Online Security, a global provider of computer forensics and information technology risk mitigation since 1997   Original Source:    http://www.newsbits.net January 17, 2003 - News Author:  Deputy Ron Levine January 17, 2003 Bushnell sex offender faces 262-month term A convicted sex abuser from Bushnell was sentenced Thursday to nearly 22 years in prison for having pornographic images of children so graphic that a federal judge and prosecutor were taken aback. "What sets these pictures off in a separate category is either the actual violence that was afflicted upon the children or the apparent violence that one can only view with a sense of horror," said U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm before sentencing 35-year-old Joseph R. Griffith to 262 months in prison. www.pjstar.com --------------- Teacher wanted in child porn case seized in California A South Carolina high school math teacher who disappeared while facing child pornography charges has been arrested in San Francisco, investigators say. Harry Dale Peterson, 44, was arrested Wednesday on a federal fugitive warrant. Police say they found Peterson, a former teacher at Pinewood Preparatory School, after he got an identification card from the California Department of Motor Vehicles that lists a mental health group home as his address. www.bayarea.com --------------- Fury as child porn chef avoids jail Role of 'highly paid lawyers' slammed. A WAVE of outrage was growing across the Republic today over the sentence imposed on celebrity chef Tim Allen for possessing child pornography. Allen, from Cork, is being allowed to do community service instead of nine months in jail after admitting the charge. www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk --------------- Driver's license spam scam quashed by federal regulators Several unscrupulous "spammers" have been shut down after bombarding Internet users with e-mail offers for allegedly bogus international driver's licenses, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Thursday. The move should put the brakes on a common scam that has evolved into one of the most prevalent forms of unwanted junk e-mail over the past several years. www.usatoday.com www.cnn.com --------------- Warning on Iraqi Hackers and U.S. Safety Intelligence officials are concerned that a recent rise in electronic attacks against government and military computer networks in the United States may be the work of pro-Iraqi hackers and could signal a "potential crisis" in national security, according to a classified F.B.I. assessment. The assessment, prepared last week by the National Infrastructure Protection Center at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, warned intelligence officials that the attacks, which have been relatively limited, are likely to grow more widespread and "more dangerous" as tension over a possible war against Iraq grows. (NY Times article, free registration required) www.nytimes.com --------------- Illegal snooping costs Allstate access to online DMV records California's Department of Motor Vehicles has banned Allstate Insurance from checking driver records online after Allstate employees were caught illegally snooping through records of friends, family and others. www.siliconvalley.com www.bayarea.com --------------- Child Porn Epidemic With three arrests in two separate cases this week, North Little Rock Police say they're striking out against child sex crimes. Officers unveiled what they say is a stunning amount of computer and video equipment seized from a Levy home on Monday. Police say tips led them to the home of roommates David Dennett and Ronald Nygaard. Police want people to know that even looking at child porn is a serious crime. Special Investigations Sergeant Luise Armstrong tells News 4 Arkansas, somewhere, that child was taken advantage of, and was forced to do some sex act, in order to take the pictures, and that's not victimless." www.kark.com --------------- Military frets over unclassified Web leaks The U.S. Defense Department is worried that sensitive information remains exposed on its Web sites. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned in a directive sent to military units this week that too much unclassified but worrisome material was popping up on the Web, and said Al Qaeda and other foes were sure to take advantage of it. zdnet.com --------------- Senators vow to halt `data mining' project Reflecting increased alarm about a Pentagon plan to find terrorists by trolling the electronic records of all Americans, several senators took steps Thursday to rein in the project and halt other ``data mining'' efforts until Congress can review the implications on civil liberties. www.siliconvalley.com www.bayarea.com www.gcn.com www.govexec.com www.usatoday.com www.cnn.com --------------- Bills: Down With Citizen Database www.wired.com --------------- Brains gather to outsmart spam If experts here get their way, spam may soon be dead meat. Unsolicited e-mail messages, or spam, are on track to make up the majority of traffic on the Internet. But a group of researchers and developers gathered here Friday hopes to halt that by coming up with better ways of blocking those messages from consumers' in-boxes. The Spam Conference, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was originally intended to be an informal gathering of 30 people or so. But more than 500 registered to discuss and debate the best way to battle the problem. zdnet.com www.usatoday.com --------------- GameSpy could let crackers mount network DDoS attacks Flaws within GameSpy, a popular program that allows game clients to find and connect to game servers, might permit crackers to flood systems with useless packets and tie up processors through DDoS attacks. The vulnerability, which affects many games across Windows and *nix server platforms, is based upon spoofed UDP requests, as an advisory by security research outfit PivX Solutions (which made public its research yesterday) explains 212.100.234.54 --------------- Week in review: Security blame game Though much of the finger-pointing for software vulnerabilities falls on hackers, virus writers and software developers, it may be time to take a closer look at how the PC user also contributes. A treasure trove of personal and corporate information was uncovered on used disk drives by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate students. The pair bought 158 disk drives for less than $1,000 on the Web and at swap meets. On those drives, they found more than 5,000 credit card numbers, medical reports, detailed personal and corporate financial information, and several gigabytes worth of personal e-mail and pornography. zdnet.com --------------- Tech--a weak link in homeland security The United States prides itself in being one nation. Yet in terms of technology, we are not yet one, but remain a nation of many-- many systems, many standards and many databases. In the realm of homeland security, this is not good. Because the nation's information systems are not standardized or interconnected, hundreds of millions of Americans are at risk. This is an aspect of homeland security we can and must change. zdnet.com --------------- IT glitches in homeland security news.com --------------- Ridge pledges data merger In his nomination hearing today before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Homeland Security secretary-designate Tom Ridge pledged to blend the government's immigration and law enforcement databases. In response to a question from Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.), Ridge said Congress had given his department the task of merging information gathered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service with that of the FBI and CIA. www.gcn.com *********************************************************** Search the NewsBits.net Archive at: www.newsbits.net *********************************************************** 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. 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