NewsBits for May 6, 2005 ************************************************************ Three British men jailed over software piracy ring Three British men who gained no money by helping crack security codes to run one of the largest international software piracy rings on the Internet were sentenced Friday to jail terms ranging from 18 months to 2 1/2 years.The three men -- plus a fourth who received a suspended jail sentence -- were behind the British end of DrinkOrDie, an international code cracking group that U.S. and British authorities believe cost the software industry billions of dollars in sales every year. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/11581750.htm http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=02000000EQIW http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/06/drinkordie_sentencing/ http://www.vnunet.com/news/1162897 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5698002.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39197662,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Police: Teacher had sex with girls A Leland High School teacher had sex with at least two female students and used his chemistry classroom as a setting to take sexually explicit photographs of the girls with a Web camera, San Jose police said. Earl Thomas Roske, 41, was arrested Friday afternoon at his home on San Tomas Aquino Road on a $1 million warrant, said San Jose police spokesman Enrique Garcia. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/11589224.htm - - - - - - - - - - PC-dumping ex-prosecutor mired in teen porn scandal A former Dutch prosecutor, who resigned last year after it emerged he had chucked his old PC out with the trash is in trouble again. The PC, which contained hundreds of pages of confidential information about high-profile cases, as well as former Dutch prosecutor Joost Tonino's social security number and personal tax files, also revealed that he had an appetite for pornography. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/06/dutch_prosecutor_porn_shame/ - - - - - - - - - - Calif. Violent Video Game Bill Passes Committee California lawmakers reconsidered and approved a bill in committee on Thursday that would ban the sale of violent video games to minors. The California Assembly's arts committee passed the bill by Democratic Assembly Member Leland Yee on a 6-4 vote after taking it up for reconsideration. The bill had failed to pass the committee on Tuesday when it fell a vote short of a necessary six votes. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1813572,00.asp http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-rosso8may08,1,1669493.story - - - - - - - - - - NASCIO goes to Washington over cybersecurity concerns Twenty-one state chief information officers met this week with congressional lawmakers and their staffs on Capitol Hill to discuss concerns over cybersecurity, data sharing, privacy, and health information exchange. For the fourth consecutive year, members from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers are holding their midyear conference this week in Washington, D.C., to remind federal officials that the association can be a valuable resource on a range of issues. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-05-06-cios-in-washington_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Trojan hidden in Tony Blair email hack message ANTI VIRUS firm Sophos said a message sent out earlier today claiming Tony Blair's email was hacked conceals a trojan worm. Sophos said that if you get one of these emails and click on the link, it will install the trojan and run a password stealer. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23064 http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39197493,00.htm http://www.vnunet.com/news/1162892 - - - - - - - - - - Sober worm makes a comeback The Sober.P worm is still spreading fast and made up almost 5 percent of all e-mail traffic on Friday morning, according to a U.K. antivirus company. Sophos said that the worm accounts for around 77 percent of all virus activity it is seeing. The company said the Sober variant is still spreading, even though large corporations appear to have patched the vulnerabilities that the virus uses to propagate. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5698411.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39197491,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Google speed bump draws scorn Google has raised privacy and security hackles once again, this time by developing an application that accelerates Web surfing but can also delete pages or serve up password-protected content. The complaints center on the search giant's Web Accelerator, which was released on Wednesday. Downloadable software for broadband users, Web Accelerator is intended to speed access to Web pages by serving up cached or compressed copies of sites from Google's servers. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5698447.html http://www.crime-research.org/news/06.05.2005/1212/ - - - - - - - - - - PSP disc protection cracked It was never going to take very long, of course, but hackers have at last worked out how to bypass the copy protection scheme used by Sony to lock down content on the PlayStation Portable's Universal Media Disc (UMD). Piracy doesn't appear to be an issue yet, since there's no way of copying games pulled from an official 1.8GB UMD onto a fresh disc, UMD being, for now, a read-only medium. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/06/psp_umd_cracked/ http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5697315.html - - - - - - - - - - Missing backup tapes spur encryption at Time Warner The data security move follows a loss of info on 600,000 employees. Time Warner Inc. this week said it will "quickly" begin encrypting all data saved to backup tapes after 40 tapes with personal information on about 600,000 current and former employees were lost in transit to a storage facility. http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,101589,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Key-loggers the new phisherman's friend Phishing attacks are increasingly using key- loggers as another method to steal personal information, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). These attacks usually redirect users to a bogus website and record details once they are entered. But the past six months has seen a tenfold rise in the number of phishing sites hosting key-logging software which can be transferred to a user's PC via an improperly patched browser. http://www.vnunet.com/news/1162890 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5695874.html http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=02000000EOMK Spyware gets into phishers' tackle box http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39197312,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Protect passwords? Not if latte is free Would you give up your computer passwords for a Starbucks latte? ``imasexyguy'' did. So did ``raiderfan.'' The football fanatic even gave it to a radio reporter -- to put on the air. And then he told the interviewer he still wasn't going to change it. In a marketing stunt designed to shine a light on sloppy personal cybersecurity, VeriSign on Thursday offered passersby in downtown San Francisco $3 coffee coupons if they would reveal their passwords to survey-takers. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/11580658.htm Americans are pants at password security http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/06/verisign_password_survey/ - - - - - - - - - - Microsoft: Exchange encryption on the cards Mail servers running on the new version of Microsoft Exchange will encrypt Internet traffic using open standards, a Microsoft executive said. "If two customers are running E12, it will automatically create a secure connection", said Kim Akers, Microsoft Exchange group senior director. Exchange 12 or E12 is the code name for the next version, and is slated for late 2006. http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/0,2000061733,39190848,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Microsoft to sound early alert for flaws Microsoft will introduce a security advisory service on Tuesday that will confirm reports of flaws and provide a workaround until a patch is released. The pilot program of Microsoft Security Advisories will strive to issue an alert within one business day of the company becoming aware of a problem and offer ways to mitigate it, a Microsoft representative said. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5697945.html http://computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,101576,00.html Microsoft promises Exchange improvements http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39197490,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Los Alamos lab director quits after two troubled years The director of the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab announced his departure Friday after two tumultuous years during which he made enemies with his hard-nosed efforts to stop financial abuses and security lapses. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/11584213.htm - - - - - - - - - - Will battling spyware be Spitzer's next crusade? The windowless, cluttered 10-by-15-foot storeroom on the third floor of a Manhattan government building seems an unlikely setting for Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's next big thing. But purveyors of spyware and adware and even the major companies that advertise in the surreptitious downloads fear exactly that from the Democrat dubbed the ``Sheriff of Wall Street.'' http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/11583583.htm - - - - - - - - - - How Real ID will affect you What's all the fuss with the Real ID Act about? President Bush is expected to sign an $82 billion military spending bill soon that will, in part, create electronically readable, federally approved ID cards for Americans. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the package--which includes the Real ID Act--on Thursday. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5697111.html - - - - - - - - - - Your Identity, Open to All A search for personal data on ZabaSearch.com -- one of the most comprehensive personal-data search engines on the net -- tends to elicit one of two reactions from first-timers: terror or curiosity. Which reaction often depends on whether you are searching for someone else's data, or your own. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67407,00.html - - - - - - - - - - The end of spyware? Fat chance Why should anyone be surprised that the epidemic of spyware--and its kissing cousin, adware--is getting worse? The raison d'etre for this sort of thing is as American as apple pie. Call it the unexpected outgrowth of entrepreneurial capitalism. Or if you're wont to take a more cynical view of our affairs, chalk it up to the seamier side of human nature. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5697796.html - - - - - - - - - - Big Brother Isn't Here Yet There's an old saying that goes, "Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail." It's attributed to President Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who in 1929 shut down the office in the U.S. State Department responsible for breaking codes to read messages sent between embassies of other countries and their capitals. http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/05/06/cx_ah_0506diglife.html *********************************************************** 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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