NewsBits for November 4, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ New York man pleads guilty to Internet death threat A former Veterans Administration law enforcement officer from New York state will serve six months of home confinement for threatening to kill a Rapid City woman through e-mail. Edward S. Grenawalt, 47, of Yonkers, N.Y., pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court in Rapid City to one count of making a threatening communication and was sentenced to two years probation. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-11-04-death-threat-guilty_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Israeli man charged with hacking Mossad An Israeli man has been arrested over accusations he hacked into a recruitment web site run by Mossad, Israel's main intelligence agency. The 23-year-old man, who is yet to be identified, has been charged in a Jerusalem court over the alleged attack, Israel Radio reported yesterday. AP reports that the nature of the charges or even the date of the alleged security breech of the Mossad-run site remains unclear. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33768.html - - - - - - - - - - Ukrainian Hacker has been caught red-handed Officers of Economic Crimes Department in Sergiev Posad (near to Moscow) detained the hacker who has stolen the unique computer program. The swindler- programmer with all his might was selling the stolen intellectual property until he was caught red-handed. http://www.crime-research.org/news/2003/11/Mess0401.html - - - - - - - - - - WorldPay floored by malicious attack WorldPay - the Royal Bank of Scotland's Internet payment outfit - appears to have been floored by a malicious attack. The site fell over just before 8.00am this morning and hasn't been seen since. Detail are still sketchy and the full extent of the problem is not yet known. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33777.html - - - - - - - - - - Chinese defend 'cyber-dissident' Several dozen Chinese academics, reporters and scholars have called on Beijing to release detained "cyber-dissident" Du Daobin and protect freedom of speech. In an open letter addressed to Premier Wen Jiabao, some of the activists said the late- October detention of Internet essayist Du was groundless, a copy obtained by Reuters on Tuesday said. http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1104_2-5101696.html - - - - - - - - - - Worms quiet in October Despite a new virus, Mimail.C, hitting inboxes worldwide over the last few days, the virus chart, detailing the most prevalent viruses during October shows very little variation in the worms which have been plaguing systems for the past few weeks. In the aftermath of the virus double whammy that was Sobig and Blaster that wreaked havoc on e-mail systems during the late summer, analysts and antivirus experts were primed for another outbreak on the same scale, which has so far failed to materialize, leaving October's virus chart spilling over with old 'favorites'. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5101966.html Destructive MiMail variant hits web http://www.vnunet.com/News/1146971 Sex and the City worms promise illicit thrills http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33774.html - - - - - - - - - - RIAA and DirecTV file more suits The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) legal actions against illegal file sharing activities continue apace, with 80 new suits filed this week and 156 in total, from its first batch of suits and the batch of 204 letters it sent out last week, settling out of court. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/33762.html Group calls for peace talks in P2P wars http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39117597,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Students buck DMCA threat When Diebold Election Systems learned that its internal e-mail correspondence had popped up on the Web, it used a common legal tactic: sending cease-and-desist letters to Webmasters. But in the months since the North Canton, Ohio-based company began trying to rid the Internet of those copyrighted files, it has arrived at a very unusual impasse. Far from vanishing, the files have appeared on more than 50 Web sites, run mostly by students who claim Diebold has a suspiciously cozy relationship with the Republican Party and that the e-mail conversations demonstrate its election software is flawed and should not be trusted. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5101623.html - - - - - - - - - - 'DDoS' Attacks Still Pose Threat to Internet On October 21, 2002, people around the world cruised through cyberspace the way they do every day -- bidding on auctions, booking airline reservations, sending e-mail -- all the while unaware that someone was working overtime to try to bring the Internet to its knees. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61714-2003Nov4.html - - - - - - - - - - Crooks stalking net banks MAFIA scams and child pornography have quickly become a focal point of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC), launched earlier this year. Australian investigators are working closely with authorities in the US, Britain and the Netherlands to crack down on identity theft and trafficking in child pornography. http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,7734561%5E15841%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Congressman Puts Cybersecurity Plan on Hold A congressional plan to require publicly traded companies to get computer security audits will be put on hold while technology businesses try to come up with a proposal of their own. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63587-2003Nov4.html Cybercrime strikes U.S. economy http://www.crime-research.org/news/2003/11/Mess0404.html - - - - - - - - - - Security fears over UK 'snooper's charter' Human rights watchdog Privacy International (PI) will today warn a House of Lords conference that government proposals to stockpile details of all phone calls and Internet access made by the entire population of the UK will create grave dangers for both privacy and security. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33765.html - - - - - - - - - - Spam Wars: Filters Strike Back Fearing that spammers are increasingly finding ways to slip their unwanted messages past the current generation of filtering technologies, activists are taking a second look at a proposal to use denial-of-service attacks in the fight against spam. Such attacks, which are illegal and can disrupt a company's communications network by burying its servers in unnecessary requests, have traditionally been associated with pranksters who use viruses to distribute their attack software on thousands of computers. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,61012,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2 Telia blocks spam-sending Zombie PCs http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/33763.html - - - - - - - - - - New smartcards to end AU satellite TV piracy Pay television operators Austar and Foxtel have teamed up to introduce new smartcards to combat satellite TV piracy in Australia. The new smartcard will replace the existing smartcard that is installed in set-top boxes to enable them to receive and read the satellite signal. The new version of the card has been not been compromised by pirates anywhere in the world, according to the two companies. http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/communications/story/0,2000048620,20280535,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Panther bitten by second data damaging bug Mac OS X 10.3's FileVault system, which protects each user's home folder with on-the-fly 128-but AES data encryption, has been found to contain a data-damaging glitch, Apple has admitted. The bug manifests itself as a request to regain lost disk space in the encrypted directory. If the user responds in the affirmative, FileVault's reclamation process damages the user's keychain data. Keychain is the Mac OS' secure password storage system, allowing passwords to be accessed through a single master code. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/33769.html - - - - - - - - - - Tivoli upgrade eases security management IBM Tivoli's risk management software has gained automated security, allowing enterprise customers to define and run their own security requirements without technical expertise. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1147245 - - - - - - - - - - Veritas announces data-tracking product Continuing a tech industry push on regulatory compliance, Veritas Software announced a product to help companies abide by rules and manage their data. The storage software company on Tuesday introduced "Veritas Data Lifecycle Manager 5.0," which aims to help organizations meet regulatory requirements for data management and retention. Veritas said the software is designed to handle e-mail and file archiving in Microsoft Exchange and Windows NT file system formats. The product is slated to be released during the first quarter of 2004. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5101657.html Abandon data retention plans, urge privacy groups http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39117600,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Ex-hackers 'rubbish at security' Don't employ former hackers to safeguard systems, warn experts. Companies should stop hiring hackers to beef up security - not for ethical reasons but because they are no good at it, according to experts. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1147140 - - - - - - - - - - Security--why don't we get it? We were lucky. I know this statement seems unbelievable to anyone who spent hours cleaning up after these worms. But the cold truth is that these worms barked more loudly than they bit. If their malicious payloads had been as effective as their propagation techniques, the computing infrastructure which we all rely could easily have been devastated. http://news.com.com/2010-7355_3-5101632.htmlupon EC site to combat IT crime http://www.whatpc.co.uk/News/1146959 Criminal and Legal Aspects of Fighting Computer Crime http://www.crime-research.org/library/Golubev_nov.html - - - - - - - - - - FBIs Trilogy rollout delayed; CSC misses deadline The FBI must delay taking Trilogy, its enterprisewide investigative system, fully live because Computer Sciences Corp. has missed a delivery deadline for a component of the third and final phase. GSAs Federal Systems Integration Management Center, which is the contracting agency for the project, announced the delay late yesterday. CSCs failure to meet its delivery date for the Phase 3 information presentation component will prevent the FBI from deploying the third component, the Virtual Case File, by Dec. 13 as planned, GSA said in a statement. http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/24045-1.html - - - - - - - - - - Baby monitor traps would-be robber A woman in Germany was surprised when the intercom system she was using to monitor her sleeping baby picked up a radio conversation in which a luckless would-be thief described his bungled robbery of a nearby bar. "Instead of hearing her baby's wails, the mother got the 46-year-old's confession. She then informed police," authorities in the western city of Bochum said in a statement. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/04/offbeat.germany.babyphone.reut/index.html *********************************************************** Computer Forensics Training - Online. 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