August 20, 2001 Man Charged After Internet Chats Charges have been filed against a man who admitted to police that he tried to find someone in an Internet chatroom to kidnap, rape and torture his wife, authorities said. Joe Mack Clemens, 55, of Longview, was indicted Thursday on charges of criminal solicitation, according to the office of District Attorney Bill Jennings. He was also indicted on child pornography charges after telling investigators he had child pornography on his computer. Clemens was arrested on June 12 after a representative of Yahoo! reported that someone using Clemens' computer had been in a chat room looking for someone to come to Longview and harm his wife. http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2001/aug/19/081908142.html - - - - - - - - Prospective Teacher Arrested A prospective fourth-grade teacher was arrested by Secret Service agents for allegedly using the Internet to try to seduce young girls. William Breen, 36, met ``nycgirlie'' online in June. She described herself as Liz, 13, from New York, said Kim Tate, Secret Service assistant agent in the New Orleans field office. Tate said ``nycgirlie'' agreed when Breen wrote that he wanted to meet her in a motel for sex, and didn't object when he sent her more than 20 e-mails with pornographic photos involving children. The pair planned their rendezvous over the phone. But his computer pal was a male agent in the New York field office's electronic crime taskforce. The voice on the phone was a female agent. http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7DVIC800 - - - - - - - - Russian Man Indicted On ISP Hacking Charges A Seattle federal court handed down a 13-count indictment last week accusing a Russian resident of hacking into a California-based Internet service provider and allegedly attempting to extort money from the company's customers. Twenty-one-year-old Vladimirovich Ivanov, of Chelybinsk, Russia, was charged with hacking into the networks of VPM, an ISP based in Folsom, Calif. According to court documents, Ivanov allegedly threatened to damage computers connected to the network unless he was paid a certain amount from each victim. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169211.html - - - - - - - - Child Pornography 'Addict' Sentenced A man who admitted possessing child pornography received less prison time than federal guidelines call for because the judge found him addicted to pornography. Federal sentencing guidelines called for 21 to 24 months in prison for Michael Bethard, but U.S. District Judge F.A. Little Jr. gave him 13 months Friday and recommended he be treated in prison. Bethard, 51, pleaded guilty in May to possessing child pornography. Investigators said he downloaded almost 700 computer diskettes of pornography, most of it showing children, some as young as 4 years old, engaged in sexual acts. http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7DVGE800 - - - - - - - - Code Red II Fails To Pack Denial-Of-Service Punch The latest incarnation of the Code Red worm did not follow in its predecessor's footsteps by unleashing a massive distributed denial of service (DOS) attack on the 20th day of its gestation period, a security expert said today. "Right now we're seeing very little activity" relating to Code Red II, Roman Danyliw, an Internet security analyst at Carnegie Mellon's CERT Coordination Center said. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169208.html Code Red's lesson: Act fast! http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-08-20-code-red.htm - - - - - - - - Hacking Hotmail made easy Some bright empiricist from Root-Core has discovered that anyone can log into their Hotmail account and then call messages from any other Hotmail account by crafting a URL with the second account's username and a valid message number. Finding a valid message number is of course total guesswork, but they all follow a consistent format and always have the same number of digits (i.e., a time stamp), so with the help of a little brute-force progie one can try numerous combinations in the background rather than type them in. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21118.html http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169167.html http://www.techtv.com/news/hackingandsecurity/story/0,24195,3343347,00.html Hotmail Security Hole Too Tiny For E-mail Spies - MSN http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169213.html - - - - - - - - 3Com Settles MagiTech Infringement Suit An Ohio-based company accused of illegally reselling 3Com Corp. products has agreed to settle a lawsuit filed against it by the networking giant, 3Com said on Monday. The lawsuit, alleging trademark and copyright infringement, false designation of origin, unfair competition and breach of contract, was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against MagiTech Corp. of Cleveland. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The lawsuit was filed in May after a 3Com product manager noticed that packaging for 3Com network interface cards being sold in a large California retail computer and electronic equipment store looked "odd," according to 3Com spokesman Brian Johnson. MagiTech had bought the cards in bulk and then sold about 10,000 of them separately in forged packaging with 3Com's name and logo on it but with counterfeit documentation and software, Johnson said. http://news.excite.com/news/r/010820/13/business-manufacturing-3com-dc - - - - - - - - Used PCs may leak sensitive secrets Three weeks ago, Jake Wilson bought a used laptop for $400 at a dot-com liquidation auction. When he booted up the IBM ThinkPad 600E, he got a lot more than he bargained for. There, on the hard drive, was a folder containing sensitive data from a now-defunct network software company called IPHighway Inc. In the file were the social security numbers and salaries of at least 46 employees, payroll information, employee termination letters, extensive minutes from executive and board meetings and documents outlining strategic plans. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2805690,00.html - - - - - - - - Sexual Predators Thrive in Anonymity of the Web While the Internet has ushered in an era of communication and education that we couldn't have imagined a decade ago, its cloak of anonymity has helped to create a new type of sexual predator, some experts say. This subset of computer- driven offenders are those who might be predisposed to child pornography but would not act on those perverse feelings if not for the ease and anonymity of modern technology, they say. http://www.antionline.com/showthread.php?threadid=89516 - - - - - - - - 30 seconds of virus hell that will change the web forever A malicious virus similar to the Code Red worm could infect the entire internet, and would need just 30 seconds to do it. According to new research from US security consultancy Silicon Defense the web is vulnerable to a co-ordinated attack, which could reach every vulnerable web-server in the world in just half a minute. Silicon Defense says such a worm would, by necessity, be quite a simple program, limiting the amount of damage it could do to infected sites. However, it also notes hat the Code Red worm was only 4kb. http://www.silicon.com/public/door?REQUNIQ=998318461&6004REQEVENT=&REQINT1=46671&REQSTR1=newsnow - - - - - - - - E-Commerce law raises liability concerns for ISPs A public consultation paper for the E-Commerce Directive has ISPs worried because, they say, it fails to clarify their liability for hosting illegal content Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are concerned that the government's public consultation document on the Electronic Commerce Directive lacks clarity in exempting them from third party liability. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2093383,00.html - - - - - - - - HTML 'Hack' Could Use Browsers To Open Net Security Hole An independent computer programmer in Germany has discovered that malicious hackers could wield seemingly ordinary-looking Web pages to send commands to servers behind such barriers as corporate firewalls. Jochen Topf, those own software credits include a POP3-protocol server for managing user access to large e-mail systems, says he found that many common Web browsers can be tricked into passing on commands from hackers unbeknownst to the browsers' users. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169207.html - - - - - - - - Site Defacers Mining A New Vein In AIX Microsoft's Windows operating system remains the overwhelming favorite target of Web site defacers, but a relatively obscure Unix variant from IBM is all the rage with homepage vandals. Until recently, sites running AIX, a commercial operating system from IBM that is based on Unix, barely made a blip on the radar of the Alldas defacement archive service. Of the more than 22,000 homepages defaced in the past 18 months, just 47 sites, or less than 1 percent, have been running AIX. Windows, on the other hand, accounts for 65 percent of defacements, according to Alldas. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169200.html - - - - - - - - Virus fighters form anti-DDoS alliance Recent threats such as the code Red and Leave worms are proof that virus writers and hackers are pooling resources to produce hybrid weapons that can cause tremendous damage. Now, a group of security companies is following suit, hoping that by combining their efforts, they'll be better able to combat the new, sophisticated attacks. McAfee, a division of Network Associates, this week will announce a research and development partnership with three anti-DDoS (distributed-denial-of-service) vendors—Arbor Networks, Asta Networks and Mazu Networks Inc.—with the goal of developing innovative technologies and techniques to detect and prevent DDoS attacks. http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2805362,00.html http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6931389.html - - - - - - - - Australian Internet Body Unveils Net Privacy Code The Internet Industry Association believes thousands of Australian small-medium businesses will embrace its new privacy code, which will give them the right to display a special seal on their Web sites or literature. The code, one of the first announced under Australia's new privacy regulatory regime, was unveiled and endorsed by federal Attorney-General Daryl Williams in Melbourne last week. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169217.html - - - - - - - - HP CEO says Web privacy law needed The chief executive of one of the world's largest computer makers kicked off a conference on resuscitating the New Economy by calling for government legislation to ensure privacy for Web users. Carly Fiorina, the head of the printer and computer giant Hewlett-Packard Co., said her industry had not lived up to its leadership responsibilities in setting such standards. http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/tech/026056.htm http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/reuters_wire/1424213l.htm http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46182,00.html - - - - - - - - Singapore Web sites feel heat of new rules Singapore's new laws curbing political campaigning on the Internet are already causing casualties as a current affairs portal becomes the second to close down in a week. Sintercom, which runs chat rooms and a ``Not ST'' section as an alternative to the pro-government Straits Times newspaper, is due to pull the plug on Wednesday after eight years. ``It's mainly a personal decision. I'm just too tired to go on,'' Sintercom's editor Tan Chong Kee told Reuters. http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/reuters_wire/1424353l.htm - - - - - - - - Domain disputes don't get fair hearing, study says The system set up to resolve disputes over Internet addresses like kodaktheater.com can be easily manipulated to favor trademark holders, according to a study released on Monday. University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist found that the domain-name dispute-resolution system set up by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers allows those filing a complaint to select forums and formats that are more likely to award cases in their favor. http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/reuters_wire/1423976l.htm - - - - - - - - Wireless Networks in Big Trouble Wireless networks are a little less secure today with the public release of "AirSnort," a tool that can surreptitiously grab and analyze data moving across just about every major wireless network. When enough information has been captured, AirSnort can then piece together the system's master password. In other words, hackers and/or eavesdroppers using AirSnort can just grab what they want rom a company's database wirelessly, out of thin air. http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,46187,00.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. 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 2000-2001, NewsBits.net, Campbell, CA.