NewsBits for October 20, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ Woman Sentenced for Invading E-Mail Privacy A judge sentenced an Arizona woman to 60 days of home detention for intercepting her husband's ex-wife's e-mail, saying the penalty is a warning to others. "Privacy is still a cherished value," U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch said in Denver when sentencing Angel Lee, 28, of El Mirage, Ariz. Lee pleaded guilty in March and admitted accessing at least 215 e-mails sent last year to her husband's ex-wife, Duongladde Ramsay. Officials said she fraudulently obtained the user name and password information for Ramsay's e-mail account. Matsch has said the e-mail case involved a vicious divorce dispute over children. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/7052577.htm http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-na-briefs20.3oct20,1,3830933.story http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/10/19/email.detention.ap/index.html http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,60888,00.html - - - - - - - - - - Teen used nude photos, Net to swindle A Gainesville teenager used an Internet conversation with an adult and some naked photographs to blackmail the man for hundreds of dollars, police say. The 16-year-old, arrested Thursday, is charged with extortion in a case that stems from a March conversation over the Internet, the Gainesville Police Department reported. The teenager is accused of asking for nude photos of a 26-year-old Maryland man. After the adult e-mailed the photos, the teen told the man his true age and threatened him, saying if he didn't send money the police would be notified. http://gainesvillesun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031011/LOCAL/210110317/1007 - - - - - - - - - - Internet Sting Nets Federal Employee The state Attorney General's office has announced the arrest of a federal employee from Delaware County as part of an undercover Internet sex investigation. Authorities say the man attempted to arrange a sexual encounter with an undercover agent posing as a 12-year old girl on the Internet. The agent was working with the Child Sexual Exploitation Task Force. The Attorney General's office today announced the arrest of 46-year-old Dominic Garofano of Lansdowne. He was apprehended at his workplace, the U-S Housing and Urban Development Office in Philadelphia. Members of HUD's Inspector General's Office confronted Garofano at his work station while he was attempting to open a file he thought was a picture of the underage girl. http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/102003-internetsexsting.html - - - - - - - - - - Porn's newest calling: Phones Mobile phones in Europe come with bells and whistles mostly unheard of in the United States. Miniature color screens and tiny speakers are standard. Sports shorts, film clips and music videos can be obtained by dialing a few numbers. But the latest feature -- fast access to high-quality video -- is setting off alarms among child protection advocates. The medium, it turns out, is also well-suited to the unfettered distribution of pornography. http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1066543968325720.xml - - - - - - - - - - Judge to hear motions in Silicon Valley economic espionage case In November 2001, two men were arrested at San Francisco International Airport with tickets to China and, prosecutors allege, suitcases packed with trade secrets swiped from high- tech companies. On Monday, in San Jose, Calif. U.S. District Judge James Ware is scheduled to hear pretrial motions in the case against Fei Ye and Ming Zhong, who are charged with stealing corporate secrets and conspiracy. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/7058714.htm - - - - - - - - - - Anti-scam site beats domain attack Anti-scam website StopECG.org has been vindicated in a domain dispute judgement brought by the subject of its attention - European City Guide. The National Arbitration Forum refused ECGs request that the domain be handed over to it for alleged trademark infringement. Instead, it followed an increasing body of arbitration decisions supporting protest sites that use the words stop and sucks to describe their critical approach to companies. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33466.html - - - - - - - - - - Senators propose Patriot Act limitations A bipartisan group of senators this week announced the latest in a steady trickle of legislative proposals to trim back some of the enhanced search and surveillance powers granted to law enforcement under the USA-PATRIOT Act. Under the proposed Security and Freedom Ensured Act (SAFE), the FBI would no longer be able to obtain "sneak and peek" warrants allowing them to secretly enter a person's home or office, except in cases when an overt search would endanger someone's physical safety, result in a flight from prosecution, or permit the destruction of evidence. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7245 - - - - - - - - - - Police push Internet safety The Wayne County Sheriff's Internet Crime Unit has caught 17 child predators in 10 months, prompting officers to launch a prevention effort in local schools aimed at keeping teens from becoming victims. One in five U.S. teen-agers who regularly log onto the Internet say they've received unwanted sexual solicitations via the Web, according to officers who visited Dearborn Heights' Annapolis High School. Even some of the school's most computer-savvy teens were shocked by what they learned. http://www.detnews.com/2003/schools/0310/20/c03-301914.htm - - - - - - - - - - Romania Emerges As Nexus of Cybercrime It was nearly 70 degrees below zero outside, but the e-mail on a computer at the South Pole Research Center sent a different kind of chill through the scientists inside. "I've hacked into the server. Pay me off or I'll sell the station's data to another country and tell the world how vulnerable you are," the message warned. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/7053236.htm http://www.msnbc.com/news/981284.asp http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2003-10-18-romainia-cybercrime_x.htm http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/Business/D5A097CD92049F9F86256DC20032D12F - - - - - - - - - - FBI uses Convera for searching terror data The FBI awarded a contract to Convera to provide a search and categorization platform for the bureau's investigative data warehouse. The initial cost of the deployment of Convera's RetrievalWare software is about $1.5 million, according to company officials. RetrievalWare will be used as a search platform for a counterterrorism and intelligence data repository that is part of the FBI's Secure Collaborative Operational Prototype Environment (SCOPE). http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/1020/web-fbi-10-20-03.asp - - - - - - - - - - Microsoft pushes for security in Longhorn Microsoft will preview its forthcoming server-stack software at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Developers will get an in-depth technical review of Longhorn, the next iteration of Windows. Microsoft is also expected to focus attention on Longhorn's underlying graphics and Aero, the new user interface. http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=125811 Bug-hunting becomes mass effort http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/developer/0,39020387,39117221,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - VeriSign puts its security news online Internet infrastructure company VeriSign last week released the first of its VeriSign Internet Security Intelligence Briefing papers. http://www.vnunet.com/News/1144759 Symantec tackles patchwork approach to patching http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5093236.html Network Associates Launches New Integrated Security Application http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/22519.html - - - - - - - - - - NetScreen firms firewalls against app attacks NetScreen Technologies is to integrate intrusion protection technology into its range of hardware firewalls this winter as part of its plans to provide more robust defences against application-level attacks. Firewalls were traditionally designed to guard against network-level attacks - such as IP spoofing and port/ network scans - but as more sophisticated application- layer attacks, such as worms and exploits of known software vulnerabilities, have become increasingly common a need has arisen to rejig corporate defences. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33473.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/10/20/HNnetscreen_1.html Kaspersky strengthens Anti-Hacker firewall http://www.pcpro.co.uk/?http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=48958 - - - - - - - - - - Disclosure Plan Won't Help Encouraging publicly-traded companies to disclose their cyber security efforts would only force them to choose between providing vague and useless platitudes, or specific and dangerous details. In an effort to shore up the security of the nation's critical infrastructures, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security recently proposed that all publicly-traded companies disclose in their filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission precisely what they are doing to protect the security, confidentiality, integrity and availability of their electronic information and databases. http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/192 - - - - - - - - - - P2P battle brews in D.C. Even casual observers of the moral swamp called Washington, D.C., may remember the notorious Hollings bill, a mandatory copy protection proposal last year, which Hollywood's lobbyists loved and Silicon Valley hated. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5093780.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5486-2003Oct9.html Kinder, Gentler RIAA http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52749-2003Oct20.html http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-10-19-music-swapping-suits_x.htm http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33470.html - - - - - - - - - - Retail wireless security: a few considerations Wireless computing can make your retail operation run more smoothly and quickly. Retailers worldwide are making the move to wireless computing, both for the flexibility it brings to in-store operations and the speed it adds to business processes. Mobile platforms and wireless networks allow retailers to complete transactions and authorizations while collecting data from any location, at any time, with a variety of devices. http://www.computeruser.com/articles/daily/8,10,1,1020,03.html - - - - - - - - - - Spam inspires musos to song Proving artists can take inspiration from the most unlikely of sources, a group of musicians has produced a compilation of songs inspired by and titled after the subject lines of spam messages. The Outside the Inbox compilation features 14 tracks by a variety of musicians, in a variety of styles, ranging from the wistful country melodies of I Got Your Letter to the experimental, techno beat of Urgent Business Confidential. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33476.html *********************************************************** Computer Forensics Training - Online. 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