK Parliamentary delegation has travelled to the US to discuss the issue. According to some estimates, half of all emails are now spam, of which 90 per cent of which comes from the US. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32957.html - - - - - - - - - - Families, police confront crime It took only moments for Internet-savvy Melissa Anderson to meet a possible sexual predator. "I went into the Wisconsin chat room to see if anyone wanted to talk and this screen popped up and he started to talk to me and told me he was 17," said the Menasha teenager, whose friends call her Missy. "It is just like a conversation on a phone." But, what Anderson couldn't detect and would later discover - luckily without harm - was one of what police say is an increasing number of sexual predators trolling the Internet waters. http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/archive/local_12326886.shtml - - - - - - - - - - Music's Struggle With Technology LIFE, like television, is full of reruns. And long- time watchers of technology trends say the entertainment industry's attack on peer-to-peer software - the technology at the heart of the song-swapping mania - follows a familiar pattern. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/technology/22neco.html Think Debate on Music Property Rights Began With Napster? Hardly http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/technology/22tune.html Music piracy still set to grow http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39116558,00.htm http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/music/2003-09-22-music-piray_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Credit checkers launch ID fraud watch services Britain's two largest credit reference agencies, Experian and Equifax, last week began offering online credit reports services designed to help combat ID fraud. Experian's CreditExpert service alerts consumers by email or SMS text when important changes have taken place on their credit report, which they can access online to determine if the changes are an early indication of fraud. The service costs PS49.99 per year (after a free 30 day trial). http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/32962.html - - - - - - - - - - Blunkett plays immigration ID card Home secretary uses illegal immigration issue in lobbying for identity cards. Home Secretary David Blunkett has cited the problem of illegal immigration to persuade colleagues to back his plans for national identity cards. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1143796 - - - - - - - - - - Intrusion detection team denies Trojan claim The Snort intrusion detection system does not have a back door for intruders, says the program's author. The author of Snort, an open-source Intrusion Detection System (IDS), Martin Roesch, has dismissed as untrue claims the software was 'trojaned' by attackers. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39116542,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Baltimore sells 'crown jewels' Security company Baltimore Technologies today announced a "conditional agreement" to sell its core public key infrastructure (PKI) business to US firm beTRUSTed for $5 million in cash. The sale of Baltimore's 'crown jewels' to BeTRUSTed (which is owned by Bank One's One Equity Partners) effectively winds up the company, analysts say. In a statement, Baltimore said the planned sale of its PKI business completes its disposal programme. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/32954.html - - - - - - - - - - Appliances consolidate security New products from Symantec include intrusion detection and virtual private network appliances. Symantec will today ship a range of all-in-one security appliances, the Gateway Security 5400 series. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1143786 Web services security takes shape http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5079937.html - - - - - - - - - - Blackmailed by Pop-Up Advertising Windows computer users are fuming over a new breed of pop-up ads with a dubious sales pitch: Buy our software, and protect yourself from pop-ups like this one! The gray pop-ups, known as Messenger spams, are sent using special software that taps into a Windows feature designed to enable administrators to send messages to users on a network. Not to be confused with the MSN Messenger chat program, the Messenger service is enabled by default on Windows 2000, NT and XP systems, and can be exploited to blast out tens of thousands of pop-up ads per hour. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60509,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Regal to Rid Its Theater Lobbies of Violent or Sexual Video Games Moviegoers looking for sex and violence at a Regal Entertainment Group cinema soon won't be able to stop for a quick fix in the lobby on the way to thebig screen. The nation's largest movie theater operator said Friday that it would ban video games that feature graphic violence or sexual behavior or "obscene or foul language of any kind" from its 562 movie houses. (LA Times article, free registration required) http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-regal20sep20,1,818540.story - - - - - - - - - - GPS helps find stolen cars Emergency services use satellites to pinpoint location. The same service that can unlock your car door remotely can help police find stolen or hijacked cars. NBC's Robert Hager reports. Automobile services that can unlock your car doors remotely - or help when youre in an emergency situation are helping police find stolen or hijacked cars - all due to improving satellite technology. http://www.msnbc.com/news/970309.asp - - - - - - - - - - Hand-Held Computers to Help City Collect on Parking Tickets In 1986, New York City tried to buy hand-held computers to help traffic agents issue parking tickets. Instead, the city got a giant scandal which led to the suicide of the Queens borough president, Donald R. Manes, and the convictions of the Bronx Democratic leader, Stanley M. Friedman, and several city officials but no hand- held computers. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/nyregion/22PARK.html - - - - - - - - - - Lifeline for Those Who Need One Jed Satow was outgoing and popular. But he was suffering in silence. Looking back, his mother, Donna, can only guess what went wrong, because Jed didn't act depressed. He was in his second year of a special program for learning-disabled students at the University of Arizona. Had he been worried about his grades? Distraught over a breakup with his girlfriend? http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,60418,00.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. 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