NewsBits for Septermber 1, 2004 ************************************************************ Man pleads guilty to child porn charges A former elementary school teacher and foster parent has pleaded guilty in federal court in Bangor to charges of distributing of child pornography. Prosecutors say 34-year-old Chris Reardon faces up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. According to court documents, Reardon transmitted images of child pornography from his home in Holden to a police officer in New Hampshire who was posing as a 14-year-old boy. http://www.wmtw.com/Global/story.asp?S=2245086 - - - - - - - - - - Ex-trooper sentenced for having child porn A former state trooper who was charged with possession of child pornography after trying to arrange a sexual tryst with children was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison yesterday. Gerald W. Weeks, who retired last year while under investigation, must surrender to U.S. marshals on Sept. 20 to begin serving his sentence. http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1094030560312520.xml - - - - - - - - - - Man indicted on child porn charges A man was indicted on child pornography charges stemming from a federal investigation of a woman accused of putting sexually explicit images of her toddler online. A federal grand jury in Pittsburgh on Wednesday indicted Wyndell R. Williams, 44, of West Mifflin, on a charge of possession of child pornography. http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/politics/9555989.htm - - - - - - - - - - Man arrested in child porn probe DETECTIVES have arrested a 31-year-old man on suspicion of downloading pornographic pictures of children. The Hartlepool man, who lives in the town centre area, is to answer bail next week. The man was arrested by members of Hartlepool CID as part of an operation by Cleveland Police to combat paedophilia. He was interviewed at Hartlepool Police Station and his computer equipment seized for inspection, before being released on police bail until mid-September. http://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=1109&ArticleID=848288 - - - - - - - - - - PAEDOPHILIA SUPERMARKET OF VIOLENCE DISCOVERED ON THE WEB A paedophile web site that proposes 58 CD Rom, 60 hours of extreme child-pornographic sex, 200 pictures that exhibit the product and involves 250 children aged between 2 and 12, scuffles and blows, rapes on little children, was discovered in Sicily. http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200408301443-1079-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&page=0&id=agionline-eng.oggitalia - - - - - - - - - - Regulators shut down phony Bedrock bank Federal regulators shut down a phony Internet bank claiming to be located in the tiny Colorado town of Bedrock population 10 near the Utah state line. Through its Web site, the First National Bank of Bedrock offered deposit accounts, investments, debit cards and credit cards, according to the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-09-01-bank-of-bedrock_x.htm - - - - - - - - - - Phishers suspected of eBay Germany domain hijack eBay Germany and German domain registry organisation DeNIC are to investigate a partly successful domain hijacking scam that remained unnoticed for at least a couple of hours. On Saturday, visitors to eBay Germany were redirected to a scam site hosted by IIntergenia AG. The German internet provider says criminals requested a DNS (domain name server) transfer for several high profile sites, including Google.com, Web.de, Amazon.com and eBay Germany. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/01/ebay_germany_hijack/ - - - - - - - - - - Appeals court slams garage door DMCA claim A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that the maker of a universal garage door remote did not violate the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, putting the brakes on one of the more adventuresome interpretations of the controversial copyright law. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/9445 http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5341625.html - - - - - - - - - - Anti-abortion cybersquatter loses appeal A federal appeals court on Wednesday said an anti-abortion activist had violated trademark law by registering a slew of domain names, including drinkcoke.org, mycoca-cola.com, mymcdonalds.com, mypepsi.org, and my-washingtonpost.com. Bill Purdy, who lives in South St. Paul, Minn., had purchased those and other domains, and used them to point visitors to prolife commentary and depictions of aborted and dismembered fetuses. Purdy claims that the companies he targeted promoted abortion. http://news.com.com/Anti-abortion+cybersquatter+loses+appeal/2100-1028_3-5342596.html - - - - - - - - - - Brazil Cracks Down on Child Porn Brazil's subcommission on pedophilia and child pornography at the Secretatiat of Human Rights is drawing up a national plan to deal with the problem of Internet pedophilia. "We need specific policies so we can coordinate action by the government and civil society to control this problem," says Alexandre Reis, who coordinates the subcommission. One proposal under study is a plan to improve the notification of denouncements so more reliable statistics on the problem of sexual abuse of minors can be obtained. http://brazzil.com/mag/content/view/47/2/ - - - - - - - - - - New Bagle worm drops in and downloads A new Bagle dropper and downloader, Bagle-AQ, was bulk mailed to numerous internet users yesterday. The malware arrives in email with subject and email body "foto" and attachment called foto.zip that poses as a file containing photographs. This zip file contains a HTML file and an executable called foto1.exe. The executable is a dropper. If activated it will kill DLL files related to the updating components of various anti-virus programs. It also attempts download an updated payload every six hours from one of more than 130 separate websites. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/01/bagle_downloader/ http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5341733.html http://news.com.com/Another+Bagle+variant+tries+to+spread/2100-7349_3-5341733.html - - - - - - - - - - Security pros warn of critical flaws in Kerberos Vulnerabilities in a technology widely used for network authentication have left computers running Unix, Linux and Apple Computer's Mac OS X potentially open to attack. The flaws could allow an online intruder to gain access to computers running a security feature known as Kerberos. The vulnerabilities, found by the developers at the Kerberos Team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, should be patched as soon as possible, Sam Hartman, engineering lead for the team, said Wednesday. http://news.com.com/Security+pros+warn+of+critical+flaws+in+Kerberos/2100-1002_3-5343325.html - - - - - - - - - - Spam-seeding viruses dominate August charts Despite a huge number of viruses released onto the Internet during August, infections were dominated by variants of old-timers The number of new viruses released onto the Internet reached a 33-month high during August, but infections were dominated by old-timers that were used primarily to seed networks for spammers. In their virus reports for August, software and Internet security companies said that viruses such as Netsky, Zafi and MyDoom, together with their variants, continued to dominate the charts. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39165257,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - PDA security still dismal Worker apathy about PDA security is putting corporate data in jeopardy. The storage of the names and addresses of corporate customers on PDAs is now common - but security practices are struggling to keep up with technology usage. Two thirds of users do not use any kind of encryption to protect confidential data on mobile devices, according to a survey commissioned by Pointsec Mobile Technologies and Infosecurity Europe. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/01/pda_sec/ Symbian smartphones get virus protection http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1105_2-5342282.html - - - - - - - - - - Academy to use encrypted DVDs The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is planning to offer its 6,000 voters a chance to view many of this year's Oscar-eligible films on a custom DVD player that has been programmed to play encrypted screeners a move intended tolimit the pirating of Oscar screeners. Academy President Frank Pierson has sent a letter to his members saying that the DVD players will be provided free of charge by a company called Cinea, which will underwrite the costs and connect the devices. (LA Times article, free registration required) http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-et-quick1.3sep01,1,887618.story - - - - - - - - - - Beefing up NIPRNET Defense Department information technology officials recently installed new hardware to better protect military networks. But the new equipment cannot achieve its full capability unless DOD's IT workers install products correctly and patches more quickly, according to a Defense Information Systems Agency official. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0830/web-niprnet-09-01-04.asp - - - - - - - - - - New WiFi security adds strong encryption A new security specification for wireless networking incorporates the Advanced Encryption Standard, opening the door for certification under the Federal Information Processing Standard. WiFi Protected Access 2 is a technical specification from the Wi-Fi Alliance based on the recently approved 802.11i standard. http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/27135-1.html - - - - - - - - - - Hummingbird stretches connectivity, security Hummingbird this week added new features in its Hummingbird Connectivity 10 suite, introduced secure-terminal software called Connectivity SecureTerm, and added other features to its security suite. The Connectivity 10 suite allows organizations to securely integrate heterogeneous legacy infrastructures with Windows desktops, enabling customers to meet business continuity and corporate governance requirements. http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1104_2-5339786.html - - - - - - - - - - Spam tide drowns email Email's usefulness is being downgraded because of the effort needed to filter out spam, says IDC. Rising tides of spam are drowning the usefulness of email, according to a new report from IDC. Spam has accounted for 38 percent of the 31 billion emails sent each day in North America in 2004, up from 24 percent in 2002, the market researcher said. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/networks/0,39020345,39165256,00.htm Sendmail trials Sender ID http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39165170,00.htm - - - - - - - - - - Computer crime costs $1 billion to Microsoft Microsoft Corp. are to spend $1bn more on the improvements of Windows OS protection from hackers, viruses and internet scammers. The website of the Independent newspaper says that Bill Gates' company offers to get a free update, so that more people could download and install it. Though, as was informed by Lenta.ru, these updates are incompatible with the pirate copies of the system, so only true license owners can get protected. http://www.crime-research.org/news/01.09.2004/601/ - - - - - - - - - - Internet porn: Guilty till proven innocent Is there an employee, you want to get rid of but can't find a good enough reason to fire? Well, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, there's now an easy and hassle-free answer: their Internet history--there's sure to be something in there that will nail them. Confused? Then let's take a look at the precedents. In July, Chancellor Gordon Brown announced plans to axe 104,000 civil service jobs over the next three years. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5340221.html - - - - - - - - - - ID thief to the stars tells all Book excerpt: In "Your Evil Twin," MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan argues that credit industry neglect led to the identity theft epidemic. Note: Last year, some 10 million people were victims of identity theft, and some estimates claim as many as 1 in 10 Americans have been hit by the crime in recent years. MSNBC.com's Bob Sullivan explores the digital epidemic in a new book, "Your Evil Twin." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5763781/ - - - - - - - - - - Agencies urged to develop teleworker corps for emergency situations The Office of Personnel Management released updated emergency guides last week, emphasizing the need for agencies to have plans for employees to work from home during emergencies. OPM also released guides for the families of federal employees and managers. http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0904/090104dp1.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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