Passport records breach highlighted by targets' prominence It's only because Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain are well known that the pilfering of their private passport records by State Department employees was uncovered, according to privacy rights groups. Read more...
Government's plans for cyber-crime "half-baked" Date: March 21, 2008Source: Technology.timesonline.co.ukBy: Jonathan Richards
The Government has severely underestimated the threat the country faces from cyber-crime and risks having its own networks breached by foreign spies if it doesn't devote more resources to the problem, the security industry has said.The Prime Minister's new security strategy, outlined yesterday. didn't do nearly enough to address what security companies called the "shockingly low" awareness of cyber-crime among both businesses and individuals, according to security experts. They said the strategy also underplayed the threat posed by foreign governments intent on bringing down UK networksState-sponsored attacks on foreign networks have been an increasingly important issue for the security industry since it emerged in December that the head of MI5 had sent a letter to the heads of Britain's largest companies warning them that the Chinese Government was attempting to penetrate their computer systems.Gordon Brown said yesterday that the Government was alert to new internet-based threats, but security companies said that its failure to establish a specialist unit to deal specifically with cyber-crime meant that the problem was still not receiving the attention it deserved. Original article
US Treasury Department Adopts Dual-Factor Authentication - 3/21/2008 1:23:00 PM Entrust IdentityGuard costs only 25 cents per card for each user
Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines
nytimes.com — The parents who objected to their children being inoculated are among a small but growing number of vaccine skeptics in California and other states who take advantage of exemptions to laws requiring vaccinations for school-age children.More… (Health)
NY Law Would Restrict Tracking of Web Users
After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law. So he drafted a bill, now gathering support in Albany, that would make it a crime — punishable by a fine to be determined — for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent. And because it would be extraordinarily difficult for the companies that collect such data to adhere to stricter rules for people in New York alone, these companies would probably have to adjust their rules everywhere, effectively turning the New York legislation into national law.
A Push to Limit the Tracking of Web Surfers’ Clicks, New York Times, March 20, 2008.
Posted by EPIC on March 20, 2008.Permanent link to this item.
Cyber attacks against Tibetan communities
Published: 2008-03-21,Last Updated: 2008-03-21 17:08:39 UTCby Maarten Van Horenbeeck (Version: 2)
There is lots of media coverage on the protests in Tibet. Something that lies under the surface, and rarely gets a blip in the press, are the various targeted cyber attacks that have been taking place against these various communities recently.
These attacks are not limited to various Tibetan NGOs and support groups. They have been reported dating back to 2002, and even somewhat before that, and have affected several other communities, including Falun Gong and the Uyghurs.
The attacks generally start with a very trustworthy looking e-mail, being spoofed as originating from a known contact, to someone within a community. In some cases, messages have also been distributed to mailing lists. These messages however contain malicious attachments. These are either:
CHM Help files with embedded objects;
Acrobat Reader PDF exploits;
Microsoft Office exploits;
LHA files exploiting vulnerabilities in WinRAR;
Exploitation of an ActiveX component through an attached HTML file.
"A new type of flash memory, called array-based memory, could offer a terabyte of data on a single chip within the next decade by bypassing current NAND memory technology, which is limited by the miniaturization capability of lithography. According to the Computerworld story, start-up Nanochip Inc. is being backed by Intel and others, and over 11 years has made research breakthroughs that will enable it to deliver working prototypes to potential manufacturing partners next year. And by 2010, the first chips are expected to reach 100GB capacity."
Your Rights Online: FBI Posts Fake Hyperlinks To Trap Downloaders of Illegal Porn
Posted by Soulskill on Thursday March 20, @09:59PMfrom the if-you-thought-getting-a-shock-site-link-was-bad dept.
mytrip brings us a story from news.com about an FBI operation in which agents posted hyperlinks which advertised child pornography, recorded the IP addresses of people who clicked the links, and then tracked them down and raided their homes. The article contains a fairly detailed description of how the operation progressed, and it raises questions about the legality and reliability of getting people to click "unlawful" hyperlinks. Quoting: "With the logs revealing those allegedly incriminating IP addresses in hand, the FBI sent administrative subpoenas to the relevant Internet service provider to learn the identity of the person whose name was on the account--and then obtained search warrants for dawn raids. The search warrants authorized FBI agents to seize and remove any "computer-related" equipment, utility bills, telephone bills, any "addressed correspondence" sent through the U.S. mail, video gear, camera equipment, checkbooks, bank statements, and credit card statements. While it might seem that merely clicking on a link wouldn't be enough to justify a search warrant, courts have ruled otherwise. On March 6, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Nevada agreed with a magistrate judge that the hyperlink-sting operation constituted sufficient probable cause to justify giving the FBI its search warrant."
[+] court, fbi, entrapment, thinkofthechildren, bigbrother (tagging beta)
Verizon, AT&T rule 700MHz auction; Block D fate unsettled
AT&T and Verizon scored big in the FCC's biggest broadband auction ever; the agency is putting Block D on ice for the moment. Chairman Martin is happy with the outcome, while Commissioner Adelstein laments the fact that woman- and minority-owned business were shut out of the auction.
March 20, 2008 - 08:48PM CT - by Matthew Lasar
The REDFLY gives me back the utility of a Handheld PC, but with the latest OS
Billion-dollar IT failure at Census Bureau
Michael Krigsman: The US Census Bureau faces cost overruns up to $2 billion on an IT initiative replacing paper-based data collection methods with specialized handheld devices for the upcoming 2010 census.
Crowded NAC space spells doom for Lockdown Networks
Jim Carr March 21, 2008
The recent closing of Lockdown Networks, one of the early entrants in the crowded network access control (NAC) marketplace, should not come as a shock to anyone, according to analysts.
Defending Laptops from Zombie Attacks
By Kate GreeneFriday, March 21, 2008
Intel is developing more-accurate ways to tell when a machine has been infected.
Feds Tout New Domestic Intelligence Centers; Press Stays Home
Federal, state and local cops are huddling together in domestic intelligence dens around the nation to fuse anti-terror information and tips in ways they never have before, and they want the American people to know about it, sort of.
Some of the nation's top law enforcement and anti-terror officials tried to tell the public Tuesday and Wednesday a bit about the growing importance and effectiveness of the nation's so-called fusion centers.
Those fifty or so centers are where the federal, state and local cops share intelligence, sift data for clues, run down reports of suspicious packages and connect dots in an effort to detect and thwart terrorism attacks, drug smuggling and gang fighting.
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