October 21, 2002 Child porn swoop nets 90 police Hundreds of child welfare professionals, including police officers, care workers and teachers, have been identified as 'extremely high-risk' paedophiles by an investigation into internet porn. The discovery came after US authorities passed on more than 7,000 names of UK subscribers to an American-based child porn website. When police examined a sample of the most dedicated users, they discovered that many worked with children. http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,815491,00.html - - - - - - - - CHILD PORN HORROR HAUL Police found "horrific and graphic" images of child pornography after seizing a Grimsby man's computer. Perverted David Waller downloaded vile and sickening pictures of sexual abuse after becoming embroiled in seedy Internet chatrooms, Grimsby magistrates heard. Unemployed Waller (50), formerly of Littlecoates Road but now of Columbus Way, Bradley Park Estate, admitted possessing indecent pictures between July and September 2000 and received a two-year community rehabilitation order. http://www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=59380&command=displayContent&sourceNode=58907&contentPK=2846829 - - - - - - - - Interpol instrumental in global child pornography investigation Operation Landslide. Coordinated police action in many Interpol member countries throughout the world has recently resulted in a large number of arrests for offences related to child pornography. This successful enforcement action arises directly from close cooperation between the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Interpol. http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/PressReleases/PR2002/PR200223.asp http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/nrintrpl.htm - - - - - - - - Ex-Homestore execs plead guilty to fraud Two former Homestore executives pleaded guilty Monday in a Los Angeles court to fraudulently inflating the revenues of the Internet-based real estate listing company by $46.4 million in 2001. Homestore's former chief operating officer, John Giesecke, and former chief financial officer, Joseph Shew, admitted to federal criminal charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Giesecke also pleaded guilty to wire fraud. http://news.com.com/2100-1017-962849.html - - - - - - - - Hundreds of Navy computers 'missing' The US Navy has lost track of many computers that may have handled classified data, finds an audit. And this may be just the tip of the iceberg. The US Pacific Fleet's warships and submarines were missing nearly 600 computers as of late July, including at least 14 known to have handled classified data, an internal Navy report obtained on Friday said. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2124182,00.html - - - - - - - - Child porn task force on verge of collapse A GROUP set up to tackle child pornography on the internet is on the verge of collapse because the Government is not providing enough funding, a conference heard yesterday. "We have no government funding, we have no investment or resources and if it wasn't for a few very concerned volunteers on the ground there would be no facilities either," the director of Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe (COPINE), said yesterday. http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/ireland/Full_Story/did-sgTJi6Fje5PCM.asp - - - - - - - - E-card Sneakware Delivers Web Porn A Trojan horse program created by an Internet adult entertainment company routes surfers to racy sites. It's no coincidence that one of the most recent Trojan horse programs to enter the FBI's bi-weekly rogues gallery of malicious code is named after an Internet porn company. The program, dubbed "Cytron" by the bureau's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) and some anti-virus vendors, is a covert browser plug-in that gives Internet Explorer users something they probably don't want: more pop-up ads, promoting a slew of adult websites. http://online.securityfocus.com/news/1350 - - - - - - - - Feds planning early-warning system for Internet The U.S. National Communications System (NCS) plans to develop a Global Early Warning Information System (GEWIS) to monitor the performance of the Internet and provide warnings to government and industry users of threats that could degrade service, such as denial-of-service attacks against the Domain Name Servers that control Internet traffic. http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/hacking/story/0,10801,75248,00.html - - - - - - - - Webcasters granted extension on royalty payments Smaller Internet music broadcasters are getting an extension on copyright royalty payments that would have been due Sunday, which means they can avoid shutting down. The webcasters will still have to pay up to $2,500 each in fees by Monday. But that is far less than the tens of thousands of dollars that many of them would have owed. http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/584771p-4556589c.html http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/10/21/internet.radio.ap/index.html - - - - - - - - Direct marketers want anti-spam laws The Direct Marketing Association said Monday that unsolicited e-mail has become so noxious that a federal anti-spam law is finally necessary. Until now, the DMA has opposed the majority of anti-spam bills in Congress or offered only lukewarm support. But the ever-rising tide of junk e-mail has made the influential trade association rethink its stand. "Even legitimate business' messages are not being looked at because of the get-rich-quick schemes and pornography and so orth," Jerry Cerasale, the DMA's vice president for government affairs, said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962821.html - - - - - - - - Ballmer: Mod chips threaten Xbox CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft may pull its Xbox game console from the Australian market because of a court decision that legitimizes "mod chips" for hackers, an Australian newspaper reported. Mod chips are gray-market add-ons that, once soldered to a console's main circuit board, defeat security systems and enable the machine to run legally and illegally copied discs, import games and homemade software. http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962797.html - - - - - - - - Adobe introducing Web-based digital signature software Adobe Systems Inc. has long offered its Acrobat Reader software for free, a calculated move that has helped make its Portable Document Format a de facto standard on the Internet. On Monday, Adobe took that strategy to the next level, launching a Web-based package - at a price - that will enable companies that offer PDF- formatted forms online to have people fill out and digitally sign them electronically. http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/585896p-4564430c.html http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/4331067.htm http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/20317-1.html http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/1021/news-adobe-10-21-02.asp - - - - - - - - Security Concerns in Licensing Agreements, Part Two: Negotiating Security Provisions In the first article in this series, we looked at security concerns related to clickwrap and shrinkwrap agreements, used by vendors for mass-market licenses and service agreements. In these cases, no negotiations are involved. If you want what the vendor is selling, you are required to agree to "a one size fits all" agreement, including whatever provisions it contains, if any, that pertain to information security. This type of agreement is typical of the licensing agreements that individual users and small organizations enter into. http://online.securityfocus.com/infocus/1636 Security Concerns in Licensing Agreements, Part One: Clickwrap and Shrinkwrap Agreements http://online.securityfocus.com/infocus/1602 - - - - - - - - Autonomy enlisted in war on terror The UK software firm strikes a deal with US anti- terrorism forces to help cope with information overload. Autonomy has won a deal from the Office of Homeland Security for its software to appear on 200,000 desktop computers in the US, across 21 agencies. The agencies -- which include the FBI and departments of Defense, Commerce, Energy and Justice -- have been attracted to the technology from the UK company because it allows natural language links to be identified and analysed between various text, audio and video sources. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2124191,00.html - - - - - - - - A tough case to crack How IT can -- and cannot -- aid law enforcement's search for a D.C.-area sniper. Technology has received a prominent role in the hunt for a sniper who has killed nine and wounded two in a two-week spree in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, but even technology experts say the case is most likely to be cracked by cops, not computers. "This is a fairly low-tech kind of crime," said Jay Siegel, a forensic science professor at Michigan State University's School of Criminal Justice. "What's going to solve this crime is old-fashioned police work. It does not require a lot of technology." http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/1021/news-sniper-10-21-02.asp http://www.msnbc.com/news/750150.asp - - - - - - - - MS Palladium boss to debate TCPA with Anderson, Cox UK open source consultancy netproject is clearly on something of a roll. Earlier this month the company announced the first deployments in a pilot scheme intended to equip police forces in England and Wales with secure Linux desktops, and next month it plays host to what sounds like being the trusted computing face-off of the year - John Manferdelli versus Ross Anderson versus Alan Cox. http://online.securityfocus.com/news/1356 *********************************************************** 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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