Updated: 26.11.2002; 11:51:26 Uhr.
disLEXia
lies, laws, legal research, crime and the internet
        

Sunday, November 24, 2002

Ross Anderson: Security Engeneering

Rob Slade reviews my favourite Security Engineering: "I have often been asked, in regard to these reviews, whether there are, in fact, any books that I like.  Well, I like this one.  If you are involved with security and you haven't read it, you should."
[Security Weblog]
19:46 # G!

The Shrinking Frontiers

Two Harvard researchers are demonstrating how what you read online depends very much on where you are.

&147;I think the cyber-libertarians are off their mid-Nineties high,&148; Jonathan Zittrain said flatly. &147;Many now realize that the Net isn&146;t inherently, unchangeably freedom-promoting.&148;

...

It used to be that network servers simply and neutrally passed on data packets, helping them along their way to their destination terminal.

Now, however, that end-to-end neutrality of the greater network is being eroded by &147;discerning Net couriers&148; along the way. More and more networks are evaluating and categorizing the content of the information they relay before passing it on, and if the server&146;s owner doesn&146;t like the category the content falls into, that information is prohibited from moving along the chain. The request fails. [The Hacktivist]
18:53 # G!

The Shrinking Frontiers

Two Harvard researchers are demonstrating how what you read online depends very much on where you are.

&147;I think the cyber-libertarians are off their mid-Nineties high,&148; Jonathan Zittrain said flatly. &147;Many now realize that the Net isn&146;t inherently, unchangeably freedom-promoting.&148;

...

It used to be that network servers simply and neutrally passed on data packets, helping them along their way to their destination terminal.

Now, however, that end-to-end neutrality of the greater network is being eroded by &147;discerning Net couriers&148; along the way. More and more networks are evaluating and categorizing the content of the information they relay before passing it on, and if the server&146;s owner doesn&146;t like the category the content falls into, that information is prohibited from moving along the chain. The request fails. [The Hacktivist]
18:52 # G!

Holiday Fraud May Cost Nearly $300 Million

The stakes get bigger and both the good guys and the bad guys are escalating their efforts in the ongoing online battle between merchants and thieves.

A new industry report on the persistent fraud problem that dogs e-commerce merchants, from the giants like Amazon.com down to mom-and-pop storefronts, predicts that crooks and deadbeats will create losses of an estimated $285 million over the holiday season in the United States.

The good news is that fully two-thirds of U.S. merchants are taking more online fraud precautions this year than they did in 2001, according to the fourth annual CyberSource Fraud Survey.

The bad news is that 29 percent of survey respondents believe they will experience more credit card fraud this holiday season than they did last year.

In fact, fraud is expected to siphon off 3 percent of overall online sales in 2002, the survey said. Even a company the size of Amazon.com, which surely has abundant resources and ample motivation to fight fraud, gets taken now and again.

An Amazon exec said in a conference call with analysts recently that the fraud rate at the company is running about 2.5 percent.

The percentage may seem small, but as online sales increase the dollar amounts become more and more significant. And online holiday sales are up -- Bizrate.com and online retailer association Shop.org reported this week that during the first two weeks of November, 60 percent of Internet retailers posted revenue increases of 25 percent or greater compared to the same period last year.

The CyberSource survey found that 71 percent of merchants say they plan to use AVS, a means of ensuring an address supplied with the order matches the address attached to the buyer's credit card, compared to 46 percent the year before.

And to battle identity theft, 59 percent of merchants say they are now encrypting stored credit card numbers, an increase of 11 percentage points over last year's 48 percent.

Penetration audits -- checks to determine if a site has been hacked -- have nearly doubled since last year, and nearly half of the survey respondents now report having a paid risk management employee responsible for battling online credit card fraud, CyberSource said.

Interestingly, the survey audience said that 20 percent of their orders still require human intervention to screen for fraud. That of course is costly, and helps to explain why the survey found that more merchants will be adopting verification services like Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode.

The percent of respondents rating online credit card fraud as a "Serious" or "Very Serious" business issue fell to 46 percent this year from 59 percent in 2001. The survey was done for CyberSource by Austin, Texas-based Mindwave Research. The survey was fielded October 2-9, 2002 and yielded 341 complete responses (vs. 220 the year before). The sample was drawn from a database of companies involved in electronic commerce activities. [internetnews.com: E-Commerce News]
18:14 # G!

Kazaa in Court This Week

Popular peer-to-peer network software creator Kazaa will be in court on Monday, November 25. The crucial question is whether Kazaa has enough business in the US to be sued in a US court of law. The hearing will be held at 1:30 pm before U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson at the U.S. Federal Courthouse, located at 312 North Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Kazaa BV sold the Kazaa software to Sharman networks this February. However, Judge Stephen Wilson allowed Sharman to be added to the federal lawsuit. Should the judge rule in favour of RIAA and MPAA, Sharman will be added to the Streamcast and Grokster trial. [GrepLaw]
15:49 # G!

The constitutional basis of litigation?

The New York Times publishes "Is Litigation a Blight, or Built In?", which features law professors who say, in essence, that litigation has become a necessity in a nation where the central government has been hamstrung by a constitutional system which artificially restricts its otherwise all-reaching power. (Link suggested by How Appealing)

While countries like Britain, Germany, France or Sweden have a centralized government with powerful regulatory agencies to provide safeguards and with generous social welfare benefits to cushion life's blows, Professor Burke argues, the decentralized American system forces Americans to take their problems to court. So instead of national health care, he says, Americans get proposals for a "patients' bill of rights" that would allow the sick to sue their managed-care companies.

They just never quit, do they?

[The LitiGator]
2:15 #

Maximillian Dornseif, 2002.
 
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