NewsBits for September 14, 2005
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Teen Pleads Guilty to Hacking Paris Hilton's Phone
A Massachusetts teenager has pleaded guilty
to hacking into the cell-phone account of hotel
heiress and Hollywood celebrity Paris Hilton,
a high-profile stunt by the youngest member
of the same hacking group federal investigators
say was responsible for a series of electronic
break-ins at data giant LexisNexis.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/13/AR2005091301423.html
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5865391.html
http://news.com.com/Hilton+hacker+sentenced+to+juvenile+hall/2100-7349_3-5865391.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9343344/
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-09-14-hilton-hacker-jail-time_x.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/hacking/story/0,10801,104620,00.html
http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39152303,00.htm
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Fort Carson records stolen
Soldiers, civilians are urged to watch for signs
of fraud Fort Carson has cautioned thousands of
its soldiers to watch their credit records carefully
following the theft of computerized personnel records
from the post. Thieves broke into the Soldier Readiness
Processing center over the weekend of Aug. 20-21 and
stole four computer hard drives containing thousands
of personnel records, Fort Carson spokeswoman Dee
McNutt said Monday.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_4076654,00.html
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Personal data exposed via eBay storage
A trawl of 150 pieces of removable storage
available for auction turned up a rich mix
of passwords, letters, phone numbers and
addresses. Security codes, passwords, phone
numbers and home addresses are being found
in storage sold on eBay, according to a UK-
based data recovery firm.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39218125,00.htm
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Child porn sentence of 30 years is upheld
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a 30-year
sentence for a Fulton, Mo., man convicted on child
pornography charges. Jack Wayne Rogers was sentenced
in April 2004 after investigators found about 1,000
images of child pornography at his home and business.
Among the photographs, investigators also found
evidence that Rogers performed voluntary
nullifications, a procedure in which
a males sexual organs are removed.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/12637846.htm
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Ex-judge to go on trial in child-porn case today
Stephen W. Thompson's attorneys planned to cite
war injuries as part of an insanity defense.
After a week of jury selection, opening statements
in the child-pornography trial of former state
Superior Court Judge Stephen W. Thompson are
expected to begin in federal court in Camden
this morning. Thompson's attorneys plan to
argue an insanity defense, saying Thompson
suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder
from his Vietnam War injuries.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/new_jersey/12639305.htm
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Businessman in court over child porn
A 32-year-old East London businessman appeared
briefly in the town's magistrate's court on Tuesday
for possession of pornographic photographs of five-
year-old girls. He will remain in custody until his
next appearance on September 21, when a formal bail
application will be made, a court official said.
http://iafrica.com/news/sa/486211.htm
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Mistaken child-porn raid leads to lawsuit
Brian and Sarah Doom were shocked when police
showed up at their Wichita home accusing them
of child pornography. The Dooms had never been
in trouble with the law. On Aug. 12, 2004, they
found themselves being accused of activity that
disgusted them. But the police had the wrong house,
based on mistaken information from the Dooms'
Internet service provider, Cox Communications.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/news/local/crime_courts/12620843.htm
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Doctor in child porn case closing Waterbury office
A longtime local eye surgeon arrested in April
on charges of possession of child pornography
has notified his patients that he will close
his Wolcott Street office next week. Dr. James
R. Coppeto recently began notifying patients
by letter that they can pick up their medical
records.
http://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=27236
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Resellers slam black market in Microsoft software
The problem of fake copies of Microsoft products
in the channel is getting worse, warn software
resellers. Microsoft's UK partners are increasingly
concerned about the amount of counterfeit and
unlicensed software being sold in the UK reseller
channel, which they say is threatening the reseller
industry at large. Fake copies of Microsoft software
are most commonly distributed because it has
such a vast user base and is easier to sell
on, they warned this week.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39218126,00.htm
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New Firefox, Mozilla releases coming to fix bugs
The Mozilla Foundation plans to "shortly" release
new versions of its Firefox and Mozilla Web
browsers to address a recently disclosed serious
security bug as well as several additional flaws,
a representative said Wednesday. The decision
for new, so-called point releases was made after
the disclosure last week of a problem in the way
the browsers handle International Domain Names,
or IDNs, Web addresses that use international
characters.
http://news.com.com/New+Firefox%2C+Mozilla+releases+coming+to+fix+bugs/2100-1002_3-5865882.html
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Keyboard clicks can lead to security hacks
A new security vulnerability has been discovered:
the clickety clack of the keyboard. An audio
recording of an individual's typing can be
transposed into a transcript of what was typed,
according to University of California at Berkeley
researchers. The technique works because each key
makes a distinct sound when hit, and users, who
typically type about 300 characters a minute,
leave enough time between keystrokes for
a computer to isolate the individual sounds.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5865318.html
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Microsoft Unveils Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2
The next IE7 beta will include new capabilities
for managing tabs, zooming in on text and images,
and ActiveX security. The Internet Explorer
development team has revealed details of upcoming
key features that will land in the next beta
of IE 7. Among the features demonstrated Tuesday
at a Microsoft Professional Developer Conference
presentation, then outlined on the IE team's
blog, were Quick Tabs and Page Zoom.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170703246
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Security Patch Watch: Apple Plugs Mac OS X Java Holes
Apple Computer Inc. late Tuesday posted
a Java security update for Mac OS X to plug
five vulnerabilities that could cause system
hijack, security bypass, data manipulation
and privilege escalation attacks. In a
security advisory, Apple posted a Java
Security update for users of Mac OS X
10.3.9 and recommended that customers
running Mac OS X 10.4 or later apply
the Java 1.3.1 and 1.4.2 Release 2 update.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1859120,00.asp
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UK ID card access to be graded
The Home Office has outlined plans for controlling
access to ID card information in a bid to allay
fears over misuse and to manage the possible load
on the database system. According to the government
department, business and public sector organisations
are to be given graded access depending on need.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2142286/uk-id-card-access-graded
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And now from Visa, child porn
IF ITS not illegal, then its OK. That is the
secular, moral relativist approach to life
which I am attacking in a television programme
tomorrow evening. To take one example of where
it leads, just look (if you can bear it) at a
revolting website called lilamber.com, featuring
underage girls in provocative poses. This site,
because its girls are scantily clad rather than
naked, and are not shown as victims of obvious
abuse, counts as soft rather than hardcore porn.
It will thus not be covered by the Governments
commendable, if belated, planned legislation
against extreme sexual content on the internet.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-1775941,00.html
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Companies urged to move beyond passwords
In today's security climate, passwords are
apparently no longer enough to guarantee user
authentication. Companies are "fiddling while
Rome burns" by continuing to put their faith
in passwords to guarantee user authentication,
according to a Gartner analyst. Speaking at
the Gartner IT Security Summit in London on
Wednesday, research vice-president Ant Allan
warned that "passwords are no longer adequate
as threats against them increase."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39218136,00.htm
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Lessons Learned from a Teenage Hacker
Security pros need to learn from those who
succeed in hackingsuch as a Massachusetts
teen who wreaked havoc for over a year. When
the fire alarms are not sounding and calling
us to immediate reactive action, security pros
need to be kicking back a bit and taking a look
at how a serious security problem unfolds. That's
why we should take a look at a Massachusetts
teenage who pled guilty of, among other things,
hackingto see what, if anything, could have
been done to prevent him and his buddies from
succeeding in doing what they did.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1858615,00.asp
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More tech fails to exorcise security risks
Current IT systems are inherently insecure and
growing complexity will simply increase these
risks, a leading academic has warned. Users
should rebel and demand vendors compensate
them for security foul-ups, said pugnacisous
Professor Klaus Brunnstein of the University
of Hamburg.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/14/complexity_risk_gartner_keynote/
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The Software Practices Police Squad
"Anti-Spyware" (I hate that term) is becoming a lot
more complicated than just scanning files. Now they
have to scan the whole business. Let's hope it's
more Jack Webb than Leslie Neilson. I used to think
that the whole category of anti-spyware software was
redundant because the established anti-virus products
should be perfectly capable of detecting all the
threats detected by anti-spyware. They just weren't
looking for them.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1859108,00.asp
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