Online Security, a global provider of computer forensics and information technology risk mitigation since 1997   Original Source:    http://www.newsbits.net January 31, 2003 - News Author:  Deputy Ron Levine January 31, 2003 ***************** Training Announcement ******************* The High Technology Crime Investigation Association (HTCIA) Silicon Valley Chapter, is presenting a three-day high tech crime training session, May 6-8, 2003. This training is intended for Federal, State and Local Law Enforcement; prosecuting attorneys; private investigators; corporate security staff and network security administrators who are responsible for the investigation of high technology crimes. Register early - only 200 seats available. Sold out each year! Information and registration at htciatrining.org *********************************************************** Sergeant gets six years confinement An Air Force staff sergeant will spend six years in confinement, be demoted to airman basic and be dishonorably discharged for stealing four laptop computers and two personal data assistant devices from U.S. Central Command last year. www.af.mil --------------- Bail set for Chinese businessman after charges of export violations A federal judge insisted Thursday that the friends and family of a Chinese businessman accused of shipping missile technology to China provide $250,000 in cash and property to secure his release, citing the severity of the charges against him and his flight risk. In addition, Qing Chang Jiang, jailed since early January, must remain in Santa Clara County, wear an electronic monitoring device, surrender his passport and submit to searches of his body, home and car at any time for any reason, ruled Chief Magistrate Judge Patricia V. Trumbull of the U.S. District Court in Northern California. www.siliconvalley.com --------------- Man Held For Allegedly Trying To Meet Child A man who allegedly sent sexually explicit Internet messages to a 12-year-old girl was arrested when he went to an Orange County home to meet her, police said. Mark William Suggs, 31, of Carson, was arrested Wednesday and was held on $50,000 bail, Sgt. Jack Conklin said. The girl was not at home and Suggs never physically met her, Conklin said. Suggs met the girl online several weeks ago and had sent some "very sexually explicit messages," Conklin said. The girl's father saw some of the messages and called police. www.nbc4.tv --------------- NY Man sentenced for producing child porn A Binghamton man will spend at least 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to producing child pornography. Forty year old Anthony R. Lesch of Oak Street admitted taking pictures of girls as young as six performing explicit sex acts in his home. Authorities say they found thousands of pictures of child pornography in his computer and on compact discs. www.wicz.com --------------- Internet child porn nets man 3-6 years behind prison bars A North Hampton man arrested for possession of child pornography in December 2001, was convicted this week and sentenced to three to six years in state prison. Karl Kulberg, 44, of 203 Lafayette Road, Lot 19, North Hampton, was charged with possessing more than 10,000 photographs of child pornography on his computer. He was subsequently charged with 41 counts of possession of child pornography, all of which are Class B felonies, punishable by a 3 - to 7-year prison term. www.seacoastonline.com --------------- ‘Morbid curiosity’ not a defense, federal judge rules Morbid curiosity led a former Bradley University student to download images of preschool-aged children engaged in sexual conduct off the Internet, he stated Thursday. During his sentencing hearing, C.J. Moran, 25, of Chicago said he first started to look at child pornography in September 2001, after he saw TV news shows saying how easy it was to get on the Internet. "I did it (downloaded the images) to see what you get out there," he told U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm. "It wasn’t for pedophilia, but for morbid curiosity." But the judge didn’t buy that argument and sentenced Moran to five years in prison - the maximum allowed - for possession of child pornography. www.pjstar.com --------------- Pupil 'suspended' after he Asked f&%king Jeeves An Essex schoolboy is currently under police investigation after he sent an "extremely abusive email" to staff at search outfit Ask Jeeves. The 72-word rant contained a heavy sprinkling of expletives before ending with the threat of bodily harm. It seems, he was dissatisfied with the performance of the Ask Jeeves search engine. Unfortunately, he sent the email from his school email account, so Ask Jeeves decided to forward it to his headmaster. 212.100.234.54 --------------- University students admit to using cell phones to cheat Six University of Maryland students have admitted to using their cell phones to access answer keys during a December accounting exam, a case of students using technology to cheat that surprised university officials. Twelve students were accused of using the text messaging functions on their cell phones to receive messages from people outside the College Park campus exam hall. Those aiding the students accessed answer keys posted on the Internet by a professor once the exam began. www.usatoday.com --------------- The week in review: Slammer dunks the Internet A tiny SQL worm taught major corporations a lesson, UK citizens were overjoyed about ID cards, and Stelios lost the CD-copying battle. What is just 367 bytes long, yet can cripple cash machines, knock South Korea off the Internet and clog up the Internet's nameservers, all in one weekend? The IT world found out this week when the SQL Slammer worm slowed Web sites and corporate networks to a crawl. The punchline: at the root of the problem was a bug that had supposedly been fixed months ago. Microsoft itself admitted it had fallen prey to Slammer. news.zdnet.co.uk news.com --------------- The Slammer worm: a sysadmin's view www.smh.com.au --------------- Counting the cost of Slammer news.com --------------- Microsoft warns of Slammer morphs news.zdnet.co.uk --------------- Experts say Microsoft security effort failing Computer security experts said Thursday the recent ``SQL Slammer'' worm, the worst in more than a year, is evidence that Microsoft Corp.'s year-old security push is not working.``Trustworthy Computing is failing,'' Russ Cooper of TruSecure Corp. said of the Microsoft initiative. ``I gave it a 'D-minus' at the beginning of the year, and now I'd give it an 'F.''' www.siliconvalley.com zdnet.com news.zdnet.co.uk www.usatoday.com --------------- 'Secure by design', claims MS op-ed ad online.securityfocus.com --------------- Bush Approves Cybersecurity Strategy President Bush has approved the White House's long-awaited national cybersecurity strategy, a landmark document intended to guide government and industry efforts to protect the nation's most critical information systems from cyberattack. In an e-mail sent Thursday to White House officials, cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke said that the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace has received Bush's signature and will be released to the public in the next few weeks. www.washingtonpost.com --------------- Clarke to step down as cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke, the White House cybersecurity czar, will resign after he finishes the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace early next month. Clarke announced that he submitted his resignation to President Bush in a memo to the Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a nonprofit organization formed by technology vendors to share information about network security. Clarke released a draft of the national strategy in September, and agencies and the private sector submitted comments through November. Now, the plan is being finalized and is due out in early February. www.gcn.com www.govexec.com www.fcw.com www.washingtonpost.com www.msnbc.com www.cnn.com www.wired.com www.nandotimes.com --------------- Cybersecurity R&D agenda unveiled The Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) has unveiled its 2003 Cyber Security Research and Development Agenda, which identifies critical areas that require significant research and development to help secure the nation's information infrastructure. The agenda, announced Jan. 30, outlines eight crucial R&D gaps that are not being sufficiently addressed by ongoing government, private-sector or academic research. www.fcw.com --------------- Feds Building Internet Monitoring Center The Bush administration is quietly assembling an Internet-wide monitoring center to detect and respond to attacks on vital information systems and key e-commerce sites. The center, which has been in development for the past 15 months, is a key piece of the White House's national cybersecurity strategy and represents a major leap in the federal government's effort to achieve real-time tracking of the Internet's health. online.securityfocus.com www.washingtonpost.com --------------- FBI Has Searchable Counter-Terror Data www.newsfactor.com --------------- Total Information Awareness official responds to criticism www.govexec.com --------------- Fraud-Net.com gets states' attention Backers of Fraud-Net.com, which was launched earlier this month, are reporting nationwide interest as banks and police forces look to link to the Florida- based online financial fraud alert system. If the level of interest translates into actual connections -- more than 30 state organizations have expressed interest and as many as 15 could be on board by the middle of the year -- Fraud-Net.com could wind up providing a nationwide service, according to Thomas Kerr, vice president and chief financial officer of the Florida Bankers Association. www.fcw.com --------------- Defense Dept., firms reach Wi-Fi pact update Tech companies and the Department of Defense have reached a compromise on the future of wireless networking, addressing military concerns about radar interference. The two sides said Friday that they had reached a resolution that establishes a new radio frequency threshold for products using unlicensed radio spectrum--primarily Wi-Fi products. Wi-Fi is a technology that lets devices located within a 300-foot radius communicate with one another wirelessly. news.com www.newsfactor.com www.washingtonpost.com www.msnbc.com --------------- Trojan writers exploit Outlook to get around content filtering Virus authors and Trojan writers are using fresh malware tricks to fool traditional content filtering packages, email security firm MessageLabs says. A feature of Microsoft Outlook can be exploited to evade content filters and persuade an email recipient that an attachment is safe to open - even when it contains malicious code. 212.100.234.54 --------------- Software-filtering foe goes after Net-blocking governments A leading critic of filtering software is working with the U.S. government to find ways to prevent China and other censor-happy regimes from controlling what their citizens read online. Other projects like SafeWeb's Triangle Boy and DynaWeb have similar missions. The difference here is that Bennett Haselton wants to keep the project fully open for inspection — even to the censors. www.usatoday.com --------------- E-Voting security debate comes home Should electronic ballots decide the next presidential election? Some respected computer scientists and security experts say the risks posed by malicious hackers, equipment failure or subtle programming errors make fully-electronic voting systems a bad idea. On Friday, they're taking that fight to their own backyard, trying to stop local officials from introducing the systems into 5,000 voting booths in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. online.securityfocus.com --------------- Mitnick: Consumer vigilance can thwart high-tech crooks CORPORATE security is an illusion. So is personal financial privacy. I should know; I spent five years of my life in federal prison for proving it. A recent survey by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI found that 90 percent of U.S. companies responding had detected security breaches during the preceding year. Many companies believe that they can protect their information and networks from the bad guys by acquiring security technologies such as fire-walls, anti-virus software and biometric authentication systems. But while it's essential to use technology to prevent and detect hackers, it is naive to rely on technology alone. www.siliconvalley.com --------------- FBI activates Trilogy network The FBI on Jan. 27 began deploying the WAN that will support its Trilogy classified case management system, a bureau official said.The Ethernet TCP/IP network is intended to replace the agency’s existing token-ring network and to connect about 700 sites by the end of March, the official said. The network will operate at speeds of 1.544 Mbps or faster, the official said, using commercial bandwidth. As the bureau deploys the network, it will activate an enterprise operations center to control the network and monitor its operation. The control center will be located in Washington, with backup facilities elsewhere, the official said. www.gcn.com --------------- Technology helps immigration inspectors spot fake documents Immigration inspectors at the Nogales port of entry are using new technology to detect document fraud. Since Nov. 14, a pilot project has allowed them to catch about 100 people trying to cross the border with other people's identification cards, said Gary Rehbein, the Immigration and Naturalization Service's deputy port director. www.usatoday.com --------------- U.S. Releases Woman Deported by Russia After several hours of questioning, federal authorities early Thursday released an American woman deported from Russia for allegedly encouraging Islamic extremists via the Internet to target the United States. But after FBI and U.S. Customs Service agents released Megan McRee, they made it clear that they were continuing to investigate her activities. Officials would not confirm or deny reports that they had confiscated McRee's laptop computer and were monitoring her whereabouts. www.latimes.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. Reproduction of this text is encouraged; however copies may not be sold, and NewsBits (www.newsbits.net) should be cited as the source of the information. 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