NewsBits for November 6, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ Brazil police bust gang of Internet hackers Brazilian police arrested 18 Internet hackers on Wednesday in a massive operation to dismantle a gang operating across four northern states, authorities said. The operation, dubbed "Trojan Horse" and involving 205 officers, targetted a gang that stole more than $10 million last year by breaking into banks and clients computers, federal police said in a statement. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=269501 - - - - - - - - - - Officer Fired for Computer-Snooping on VIPs Chief William J. Bratton has fired Los Angeles Police Officer Kelly Chrisman for using department computers to look up confidential law enforcement data on scores of celebrities. "The message is clear," Lt. Art Miller, an LAPD spokesman, said Wednesday after The Times learned of Bratton's action last week. "If officers break the law, they'll be dealt with severely." (LA Times article, free registration required) http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-chrisman6nov06,1,315192.story - - - - - - - - - - Microsoft's Newest Virus Fighter: Cash Microsoft Corp. hasn't figured out how to write software invulnerable to Internet worms and viruses. But it knows a thing or two about public relations and quite a lot about the power of money. On Wednesday, the company offered $250,000 bounties for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those behind two rogue programs that hit millions of computers this summer. (LA Times article, free registration required) http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-bounty6nov06,1,4082881.story Virus writers have a price on their head http://www.vnunet.com/News/1147523 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8303-2003Nov6.html http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2003/tc2003116_1510_tc119.htm Virus bounty 'will change nothing' http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39117658,00.htm http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,86869,00.html Windows security 'will take time' http://www.vnunet.com/News/1147517 - - - - - - - - - - Bonic gets 27 months for child porn possession Nicholas Bonic of St. John, convicted on a child pornography possession charge, was sentenced Wednesday to 27 months in federal prison. Bonic, 23, will surrender to the federal Bureau of Prisons today. Upon release, he will be required to register on sex offender listings with local authorities in communities where he lives, works, attends school, or vacations. Bonic was charged in 2000, following an investigation by the FBI and the Purdue University Police Department. http://www.post-trib.com/cgi-bin/pto-story/news/z1/11-06-03_z1_news_15.html - - - - - - - - - - E TEXAS MAN SENTENCED ON CHILD PORN CHARGES An East Texas man previously convicted of child molestation was sentenced Wednesday to five years and three months in federal prison for possessing child pornography. Larry Gene Brown, 43, Henderson, pleaded guilty in July and admitted to looking at children's pictures on the Internet for four years. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1994&dept_id=341384&newsid=10469093&PAG=461&rfi=9 - - - - - - - - - - Aurora pleads guilty; faces 3-7 years in jail Joseph Aurora, the local man charged with child pornography in Connecticut and under investigation by Florida authorities, faces 3-7 years in a New Hampshire jail after pleading guilty to child pornography charges there Thursday. The 42-year- old bowling and tennis instructor was caught last May in an Internet sting operation run by Keene, N.H., police and an investigation by Clinton police that simultaneously resulted in his arrest at a Keene motel, and a raid on his Clinton home that netted hundreds of videotapes of explicit encounters with young boys. http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10452825&BRD=1634&PAG=461&dept_id=8416&rfi=6 - - - - - - - - - - Father offered son, 7, for sex: police An Ottawa man is before the courts after allegedly molesting his seven-year-old son and offering the boy to others over the internet. The man, in his early 20s, was arrested on Oct. 25 after someone contacted police when suspicions were raised in an internet chat room. The person was worried the boy had already been sexually assaulted and had the impression the man was offering the seven year old for sex, police said. http://ottawa.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=ot_assaultcharges20031106 - - - - - - - - - - UH student faces enticement charge A University of Hawai'i student accused of using the Internet to try to lure a 13-year-old girl for sex has been indicted by a grand jury. Paul Clur, a 35- year-old UH-Manoa graduate student, was arrested last month after allegedly arranging to meet the girl at Zippy's on King Street. When he arrived, he discovered he had actually been conversing with an undercover agent. Clur is the third person in Hawai'i charged with electronic enticement of a child, a felony offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Nov/06/ln/ln13a.html - - - - - - - - - - Substitute teacher faces sex charge A substitute teacher is suspected of having sexually explicit conversations with a 15-year-old Utica girl over the Internet. Charged Wednesday with disseminating indecent material to a minor, a felony, was Timothy M. Flihan, 43, of Frankfort. The Oneida County Child Advocacy Center received a tip that Flihan was having online conversations with a minor that involved sex, officials said. http://www.uticaod.com/archive/2003/11/06/news/19368.html - - - - - - - - - - Teacher's child porn venture The owner of a northern Greek private language school was charged yesterday with selling pictures of naked children aged 6-16 on a German child pornography website. The 27-year-old Greek suspect, who taught German at a language school in Yiannitsa, some 52 kilometers west of Thessaloniki in central Macedonia, had allegedly cajoled many local schoolgirls - whom he apparently approached through Internet chatrooms - into sending him pictures of themselves undressed. Police said the suspect had also managed to obtain video footage of naked young girls with the use of a web camera. http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100018_06/11/2003_35980 - - - - - - - - - - RIP tribunal dismisses 470 privacy violations Every complaint of privacy violation made under the UK's controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act has so far been dismissed at tribunal. The RIP Act was passed in 2000, giving police, intelligence services and the Inland Revenue powers to access to communications data, such as the names and addresses of website subscribers. http://www.internet-magazine.com/news/view.asp?id=3794 - - - - - - - - - - Officials declare open season on child predators Casey Howard, an investigator for the Attorney General's office, uses one of the crime units computers on Wednesday in an effort to lure out child predators. After capturing its first child predator suspect a few weeks back at a Baton Rouge hotel, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is continuing to attempt to lure out child predators in Internet chat rooms. http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/110603/new_sexpredators001.shtml - - - - - - - - - - Internet adult business in legal battle with former models The operators of an adult-oriented Internet businesses is locked in a legal battle with two of its former models which is raising legal issues over the workplace rights of those who bare their bodies on the Web. Voyeur Dorm is suing in Hillsborough County Circuit Court two of its former models, Laura Spell and Stephanie Piccolo of Brandon, for joining a competitor's site and violating their employment contracts' noncompete clauses. Voyeur Dorm operates a subscription-based Web site that allows customers to watch young women at work and play via Internet cameras in a Tampa home. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-11-06-voyeur-dorm-suits_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Attempted attack on Linux kernel foiled An unknown intruder attempted to insert a Trojan horse program into the code of the next version of the Linux kernel, stored at a publicly accessible database. Security features of the source-code repository, known as BitKeeper, detected the illicit change within 24 hours, and the public database was shut down, a key developer said Thursday. The public database was used only to provide the latest beta, or test version, of the Linux kernel to users of the Concurrent Versions System (CVS), a program designed to manage source code. http://news.com.com/2100-7355_3-5103670.html http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7388 http://www.msnbc.com/news/990343.asp - - - - - - - - - - 'Legacy viruses' lie in wait Old viruses do not die but merely remain dormant, according to experts at an antivirus conference. Antivirus experts speaking at the Association of anti-Virus Asia Researchers (AVAR) conference have told delegates that old computer viruses are still a threat. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39117663,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Telewest blames viruses for lost broadband users The cable company has won thousands more broadband users, but says that virulent code is partly responsible for scaring others away. The swarm of viruses that plagued computer users this summer was a factor in driving some broadband users away from Telewest, the cable company said on Thursday. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,39020336,39117671,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Parliament 'didn't understand RIP Act' Peers have expressed their alarm about government attempts to widen the scope of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, claiming the passing of the original law was 'a nightmare'. Legislation brought in three years ago that allows UK law enforcement and security agencies to monitor and intercept mobile phone and email records was not properly examined by politicians because they didn't truly understand it, according to a member of the House of Lords. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39117681,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Panther Bug: Is It Really Dead? The nasty hard-drive-eating bug in Panther has been resolved, according to Apple Computer. But some experts say poppycock -- upgrading to the latest version of Mac OS X is like playing Russian roulette with your data. As previously reported, there's a glitch in the Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) installer that renders some -- but not all -- external FireWire drives inoperable. http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61107,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Employers want security certifications Peter Stephenson, an IT security consultant, says he wouldn't bother getting a security certification unless it helped feed his family. In his case, it did. Some security professionals have begun to question the value of their most highly-valued certifications, as more and more people pass those tests, said Stephenson, a consultant at Eastern Michigan University's Center for Regional and National Security, during a presentation at the Computer Security Institute's (CSI) Computer Security Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C. http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/1105seccert.html E-police unlikely to get bigger budget http://www.vnunet.com/News/1147516 - - - - - - - - - - Snag in next-gen Wi-Fi security unearthed Security researchers have identified a potential security problem involving use of the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) protocol, the second generation wireless LAN security standard. Although WPA itself remains cryptographically secure, a method used for making the technology easier for consumers to use is susceptible to attack, according to a paper by Robert Moskowitz, senior technical director at the ICSA Labs division of TruSecure. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/33829.html Weakness Reported in Wireless Security Protocol http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1375027,00.asp Is wireless world a secure one for travelers? http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2003-11-06-wireless-travel_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Start-up makes quantum leap into cryptography A 4-year-old start-up has begun shipments of what it says are the world's first commercial data-scrambling devices that use the radically new technology of quantum encryption. Magiq Technologies, a privately held firm based in New York City, said this week it is selling Navajo Secure Gateway for between $50,000 and $100,000 a unit. It uses a combination of quantum cryptography and traditional cryptography to provide a virtual private network (VPN) running over fiber-optic cable that's designed to be completely secure against all eavesdroppers. http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-5103373.html - - - - - - - - - - National ID scheme not on the cards After months of political wrangling, the government has finally decided not to press ahead with its controversial national ID card scheme - for now at least. The government has not ruled out introducing the cards completely, but instead has postponed introducing them until later on in the decade, according to a cabinet statement. http://www.silicon.com/management/government/0,39024677,39116790,00.htm http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33827.html - - - - - - - - - - Study: Millions delete all music files More than a million households deleted all the digital music files they had saved on their PCs in August, a sign that the record industry's anti-piracy tactics are hitting home, research company NPD Group said. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/11/06/music.piracy.reut/index.html Final countdown begins for file-sharers http://www.vnunet.com/News/1147647 - - - - - - - - - - Why new privacy law still needs tightening WITH hindsight it seems incredible that mobile phone text messaging was once seen as a toy suitable only for children. Yet until 1998, the networks usually didnt charge for a service they regarded as a novelty. However, as the mobile phone has become an essential part of modern life, texting too has increased in popularity - last year more than 16 billion texts were sent. http://www.business.scotsman.com/technology.cfm?id=1214392003 - - - - - - - - - - Pseudonymous blogging safe (for now) A right wing columnist and Paul Krugman-obsessive has abandoned his legal threat to unmask a popular pseudonymous weblogger. The threat by author Donald Luskin was pretty explicit, and characterized as a SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) action, the prime purpose of which is to deter criticism. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33837.html - - - - - - - - - - High-tech security SO you're on a tropical beach, sipping a daiquiri, and your cellphone rings. You pick it up, look at the video display and see your living room, your expensive stereo system and a burglar about to make his move. Press a few buttons, and the stereo turns on, full blast. Seconds later, your voice is broadcast through the house, and you startle the burglar as you yell: "I see you yes, you, in the living room by the north window! Get out of my house, the police are on their way!" (LA Times article, free registration required) http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-hm-homeworks6.2nov06,1,47336.story *********************************************************** 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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