Online Security, a global provider of computer forensics and information technology risk mitigation since 1997   Original Source:    http://www.newsbits.net April 17, 2003 - News Author:  Deputy Ron Levine NewsBits for April 17, 2003 sponsored by, Southeast Cybercrime Institute - www.cybercrime.kennesaw.edu ************************************************************ Internet killer pleads to sex charges A man convicted of state manslaughter charges for strangling a 13-year-old girl he met on the Internet pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges of crossing state lines to have sex with the child. Saul Dos Reis, 25, admitted traveling from New York to Danbury to meet the girl and also pleaded guilty to making a similar trip in 1998 to have sex with a 15-year-old girl he met online. Authorities say Dos Reis strangled Christina Long on May 17, 2002, while the two were having sex in his car after he picked up the sixth- grader at a Danbury mall. Police said Dos Reis met her in an Internet chat room. www.nandotimes.com ---------------- Mayor held over child porn A Tory mayor at the centre of a police probe was arrested again today in connection with alleged computer child porn. North Tyneside's Chris Morgan was detained over the alleged possession of indecent images of children. Mr Morgan, 33, was arrested by child protection officers last month in an inquiry into the alleged indecent assault of a schoolgirl when she was 15. It is understood that Mr Morgan's computer was seized at his home when he was arrested over the indecency allegation. Material obtained from the computer led to Mr Morgan being arrested and quizzed today. icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk ---------------- Ex-Cornell employee sentenced for child porn A former employee of Cornell University's office of information technology was sentenced to probation and a fine for having child pornography on campus computers. Robert E. Mosher, 36, of 3 Garfield St. in Cortland, was sentenced Monday in Ithaca Town Court to three years of probation and a fine of $500. www.theithacajournal.com ---------------- Student arrested for child porn IU sophomore Galen Baughman was arrested earlier this month in his Henderson Street apartment by the District Attorney's office of Westchester, N.Y., for multiple charges of child pornography. With assistance from the IU Police Department and Monroe County Prosecutor's Office, investigators of Westchester D.A.'s office arrested Baughman and charged him with five Class D felony counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child. He was also charged with a Class E felony for attempting to disseminate indecent material to a minor. www.idsnew.com ---------------- FTC targets porn spam operation The Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on a pornographic spam operation that it says has grossed more than $1 million in commissions and nearly 50,000 consumer complaints from a recent bulk e-mail campaign. The government agency this week asked a district court to bar a Missouri man from further sending e-mail that contains deceptive subject lines, bogus reply information, and sexually explicit material designed to drive commerce to an adult Web site. zdnet.com www.siliconvalley.com ---------------- 'Bar code' Web site put new twist on old scam A Web site that urged visitors to lower prices for grocery items by substituting bar codes shut itself down after pressure from Wal-Mart Inc. The site's operators, a group of tech-savvy political activists, decided to close the site Wednesday after contacts between their lawyer and those of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer. "I decided that maybe I'm in over my head at this point," said a member of the group who would identify himself only with the pseudonym Nathan Hactivist. He said he's a 26-year-old art student in upstate New York. www.nandotimes.com www.usatoday.com www.wired.com www.msnbc.com www.siliconvalley.com ---------------- 419 scammers move into the French air disaster market Continuing our ongoing reportage of new 419 scams, we're pleased to announce that Nigerian advance fee fraudsters have moved into the foreign language and air disaster markets. www.theregister.co.uk ---------------- Digital copyright act survives legal challenge A federal judge in Boston recently dismissed a lawsuit supported by the American Civil Liberties Union that sought a declaration that would have taken some of the teeth out of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The lawsuit hoped for a ruling that would say the DMCA violates free speech rights protected by the First Amendment. The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that it did not present a ripe case or controversy for adjudication. The judge also used language in his dismissal ruling that suggested the copyright protections of the DMCA were not outweighed by any constitutionally protected rights. www.usatoday.com ---------------- Judge says Georgia Tech student can't discuss security flaws Fifteen minutes before he was to lecture on security flaws in a debit card system used on 223 college campuses, 22-year-old Billy Hoffman found out a judge had banned him from talking. Hoffman had used a screwdriver to break into a laundry room swipe machine that reads BuzzCards - identification cards used by staff and his fellow students at Georgia Tech and similar to ones at hundreds of other schools. The computer engineering major says he found ways to bilk the school out of Cokes, laundry service and cash. http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/858522p-6005850c.html www.washingtonpost.com www.siliconvalley.com ---------------- HSD seeks to secure data it gets from the private sector The Homeland Security Department has proposed rules under which it would protect systems information it receives from the private sector. The proposed rule explicitly applies to hardware and software that makes up critical-infrastructure systems. The government relies on many such systems, such as private voice and data networks, for its daily operations. www.gcn.com ---------------- Identity theft worse than Iraq war The danger of digital identity theft causes more worry for consumers than the war in Iraq, a survey released yesterday has found. Identity theft is second only to the World Trade Center terrorist attacks in terms of its impact on consumer awareness of security issues, according to the study conducted by Opinion Research Corporation. www.vnunet.com www.wired.com ---------------- Arab Web sites cite rise in hacking attempts during war The war in Iraq set off a rash of online vandalism against Arab Web sites, site administrators and security experts say, with dozens of Web sites attacked. At Islamonline.net, one of the most popular destinations for reports and analysis on Islamic affairs, traffic doubled after U.S. forces invaded Iraq. So did cyberattacks, which reached 250 a day, according to Mutiullah Ta'eb, the site's general coordinator. Another attack put Arabia.com, a Dubai-based Web site, off line the third day of the war. www.nandotimes.com www.usatoday.com abcnews.go.com www.wired.com ---------------- Parents Rally to Stop 'Cyber Bullying' Calling Internet rumor mills harmful, some move to shut sites. Defenders say free speech is at stake. When Internet users log onto schoolscandals.com and click on the Beverly Hills High School link, they will find a message calling one student a "retard" who "deserves to go to hell." A posting in the Frost Middle School chat room describes a student as a "homosexual with a pigeon-like face and a penguin-like body." (LA Times article, free registration required) www.latimes.com ---------------- NIST starts security certification program Ron Ross, former head of the National Information Assurance Partnership, has started a new office that will develop standards for certifying that new agency systems are secure. The Certification and Accreditation Program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology will roll out in two phases, Ross said. In Phase 1, now under way, a team will develop standards for evaluating whether a new system is secure. In the second phase, which Ross said will occur "over the next few years," the office will establish a network of accredited organizations to provide security certification services based on these guidelines. www.gcn.com ---------------- Experts warn not to apply Microsoft patch Microsoft yesterday released details of yet another vulnerability in versions of Windows, but some security experts are dubious about the contents of the patch for Windows 2000. The flaw in question is in the Windows kernel and affects XP, NT and 2000. Labelled as 'important', the bug affects the way the kernel passes error messages to a debugger. www.vnunet.com ---------------- IE bug crashes browsers A researcher has revealed details of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6.0, but it is unclear whether it is exploitable. A simple flaw in Internet Explorer 6.0 causes the browser to crash when it views pages containing malicious HTML code, a security researcher has found. Although many DoS vulnerabilities such as this can lead to the discovery of more serious flaws after further research, AusCERT security researcher Jamie Gillespie said it's unlikely in this case. news.zdnet.co.uk ---------------- Grampian police trial facial biometrics Grampian Police are to use a biometric facial recognition systems to help identify and process suspects more rapidly. The system is supplied by Steria and integrates Imagis' ID-2000 face recognition technology to confirm the identities of suspects by cross-checking against photographic records. www.theregister.co.uk ---------------- Data management system gets new analysis tool An automated data analysis tool will power a new FBI counterterrorism database, letting bureau analysts easily pore through more than 1 billion documents and share information with other intelligence agencies. The tools, ClearTags and ClearResearch, will draw patterns from terrorism-related intelligence collected from several sources into a centralized data mart that's part of the agency's modernized Trilogy network. www.gcn.com ---------------- Cell phone can call up spy cam A wall-mounted surveillance camera that can send images directly to a cell phone will be available in the United States this summer, according to maker Nokia. The Observation Camera will launch in July, executives for the Finnish phone giant said Tuesday. The sub-$500 device is among the first to use so-called machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, which lets machines use cellular telephone networks to communicate with computer systems or other machines. zdnet.com *********************************************************** Computer Forensics Training - Online. An intense, 150 hour, instructor lead program that teaches you computer forensics and helps prepare you for the Certified Computer Examiner exam. 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