Updated: 24.11.2002; 17:33:46 Uhr.
disLEXia
lies, laws, legal research, crime and the internet
        

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

Media giants want internet ruling

Music and film companies ask a US judge to rule on an internet copyright case against three file-sharing outfits without trial. [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY]
23:57 # G!

Terror Czar: The War Is Digital

Ousting Saddam Hussein is the easy part, says congressional security adviser Barry McCaffrey. The real trick, he maintains, is disrupting terrorists' communications. John Gartner reports from a security confab in Philadelphia. [Wired News]
23:56 # G!

Broken Sept 11 worm poses little risk

Virus writers have exploited interest in the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks with their latest attempts to create a damaging email worm. Fortunately due to bugs in the code of Chet-A it fails to work properly and is considered a minimal threat.

In the unlikely event you receive it, Chet-A arrives in the form of an email attachment called 11september.exe to a letter advancing a preposterous conspiracy theory that the motive for attacks on the US was to conceal money laundering. [Moreover - moreover...]
23:22 # G!

Hacking: 90% of corporate networks are vulnerable

The true picture of the hacking problem has allegedly been revealed this week by another study. It claims that as many as 90% of corporate networks are, essentially, gaping vulnerabilities as far as companies are concerned. The report does, however, come with its own in-built caveat - it's from a security firm. [...] The whole basis of the report is a study that PanSec undertook in July of this year where it analysed more than 4,000 IP addresses from companies that volunteered for the study. We're not clear how many companies that included but PanSec claims it found that 92% of these networks were seriously vulnerable to a hacker assault. [Moreover - moreover...]
23:18 # G!

The Great Firewall of China

[...] Since 1995, more than 60 laws have been enacted governing Internet activities in China. More than 30,000 state security employees are currently conducting surveillance of Web sites, chat rooms and private e-mail messages - including those sent from home computers. Thousands of Internet cafes have been closed in recent months, and those remaining have been forced to install "Internet Police 110" software, which filters out more than 500,000 banned sites with pornographic or so-called subversive content. Dozens of people have been arrested for their online activities; in 2001, eight people were arrested on subversion charges for publishing or distributing information online. [Moreover - moreover...]
23:14 # G!

27.-29.12.: Chaos Communication Congress

"IMGccc" in Berlin, Germany, CfP started.
19:32 # G! Translate

Internet censorship in Germany

For nearly one year there is going one a farce in Northrhine-Westfalia, one of germany's 16 states. The district government of Düsseldorf asked local providers last fall to "block" access to four webpages. http://www.nazi-lauck-nsdapao.com, http://www.stormfront.org, http://www.front14.org should be blocked for hate speech and http://www.rotten.com for promoting violence and war and for inhuman exposure of people. The hatepages are clearly verboten by german criminal law and there is no much room for discussion that rotten.com is at least inapropriate for minors. So publication of all four sides is a crime over here and the content itself is illegal in Germany. The district government asked the Sites by mail to remove the content - they didn't. But we have a law in Germany which states that the access provider (ISP) has to block access to illegal content if this is possible and does not hurt the ISP beyond reasonaability ("zumutbar"). Up to then it was consensus that it is not technically possible to block internet sites while keeping the Internet in a way we know it. But the district gonvernment claimed that it was possible.

So some Providers started redirecting the IP addresses of the four sites by hacking their own recursive DNS resolvers ("DNS Servers") they where providing to their customers. In Apring 2002 the district government sent a order to 80 ISPs to block http://www.stormfront.org http://www.nazi-lauck-nsdapao.com by either:

"1. Exclusion of the Domains in the Domain-Server. In case the Accesprovider deploys a DNS this can be configured in a way that requests will not be routed at the right server but to an nonexistent or another predefined page.
2. Usage of a Proxy-Server. The URL as a destinctive key for a individual webpage on the server can be blocked by using a proxy. Request to a illegal webpage will be filtered and access will be denied or it will be redirected to a predefined page in the browser and informed.
3. Exclusion of IPs by blocking at the router. The Router can be configured in a way that all datatraffic to a certain IP will not be routed."

Also the district government initiated a test of other filtering mechanisms. To my knowledge they didn't ask the Chinese for knowledge transfer. Legal battles, demonstrations etc. followed during the summer. Yesterday the district government ordered the providers to immediately block the sides.

You might want to watch at the machine translation of a Documentation collected by the CCC; there is also an english page on the subject by the organizers of the demonstrations.
9:28 # G! Translate

Create effective passwords

Passwords. These days it seems that everyone has five to 10 of these annoying creatures where a few years ago most people had maybe one or two. Today, having up to 10 passwords at a time is often the norm and it's not going to get any easier to manage them. This article looks at password usage: why it's a problem and what you can do about it. It introduces a simple system for creating secure and easy-to-remember passwords. [IBM Developer Works - Security Articles]
9:19 # G!

Thailand says " Hacking widespread here "

More than 48 public sector web sites and 500 sites belonging to private firms in Thailand have been hacked, despite 98% of these sites having a firewall, according to a report from the Alldas.org IT security information network.

Police Col Yanaphon Youngyuen, Deputy Commander of the Police Information System Center, said most government agencies have problems with IT security and need education to help secure their systems. [Security News Portal]
9:15 # G!

Attack Anniversary Cyberthreats Unfounded - says VMyths

See http://www.vmyths.com/ for urther ranting [Security News Portal]
9:12 # G!

Betrug mit Pferdewetten-Software

Australien - Ein australisches Gericht hat drei M...nnern den weiteren Vertrieb einer Software f[florin]r Pferdewetten untersagt. 12,500 australische Dollars sollten die K...ufer berappen f[florin]r eine Software, mit der sich "todsicher" der Ausgang von Pferderennen errechnen l...sst. Neben dem Verkaufsverbot verh...ngte das Gericht auch Schadenersatzzahlungen an K...ufer der Software. Einer der Verurteilten hat sich zudem bereit erkl...rt, f[florin]r Spiels[florin]chtige Spenden zu sammeln. [Newsbyte.ch]
8:25 # G! Translate

US citizens back web controls

Americans approve of measures taken by the government to censor official websites in the name of securityü a survey has found. [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY]
0:53 # G!

Thin Line Splits Cheating, Smarts

Students try to get their papers written by Google Answers. [Wired News]
0:47 # G!

Got Cheaters? Ask New Questions

The Web puts answers to most questions -- not to mention ready-made term papers -- at students' fingertips. One educator says it's time to assign work that truly makes kids think. By Dustin Goot. [Wired News]
0:30 # G!

Maximillian Dornseif, 2002.
 
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