April 9, 2002 Sports anchor, host arrested A Chicago sports anchor who was arrested for allegedly soliciting sex over the internet is free on bond. Robert Goldman - a sports director and anchor for Chicagoland Television and host of a WGN-radio program - was arrested Saturday night in Waukegan. He allegedly had been corresponding on line for 15 months with a person he believed to be a 16-year-old girl. It was in fact an undercover police officer posing as a teenaged girl. Goldman - who is 40 years old and lives in Aurora - is married and has a family. His next court date is May 1. http://abclocal.go.com/wls/news/040802_ns_goldman.html - - - - - - - - Cyanide Anarchist a Hacker, Too? A 25-year-old anarchist who goes by the moniker "Dr. Chaos" is not only accused of being a potential cyanide-terrorist. The FBI also believes that Joseph Konopka, charged with illegally possessing sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide, is a nefarious computer hacker with ties to 2600 magazine. On Friday, about nine FBI agents swooped down on a public gathering of hackers loosely associated with 2600 and interrogated attendees about subway tunnels in Chicago, Illinois, where Konopka allegedly stashed over a pound of poison. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51648,00.html - - - - - - - - Scottish ISP floored as DDoS attacks escalate Most of the customers of Edinburg business ISP edNET were left without Internet services yesterday after it experienced a serious denial of service (DDoS) attack. edNET began to experience what it described in an email to users as a "catastrophic network failure" at around 8am yesterday. This resulted in most of edNET's users experiencing difficulties sending email or browsing the Internet throughout yesterday. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/24773.html - - - - - - - - Virus variant doing the Australian rounds Variants of the destructive MyLife virus continue to be reported in Australia. Initially MyLife.a became prevalent in March, according to Andrew Gordon, managed services architect with anti-virus software vendor Trend Micro. This was followed by MyLife.b in late March with another four variants being reported over Easter. http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebusiness/story/0,2000024981,20264474,00.htm - - - - - - - - UK: Staff e-mail surveillance 'illegal' Firms that secretly monitor staff e-mail and Internet use are likely to be breaking the law, according to the UK's Information Commission. In a draft of its guide on employee monitoring, "The use of personal data in employer/employee relationships," the commission says it is difficult to see how covert monitoring of performance can ever be justified. "Covert monitoring of behavior can only be justified in very limited circumstances, such as where being open with employees would be likely to prejudice the prevention or detection of crime or the apprehension or prosecution of offenders," the draft states. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-878885.html http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2108075,00.html - - - - - - - - Parents get graphic education in Internet dangers What about 15 parents saw Saturday shocked them. "Susie" was online for only a few seconds before someone with the screen name of "in my dreams you do" sent a link to a Web cam that showed him masturbating. "This is sick," one mother said. The demonstration at The Internet and Your Child class at Mountain View Elementary School was meant to stun parents and show them how easily their child can slip into a world full of sex. "Susie" was really Colorado Springs police detective Rick Hunt. The Web cam incident wasn't out of the ordinary. http://www.gazette.com/stories/0407loc5.php - - - - - - - - Cert warns of automated attacks Hacking tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated. The Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert) has released a report pinpointing the six fastest evolving trends in the black hat world of internet security. The organisation, which has been monitoring hacker activity since 1998, found that the most notable trend to evolve over recent years is the automation and speed of attack tools. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1130755 - - - - - - - - Denial-of-service attacks on the rise? Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks continue to present a significant security threat to corporations two years after a spate of incidents brought down several high-profile sites, including those of Yahoo! Inc. and eBay Inc., users and analysts report. Since then, several technologies have emerged that help users detect and respond to DoS attacks far more quickly and effectively than before. But the increasingly sophisticated attack methods and the growing range of systems targeted in DoS attacks continue to pose a challenge. http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/04/09/dos.threat.idg/index.html Denial-of-service attacks still a threat http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO69924,00.html - - - - - - - - Those top 20 viruses in full The old ones are the worst, say experts. Although more than 500 new viruses were discovered last month, March was a quiet one for epidemic outbreaks. The Fbound virus, which hit the Asia Pacific region, was stopped in its tracks in Europe and not many users fell for the comedy Caricature virus of Bill Clinton and his sax. Following the trend for the last few months, it was the Klez and BadTrans viruses that took the top slots. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1130771 - - - - - - - - Why one spam could cost $50 E-mail could suddenly get very expensive. A US law firm has become the hero of the common people for its decision to take on the spam merchants who wage guerrilla warfare on our e-mail inboxes, offering everything from sex to cars and easy money to psychic readings. The San Francisco office of Morrison and Foerster, also known as MoFo, is one of the first outfits in the United States to take on spammers who send out unsolicited commercial e-mail. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1917000/1917458.stm - - - - - - - - Tobacco Firm Smoked In Dispute Over Kool.com Domain In a trademark dispute that has smoldered for nearly three years, cigarette giant British America Tobacco (BAT) Group has been told by an international arbitrator it can't claim the Internet address Kool.com from a U.S. company. In a ruling released today by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), arbitrator Andrew Brown said the U.K. tobacco company, known for its Lucky Strike and KOOL cigarette brands, was unable to prove that the current holder of Kool.com had registered the name as an online trademark squatter. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175751.html - - - - - - - - A trio of MS-Office security vulns Researchers at GreyMagic Software have uncovered three novel vulnerabilities provided by Microsoft Office Web Components (OWC), which can override security settings in Internet Explorer. First up, it's possible, using the spreadsheet component of OWC, to enable active scripting when the user has it disabled in IE. "One of the features added to the spreadsheet component is the '=HOST()' formula, which returns a handle to the hosting environment. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24777.html - - - - - - - - IBM To Unveil Antipiracy Software Companies say they're losing billions of dollars in sales because people can use computers to easily make perfect copies of CDs and videos. IBM, wading into the debate over the post-Napster structure of the online music business, is set to announce today new software designed to prevent the illegal copying of digital music and other data files. The company has spent five years working on its Electronic Media Management System, or EMMS. But today's announcement, scheduled for the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, is intended in part as a response to recent legislative proposals that would force the electronics industry to make antipiracy technology a part of every digital device, from computers to game machines. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/17162.html - - - - - - - - Secure IM a boon for financial firms Several leading financial services companies signed up for an instant messaging service Monday designed to provide security and allow control over the information sent to clients and employees. Salomon Smith Barney, J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and UBS Warburg have begun using the Communicator Hub IM service, creator Communicator announced Monday. The companies have each signed multiyear, multimillion-dollar contracts to license the service for their employees and institutional clients, said Leo Schlinkert, chief executive of Communicator. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-878623.html - - - - - - - - Managing IDS in Large Organizations, Part Two This is the second part of a two-part series devoted to discussing the implementation of intrusion detection systems in large organizations. In the first installment, we looked at some of the challenges of planning, integrating, and deploying IDSs in a large organization. In this installment, we will look at managing agents in a distributed environment, managing data from multiple IDS packages, and correlating data from distributed agents. http://online.securityfocus.com/infocus/1567 Managing IDS in Large Organizations, Part One http://online.securityfocus.com/infocus/1564 - - - - - - - - AOL's Parsons: Beware of pirates Broadcasters must embrace new technologies and develop products for the next generation of digital entertainment, Richard Parsons, incoming CEO at AOL Time Warner, said Monday. In an opening keynote speech to a crowd of media executives at the National Association of Broadcasters conference, Parsons emphasized a need for the industry to work together to address the opportunities and threats that technology brings to the marketplace. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-878468.html - - - - - - - - Everybody Gets Hacked But You Home users worried about the results of a recent study indicating that cybercrime is flourishing can relax, even though their computers are probably vulnerable to all sorts of hack attacks. The study, a joint project of the Computer Security Institute and the FBI's San Francisco computer crime squad, painted a dire picture. Ninety percent of the 540 respondents surveyed detected computer security breaches in the past year, and the 44 percent who were willing or able to name a dollar figure claimed a total loss of $455.8 million dollars to hack attacks. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51646,00.html - - - - - - - - Brilliant responds: Now YOU be the judge In Friday's column, I challenged Brilliant Digital Entertainment, the company at the center of the Kazaa controversy, to explain itself. Whatever else I think of the company, I have to admit that its CEO, Kevin Bermeister, has been up front about answering his company's critics. So I was only a little surprised to get a response from him the same day that column ran. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-878636.html - - - - - - - - ID Cards for `Trusted Travelers' Run Into Some Thorny Questions The idea seemed simple: figure out who the good guys are, give them easy-to-recognize and hard-to-counterfeit ID cards and let them breeze past airport security. Everybody would win, advocates say. Holders of the "trusted traveler" cards would save time. Screeners would have fewer bodies to inspect there were 1.8 billion in 2000, according to the Transportation Department and could concentrate on identifying potential terrorists. And passengers would feel safer. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/09/technology/09PASS.html - - - - - - - - ************ EDITOR'S NOTE ************ This is a little off topic, but since e-mail is the replacement technology, I've included it here. Interesting reading RJL ***************************************** India clips wings of its pigeon police mail India's unique police carrier pigeon service, a crucial communications lifeline throughout more than 50 years of cyclones, floods and drought, is being grounded, making more than 800 of the country's cheapest and most reliable civil servants redundant. The government in the eastern state of Orissa, one of India's most underdeveloped regions, is expected to approve a police recommendation submitted last week that the service, which costs just $2,700 a year to run, be scrapped. http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020408-81059892.htm *********************************************************** 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. 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