December 22, 1999 ***EDITOR'S NOTE*** Though this is not a high tech crime in and of it's self, the need for personal security of high tech executives should not be overlooked - by the corporation, or the agencies where these folks reside. Two Gunmen Rob Couple In Their Atherton Home Intruders tie up high-tech executive and his wife. A high-tech executive, his wife and family were robbed at gunpoint in their Atherton home late Monday by two men who took jewelry and cash. Rob Burgess, chief executive officer of Macromedia Inc. of San Francisco, and his wife were bound by the masked intruders, while their 4-year-old son sat watching the ordeal and their twin babies slept upstairs. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/12/22/MN69681.DTL Same crime, different effect Two home robberies in neighboring towns bring varied reaction. Atherton, a city known for its millionaires and mansions, awoke Tuesday to the kind of news it is unaccustomed to hearing: A high-tech executive and his family had been tied up and robbed in their home Monday night by armed burglars. Within hours, Bay Area media swept onto the quiet cul-de-sac that is home to some of the region's wealthiest residents, and the Atherton police chief vowed that finding the attackers is the department's top priority. http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/front/docs/invasion22.htm - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Judge reverses ruling, frees former Disney exec A judge on Wednesday reversed his own ruling and released from jail a former Disney executive convicted of possessing child pornography, saying it was likely that he would win a new trial. U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie, who on Monday refused to release Patrick Naughton despite an appeals court's decision to strike down part of the law that he was convicted under, ordered the former Internet whiz kid freed on $100,000 bail. http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/internet/docs/19813l.htm - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Alleged Columbine threatener freed in Florida An 18-year-old Florida man charged with making an Internet threat against Colorado's Columbine High School, scene of a mass shooting in April, was freed on bond on Wednesday and ordered to appear at a hearing next month in Colorado. http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/internet/docs/19821l.htm - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - N.Y. appeals court overturns "cybersex" conviction A state appeals court Tuesday ordered a new trial for an Ivy League doctoral student convicted of kidnapping, sexually abusing and assaulting a woman he met on the Internet. Saying the trial judge misapplied the "Rape Shield Law" in the case of Oliver Jovanovic, 32, a molecular biology graduate student at Columbia University, a four-member panel of the Appellate Division said the trial "hampered the defendant's ability to present a defense" and confront witnesses. http://news.excite.com/news/r/991221/19/crime-cybersex - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Feds crack down on alleged fraud sites A crackdown by federal and state regulators has resulted in actions against 72 operators of allegedly fraudulent Internet marketing operations. The various cease-and-desist orders, fines and warnings followed a so-called Surf Day by regulators last spring in which they made a sweep of the Web to uncover illegal sales operations. The regulatory crackdown netted schemes ranging from homespun chain e-mail operations to elaborate alleged frauds running into the millions of dollars. Among the services or products being marketed were prepaid gasoline cards, dietary supplements, investment opportunities and water-filtration systems. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2412833,00.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Experts Fear New Year's Mischief From Hackers Cyber-imps expected to inundate Internet with viruses, worms. Some of the government's Y2K watchers are warning of computer problems on New Year's Eve that may arise not from the date rollover, but from pranks committed by mischievous hackers. They are watching for intentional acts perpetrated at the stroke of midnight under the cloak of Y2K problems -- perhaps by hackers sitting at their terminals determined to breach computer networks, but likelier through the stealthy attacks of viruses, worms and other damage- dealing software that already have made their way across the Internet and corporate computer networks. In recent weeks, the warnings have become louder and more fretful. Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre told reporters that ``hacker chat rooms'' are buzzing with Y2K plans and that ``we're apprehensive enough about it that we've put special watch procedures in place.'' http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/12/22/BU82748.DTL - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - New Gen Of Malicious Code Finjan Software has warned that although many organizations are preparing to batten down the hatches to cope with the Year 2000 problem, there is a new generation of malicious code coming in the New Year. Finjan, which has carved out a sizable niche for itself in offering protective systems against Java and malicious code applications, said that it is seeing a "new era" dawn in terms of malicious code attacks. http://www.currents.net/newstoday/99/12/22/news6.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Online, then in custody E-mail: Law enforcement authorities are often able to track down fugitives by examining their electronic communications. While Baltimore County officials were searching in October for a 49-year-old, Harvard-educated composer charged with abducting his children, Deputy State's Attorney Howard Merker did something he had never done before. He sent the fugitive an e-mail. While he was moving around the country with his two daughters, Christopher Yavelow, who grew up in Towson, replied three times, communicating online with Merker about his legal rights. At the same time, law enforcement authorities were tracking Yavelow's e-mails to his estranged wife and to his mother in Timonium. They tracked him around the country with the help of the e-mails, Merker said, and arrested him in Houston. http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?section=archive&pagename=story&storyid=1150210202219 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Police worry about latest Net anonymizer tool Law enforcement agents are criticizing a new Internet privacy tool, claiming it could be used to shield criminal activity. The product, Freedom 1.0, released earlier this month by Montreal-based Zero Knowledge Systems Inc., allows users to prevent unwanted collection of personal information by creating digital personas called pseudonyms, or "nyms." The nyms allow users to browse the Web, take part in newsgroup discussions, use chat or send e-mail without revealing their identity to cookies or online profilers. It costs about $50. Bob Wallace, a spokesman for the Miami-based National Association of Chiefs of Police, said law enforcement officers are concerned that Freedom could be used to block information gathering in a criminal investigation or obscure where an alleged crime has been committed. http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/991222D722 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Calif. Initiative Seeks To Bar Unsolicited E-mail Mike Johnson is tired of receiving unsolicited e-mail and telemarketing calls, and he wants to do something about it. He also has some clout behind him as the executive director of the Los Angeles, Calif.-based consumer watchdog group, Voter Revolt. According to a report published Tuesday in the San Francisco Examiner, Johnson was so angry about unsolicited sales pitches - especially since his fiancée recently received one that he deemed to be pornographic - that Johnson wrote a proposed ballot initiative to have the businesses that use unsolicited e-mail and telephone marketing calls, "Stop bugging us." http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/99/141166.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - No Protection For Net Images A United States District Court judge in California has denied the plaintiff's claim for damages in a lawsuit brought against the Web search site ditto.com for using copyrighted photographic images without permission or compensation to the copyright owners. http://www.currents.net/newstoday/99/12/22/news2.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Not All Cookies Are Sweet Not all cookies are of the Christmas kind this holiday season. Consumer privacy groups, as well as legislators, are concerned about the use of the tracking ability inherent in the electronic "cookies" that reside on computer hard drives and are used to profile the activities of consumers while online. Through the use of "cookies," advertising agencies, ad serving networks and retailers can retrieve information about the kinds of information a user might access from the Internet. That includes products individual consumers are purchasing from various retailers, or even the Web sites which a surfer visits while online. http://www.currents.net/newstoday/99/12/22/news7.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FTC Net Protection The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is giving itself what it feels is a well-deserved pat on the back with the release of a staff report that highlights the federal consumer protection and trade agency's fights against online fraud. The report, "Five Years: Protecting Consumers Online," which was released today, said that the agency has filed more than 100 legal actions against almost 300 businesses since 1994 when it prosecuted its first Internet fraud case. http://www.currents.net/newstoday/99/12/22/news9.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sanity.com admits to security blunder SANITY.COM, the fledgling e-commerce spin-off from the Sanity retail music chain, admitted breaching its security policy and angering customers by accidentally revealing the e-mail addresses of more than 140 people using its service. It was the second furore Sanity.com has been involved in since its launch in October, when it was revealed that the company had accidentally given away free CDs through its website. In its latest blunder, Sanity.com yesterday sent an e-mail to remind customers who had not supplied their credit card details to do so before Christmas Eve or their orders would be cancelled. But instead of including the e-mail addresses of all the relevant customers in the invisible field known as "blind carbon copy", each e-mail address was added in the "To:" field. This made all the e-mail addresses viewable by everyone. http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/e-commerce/19991222/A52132-1999Dec22.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Government expert backs open source A British security agent's endorsement of Linux and the open-source model highlights Windows concerns. An expert at the British government's computer security headquarters, CESG (Communications-Electronics Security Group) has endorsed Linux along with the open source model for software development as the most secure computer architecture available. CESG is the sister organisation of the notoriously secretive GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). http://212.187.198.142/news/1999/50/ns-12266.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - N A K E D- eYE A prudish hacker caught me surfing porn and turned the image on my monitor, and my world, upside-down. I was working late one night, trolling softcore sites on the Net, when I fell victim to a priggish hacker. Everybody has heard of hacks into government or corporate Web sites but, fool that I was, I didn't even know my PC was susceptible. Looking back, I can't believe I hadn't paid more attention to all the media hoopla over viruses -- and I can't understand why my Internet service provider didn't offer better warnings about the potential vulnerabilities of cable modems. Now some guy I know nothing about has explored my hard drive and learned who-knows-what about me; I feel violated, angry, afraid. I can't believe I have no recourse, no way to find this guy, no way to keep him out of other people's computers. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/12/22/hacked/index.html - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hate sites on the Web, revisited I have been having a spirited exchange with David Goldman, the founder and director of HateWatch, a group whose Web site tracks and catalogs hate groups in cyberspace. Goldman e-mailed me after reading my October Y-Life column, in which I speculated that hate groups on the Web may be a tiny fringe. "My best guess is that Nazis on the Net are at least 1,000 times less popular than porn," I wrote. "The latest figures from the NEC Research Institute show that pornography sites represent a mere 1.5 percent of the estimated 800 million Web pages that exist.... The situation is further clouded because groups opposed to hate sites have a vested interest in exaggerating their popularity; that makes their own work seem more important." http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2412409,00.html