NewsBits for June 24, 2004 ************************************************************ Teen guilty of mobile spamming A teenager who sent an obscene text message to 15,000 cell phone users has become the first computer whizkid in Russia to be convicted of sending spam. The unnamed university student from the Urals city of Chelyabinsk hacked into one of Russia's biggest mobile phone operators and used a special program to send the message, according to the Interfax news agency. He was handed a one-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay a $103 (3,000 ruble) fine. http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1105_2-5246571.html - - - - - - - - - - Former constable pleads guilty to local sex abuse charges A Franklin Circuit Court judge sentenced a former county constable to 30 years in prison Tuesday, after he pleaded guilty to various sex abuse charges. Hugh Russ Campbell, 59, pleaded guilty to various charges including rape, sodomy and sexually abusing a young girl. On Monday, a federal judge sentenced Campbell to 30 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to 19 counts of child pornography charges. He was arrested in December after undercover FBI agents claimed he sent out child pornography over the Internet. Investigators later found that Campbell had produced his own child pornography images. http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/8995104.htm - - - - - - - - - - Former Navy physicist Sentenced for Child Pornography A former Navy physicist is sentenced today for charges he tried to have sex with a minor. Fourty-six-year-old La Plata resident George Paul Chambers was sentenced today to six years in jail, followed by three years of supervised release. Chambers was arrested in June of 2002, after months of "chats" with an FBI undercover agent who was posing as a 13-year-old girl. Chambers contested the charges, saying he was only role-playing. He said that he didn't really think he was talking to an underage girl in the America Online chat room called "I Love Older Men." He said he went to the mall only out of curiosity and not to have sex with a minor. http://wjz.com/localstories/local_story_175185148.html - - - - - - - - - - 9 arrested in Internet sex sting Ada County sheriff's detectives posed as minors in a weeklong Internet sting operation that resulted in the arrest of nine men. The men, all from the Treasure Valley area except for one from Nyssa, Ore., all attempted to solicit sex from minors in Internet chat rooms, made arrangements to meet the minors, and went to the meeting place before they were arrested, Ada County Undersheriff Gary Raney said Wednesday. Raney said he hoped the sting operation, which began June 14 and ended Monday, would help parents understand the risk kids face by getting into online chat rooms. http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040624/NEWS01/406240348/1002/NEWS03 - - - - - - - - - - Queens Teachers Arrested In Internet Sex Sting Two Queens teachers have been charged in separate incidents with trying to set up sexual encounters with an undercover detective they thought was a minor. The Queens D-A says the teachers, 34-year- old Anthony Laufgraben and 53-year-old Daniel Gettens, are also charged with dissemination of indecent materials and child endangerment. The D-A says Laufgraben, a social studies teacher at Benjamin Cardozo High School, communicated with a detective posing as a 14-year-old boy, then set up a meeting at a restaurant in Queens where he was arrested Friday. http://1010wins.com/topstories/winstopstories_story_175075114.html - - - - - - - - - - PCTV worker admits to having child porn A local television company employee admitted Wednesday that he had child pornography in his home and disseminated it over the Internet last year. Ronald J. Peters, 47, of Cherry Street pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Court to two felony counts of sexual abuse of children by possessing and disseminating child pornography. http://www.pottstownmercury.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12076761&BRD=1674&PAG=461&dept_id=18041&rfi=6 - - - - - - - - - - Texas AG Nets Indictments Of Suspected Child Predators Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today appeared before a Walker County grand jury to secure indictments against six Houston-area men and a Fort worth man arrested during an undercover operation in Huntsville earlier this year. In making the arrests, investigators with the Attorney General's Cyber Crimes Unit relied on satellite technology to access Internet chat rooms from remote locations. http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php?story=2004062319350167 - - - - - - - - - - Anti-spyware bill heads for House A congressional panel approved an anti-spyware bill on Thursday amid criticism from technology companies, a move that clears the way for a floor vote by the full House of Representatives. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 45-4 in favor of the Spy Act, which targets software that hides in personal computers and secretly monitors people's activities or displays unwanted advertising. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5246876.html http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5288553/ http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/06/24/spyware.reut/index.html - - - - - - - - - - File-Trading Bill Stokes Fury A new Senate bill aimed at punishing companies that encourage people to steal copyright materials met with a deluge of criticism from file-trading companies and tech industry groups that believe it could hamper development of new technologies. Sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the Inducing of Copyright Infringement Act of 2004 would, in the senator's words, "simply confirm that existing law would allow artists to bring civil actions against parties who intend to induce others to infringe copyrights." http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63969,00.html http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_title=File-Sharing-Bill-Provokes-Wrath&story_id=25555 - - - - - - - - - - Child Pornography on the Internet--What to do? If you are a parent of a child between the ages of 10-17 it is likely that your child is receiving unsolicited pornographic images. These are typically sent by bots to everyone who enters a chat room where children congregate. If you dont believe this then all you need to do is set up a profile describing yourself as a 14 year old and start entering a few chat rooms. It will not be long before you will start getting bombarded by unsolicited instant messages (IMs) with embedded hyperlinks that lead to pornography. http://www.crime-research.org/news/24.06.2004/446/ Child porn a deadly virus http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=078f966c-5abe-4eb7-afad-758927fc4281 - - - - - - - - - - RFID, where do you want to go today? Microsoft plans to publish this fall details of forthcoming products that support radio frequency identification, a wireless technology that could help retailers keep track of merchandise. Javed Sikander, Microsoft's RFID program manager, said on Thursday that the company plans to add support for the wireless technology to its core software and is also working on RFID products for small businesses. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5246910.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39158619,00.htm RFID chips on kids makes Legoland safer http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/protectingid/0,3800002220,39121670,00.htm UK to get RFID educational centre http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/emergingtech/0,39020357,39158616,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Text mining tools take on unstructured data Companies are increasingly using text mining tools to harness the information in their unstructured data. Unstructured data, most of it in the form of text files, typically accounts for 85% of an organization's knowledge stores, but it's not always easy to find, access, analyze or use. "We are drowning in information but are starving for knowledge," says Mani Shabrang, technical leader in research and development at Dow Chemical Co.'s business intelligence (BI) center in Midland, Mich. "Information is only useful when it can be located and synthesized into knowledge." http://computerworld.com/databasetopics/businessintelligence/story/0,10801,93968,00.html - - - - - - - - - - How to securely use a password self-service solution Organizations are discovering an easy way to reduce the workload of IT and help desk administrators -- password self-service. According to Gartner Inc., password-reset and user-identification problems represent 15% to 35% of help desk call volume -- with a typical cost per call of $10 to $31. Even this humble author, looking through his recent trouble tickets, must sheepishly admit to four requests for resets over the past nine months. http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,,94044,00.html How to be smart about corporate e-mail http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,,93867,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Reducing downtime at the data centre The IT manager must protect servers without limiting administrator access rights. Each week vnunet.com asks a different expert to give their views on recent virus and security issues, with advice, warnings and information on the latest threats. This week Paul Smith, UK country manager with KVM switching and connectivity company Avocent, considers how to minimise potential physical security threats to data servers. http://www.vnunet.com/news/1156158 - - - - - - - - - - Mail Security Service Model Marches On I love the service model. Some guys (I'm one of them) like running their own systems and tuning them and being "self-sufficient," but for almost any real company out there running your own perimeter, security is not core to your business. Why not hire someone else to do it? Even IBM's in the business now. E-mail security is a great candidate for outsourcing for a number of reasons. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1738&ncid=1208&e=1&u=/zd/20040624/tc_zd/130172 - - - - - - - - - - Calls for better intelligence data sharing intensify How to reform the nation's intelligence community has become a popular debate in Washington this summer, and a panel of experts on Thursday offered more ideas. The issue has become central to the investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the commission looking into it is expected to release a report next month. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0604/062404tdpm2.htm - - - - - - - - - - DHS officials duck questions on passenger screening system For the third straight day on Capitol Hill, an official from the Homeland Security Department fended off questions about the development of a system to screen airline passengers that has raised privacy concerns. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0604/062404tdpm1.htm More False Information From TSA http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63958,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Cop on the beat is now a walking database A police officer stops you on the street, then taps something into a device in the palm of his hand. The next minute, he knows who your relatives are, who lives in your house, who your neighbors are, the kind of car you drive or boat you own, whether you've been sued and various other tidbits about your life. Science fiction? Hardly. A growing number of police departments now have instant access via handheld wireless devices to vast commercial databases that contain details on just about anyone officers encounter on the beat. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/9003255.htm - - - - - - - - - - Germany tops porn Web hosting superleague Germany is the Web host with the most - at least in terms of pornography. The .de TLD boasts 10,030,200 pages of smut, beating the UK's 8,506,800 pages into the runners-up spot. That's according to Secure Computing, which has just carried out a study of the global distribution of pornographic web pages by the top 100 individual country domains - excluding US domains - using the Secure Computing SmartFilter(R) v4 Control List. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/24/porn_hosting_league/ *********************************************************** 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. Reproduction of this text is encouraged; however copies may not be sold, and NewsBits (www.newsbits.net) should be cited as the source of the information. Copyright 2000-2004, NewsBits.net, Campbell, CA.