NewsBits for April 16, 2004 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ Former Coach Pleads Guilty On Child Porn Charges A former Iowa State assistant basketball coach has been sentenced to two years in prison for receiving child pornography. Randy Brown pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court. A possession of child pornography charge was dropped as part of a plea agreement. He was charged last year after federal authorities searched his home and office and found computers that contained images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. He also was ordered to serve three years probation after he is released from prison. Brown was an assistant basketball coach at I.S.U. from 1999 to 2003. http://www.kwwl.com/Global/story.asp?S=1791744 - - - - - - - - - - Offender accused of new sex crime A convicted sex offender arranged for a California preteen girl to send an explicit photo of herself to the Minnesota state hospital where he was undergoing treatment. That's what a federal grand jury alleged Thursday when it indicted 39-year-old Dennis Mentzos Jr. of Brooklyn Park. Mentzos is housed at a secure psychiatric hospital in Moose Lake, Minn., the same place where he was staying in 2001 when he was corresponding by mail with the victim, identified only as a San Jose, Calif., girl who was 11 or 12 years old at the time, according to federal and California authorities. http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/8442744.htm?1c - - - - - - - - - - Teen saves Gates from hackers, gets nothing A teenager who discovered a security hole in Windows and worked with Redmond for six months to fix the problem has received his reward from the multi-billion dollar company: a mere note of thanks on its website. 19-year-old Matt Thompson from Aberdeen was newly employed with a local IT firm after leaving college when he discovered the security hole in the Jet Database Engine - which if exploited would have let hackers take control of a user's PC and given virus writers reason to smile. http://www.silicon.com/software/security/0,39024655,39120038,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - US proposes rigorous spam sentencing The US Sentencing Commission (USSC) sent its proposals for sentencing spammers off to Congress this week. Offences under the recently-introduced Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM Act) will be treated as a felony. Criminal sanctions apply where spam is sent using someone else's computer without their permission or where bulk mailers misrepresent the source of a message. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/16/spam_sentencing/ - - - - - - - - - - Bush: Renew Patriot Act or Else Declaring the Patriot Act a vital tool in the war on terror, President Bush says Congress would place the nation at greater risk of attack if it fails to renew the law's wide-ranging law enforcement powers. Key elements of the post-Sept. 11 law are set to expire next year and "some politicians in Washington act as if the threat to America will also expire on that schedule," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63109,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Global P2P jihad stumbles The legal debate surrounding peer-to-peer file- swapping sites has shifted up a gear in the past few months, beginning with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filing hundreds of lawsuits against serial downloaders, who they claim are costing the industry millions. But the crusade against copyright infringement has met more than a few stumbling blocks. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/16/riaa_crusade/ - - - - - - - - - - Former anti-piracy 'bag man' turns on DirecTV A one-time enforcer in DirecTV's anti-piracy campaign is suing his ex-employer for wrongful discharge, after he allegedly resigned rather than continue to prosecute the company's controversial war against buyers of hacker- friendly smart card equipment. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8472 - - - - - - - - - - Search and Seizure: Porn Hunter For $10 a month, a small company offered access to a search tool that would scour electronic bulletin boards for millions of "uncensored" movies and photographs and serve up "an all- you-can-eat taste of 'the Internet gone wild!'" Voicenet Communications executives said they didn't know users also were using their system to access child pornography until January, when authorities seized the computer servers that ran their "QuikVue" search program, a lawyer for the company said. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63111,00.html - - - - - - - - - - How secure is your handheld? The No. 1 threat to the sensitive data stored on your handheld device or smart phone remains physically losing the device, but other threats are looming on the handheld horizon. "When you send a defective PDA to the manufacturer for tech support, they usually give you a new one and then resell the old one," said John Girard, vice president and research director at Gartner Inc. "Buying dead machines is an ideal method of pursuing identity theft." http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,92338,00.html - - - - - - - - - - The average PC: spyware hotel PCs scanned using a free scanning service from US ISP giant EarthLink harboured an average of 28 items of spyware, according to figures published yesterday. Earthlink's service, which uses Webroot's Spy Audit detection program, found that most of the items were harmless cookies. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/16/spyware_audit/ http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_title=PCs_Infested_with____Pieces_of_Spyware&story_id=23732 http://www.vnunet.com/News/1154438 http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39152266,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Spammer business on the rise Spam-business grows, its technical capabilities change, spammers have more and more servers, more money to hire programmers and to pay for hosting. The number of spammers increases as this business is attractive and growing. http://www.crime-research.org/news/16.04.2004/206 U.K. spammers elude shutdown http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5193157.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39152267,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Vulnerability database goes live The Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB), which was developed to catalog and describe the Internet's security vulnerabilities, has opened for public use. Created by members of the security community, the goal of the OSVDB is "to provide accurate, detailed, current, and unbiased technical information" about security vulnerabilities, according to the organization's Web site. The OSVDB project was launched in 2002 because at that time there was no independent, community-operated vulnerability database in existence, according to a statement on the project's Web site. http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/holes/story/0,10801,92334,00.html - - - - - - - - - - PGP to integrate anti-virus defences PGP Corporation and Symantec are to integrate encryption and anti-virus technology. PGP Universal will incorporate Symantec's AntiVirus Scan Engine to thwart attempts to smuggle viruses into corporates via encrypted email. Traditionally, AV and encryption have not been particularly complementary. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8470 - - - - - - - - - - How cooperation can beat viruses Prevention truly is better than cure - and there are steps that can be taken to teach a new computing generation to protect themselves. Throughout this latest swarm of Netsky and Bagle computer viruses, I've been trying to dream up a way we can all work together to reduce the number of viruses and worms spread on the Internet. It's not easy. http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/robertvamosi/0,39020688,39152276,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Counterterrorism officials testify on IT challenges On Wednesday, a succession of some of the nation's top counterterrorism officials delivered a series of startling and at times frightening revelations about the lack of cooperation between federal intelligence agencies prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. From IT infrastructure upgrades to even basic e-mail capabilities at the Department of Homeland Security, officials acknowledged that it could take another year or more to completely transition the nation's homeland security and intelligence agencies from a brittle hodgepodge of government bureaucracies to a nimble, integrated and mobile enterprise. http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,92333,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Innocent Brits labelled as crooks Almost 200 Brits have been wrongly labelled as criminals because of mistakes in records. By incorrectly linking 193 people to various crimes recorded on the police national computer (PNC) the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) may have inadvertently blighted the employment prospects of scores of innocent individuals. The Criminal Records Bureau vets the records of people hoping to work with children or vulnerable members of society. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/16/criminal_records_snafu/ - - - - - - - - - - Danes tag kids with Bluetooth Copenhagen's famous Tivoli Gardens opened its gates today for the Summer season and, for the first time, mums and dads do not have to worry about their kids getting lost in one of the world's oldest amusement parks. Tivoli Gardens has introduced a Bluetooth surveillance system for parents with small children. The Child Spotter Service is based on Bluetooth wristbands developed by Danish company Bluetags and 63 access points manufactured by another Danish outfit, Blip Systems. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/16/bluetooth_tagging/ - - - - - - - - - - Cosmic 419er lost in space For aficionados of the advance fee fraud email genre, we have a truly delicious 419 solicitation to brighten your Friday. Just when you thought you'd heard it all, try the one about the Nigerian astronaut stuck on Soyuz: Subject: Nigerian Astronaut Wants To Come Home http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/16/cosmic_419er/ *********************************************************** 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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