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According to a report published November 12 by Aberdeen Group^, "Security advisories for open source and Linux software accounted for 16 out of the 29 security advisories - about one of every two advisories - published for the first 10 months of 2002 by Cert (www.cert.org^, Computer Emergency Response Team)." Aberdeen says Microsoft products have had no new virus or trojan horse advisories in the first 10 months of 2002, while Unix, Linux, and Open Source software went from one in 2001 to two in the first 10 months of 2002, that in the same 2002 time period "networking...

<p>Worried about having your e-mail secrets uncovered like the Wall Street big boys?</p> <p>The e-mail-fueled investigations into Wall Street brokerage firms, including former Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget and more recently, former Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jack Grubman, has prompted many office workers and consumers to wonder: How do you safely purge your electronic communications?</p>

CERT: Flaw could allow root access in some Unix, Linux systems A buffer overflow in the ToolTalk RPC database server used in the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) on systems from vendors such as Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM could allow an attacker to run code with root privileges, according to a security alert released today by the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC). CDE is a graphical interface used on Unix and some Linux systems. The ToolTalk component of the software allows applications to communicate with each other across different platforms and hosts via remote procedure calls (RPC). The RPC database server...

Beware the Cyber Cops Jonathan Zittrain Even with safeguards, allowing the government to store Internet traffic is an awful idea. Our desire to form a cocoon against terrorists is understandable. But what little policy we've seen from the Justice Department seems to deal with terrorism as a medieval king would take on would-be assassins: ever-tighter boundaries around our national castle and increased surveillance and suspicion within. We should resist the notion that such heightened scrutiny, especially if inconspicuous to the public, carries no significant cost to law-abiding citizens. Consider the range of proposals for unobtrusive but sweeping Internet monitoring. Most...

House OKs life sentences for hackers By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com July 15, 2002, 6:00 PM PT WASHINGTON--The House of Representatives on Monday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would allow for life prison sentences for malicious computer hackers. By a 385-3 vote, the House approved a computer crime bill that also expands police ability to conduct Internet or telephone eavesdropping without first obtaining a court order. The Bush administration had asked Congress to approve the Cyber Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) as a way of responding to electronic intrusions, denial of service attacks and the threat of "cyber-terrorism." The...

<p>NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — The Justice Department claims that revealing details about how it bugged the computer of an accused bookie could threaten national security.</p> <p>Disclosing material about the "key logger system" the FBI installed on the computer of Nicodemo S. Scarfo Jr. would hurt ongoing investigations of foreign intelligence agents and endanger the lives of U.S. agents, according to court documents filed by the government.</p>

Hacker to Apple: Watch those downloads A security mailing list has alerted Apple Computer OS X users to a program that could let a hacker piggyback malicious code on downloads from the company's SoftwareUpdate service. According to the BugTraq mailing list, a hacker named Russell Harding has posted full instructions online for how to fool Apple's SoftwareUpdate feature to allowing a hacker to install a backdoor on any Mac running OS X. The exploit takes advantage of SoftwareUpdate, Apple's software updating mechanism in OS X, which checks weekly for new updates from the company. According to Harding, who claims to...

Flaw Found In Popular E-Mail Scrambling Program Hacker Could Take Control Of User's Computer POSTED: 8:31 a.m. EDT July 11, 2002 WASHINGTON -- The world's most popular software for scrambling sensitive e-mails suffers from a programming flaw that could allow hackers to attack a user's computer and, in some circumstances, unscramble messages. The software, called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, is the de facto standard for encrypting e-mails and is widely used by corporate and government offices, including some FBI agents and U.S. intelligence agencies. The scrambling technology is so powerful that until 1999 the federal government sought to...

<p>WASHINGTON — It may sound like a plot device for a futuristic movie, but the federal government may not be far from forcing Internet service providers to keep copies of all e-mail exchanges in the interest of homeland security.</p> <p>The White House denied a Washington Post report Thursday alleging that the Al Qaeda terrorist network is working on using online and stored data to disrupt the workings of power grids, air traffic towers, dams, and other infrastructure. But a White House official did acknowledge that Al Qaeda has an interest in developing such abilities.</p>

[...]Unsettling signs of al Qaeda's aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshhold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed. The new threat bears little resemblance to familiar financial disruptions by hackers responsible for viruses and worms. It comes instead at the meeting points between computers and the physical structures they control.By disabling or taking command of floodgates in a dam, for example, or of substations handling 300,000 volts of electric power, U.S. analysts believe an intruder could use virtual tools to destroy real-world lives and property....

Sunday June 23, 10:51 am Eastern TimePress ReleaseSOURCE: NewsweekNewsweek: New Microsoft Program 'Palladium' Next Step in Computer Security Ambitious Plan to Let Users Control and Protect Information Will Require Remaking the Architecture of Personal Computers NEW YORK, June 23 /PRNewswire/ --?Microsoft is developing a new system to improve computer security that will address concerns about privacy, security and intellectual property, Newsweek reports in the current issue. Among the several benefits of the ambitious long-range plan, called "Palladium": it will seal information from attackers, it will block many viruses and worms from your computer and it will allow users to participate...

Study: Open, closed source equally secure By Robert Lemos Staff Writer, CNET News.com June 20, 2002, 6:00 PM PT Proprietary programs should mathematically be as secure as those developed under the open-source model, a Cambridge University researcher argued in a paper presented Thursday at a technical conference in Toulouse, France. In his paper, computer scientist Ross Anderson used an analysis equating finding software bugs to testing programs for the mean time before failure, a measure of quality frequently used by manufacturers. Under the analysis, Anderson found that his ideal "open-source" programs were as secure as the "closed-source" programs. "Other things...

Computer activists in Britain are close to completing an operating system that could undermine government efforts to the wiretap the internet. The UK Home Office has condemned the project as potentially providing a new tool for criminals. Electronic communications can be kept private using encryption. But new UK legislation will soon give law enforcers the right to demand encryption keys from anyone suspected of illegal activity. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was introduced to update UK surveillance laws to include electronic communications. But privacy campaigners say it gives too much power to law enforcers and permits intrusive eavesdropping....

<p>A federal magistrate in Los Angeles has ordered SonicBlue to spy on thousands of digital video recorder users -- monitoring every show they record, every commercial they skip and every program they send electronically to a friend.</p> <p>Central District Court Magistrate Charles F. Eick told SonicBlue to gather ``all available information'' about how consumers use the Santa Clara company's latest generation ReplayTV 4000 video recorders and turn the information over to the film studios and television networks suing it for contributing to copyright infringement.</p>

Taliban ties: B'lore firm under microscope &nbsp; Bangalore, Dec 10 The Karnataka government has despatched a team of officials to a Chinese IT facility here to investigate reports that it had developed equipment for the Taliban in Afghanistan, an official said Monday. "We have sent officials of the Software Technology Parks of India to investigate the report," said Vivek Kulkarni, Karnataka's secretary of Information Technology. "The team will submit an official report later Monday to the Ministry of Information Technology," Kulkarni said. The Software Technology Parks of India is an autonomous body under the IT ministry. The Hindustan Times ...

P H I L A D E L P H I A, April 29 — A jet that took off for Florida was forced to return to the airport because several passengers of Middle Eastern appearance had purchased one-way tickets for cash, passengers said Monday. "The FBI had a list. They knew who the people were. They were trying to track the people to their seats," said Jack Clark, who was sitting next to one of the people removed. The incident was one of four Sunday in which air travelers of Middle Eastern appearance or descent were questioned by the...

ASHINGTON, April 22 — The White House cut 93 percent of a recent request by the secretary of energy for money to improve the security of nuclear weapons and waste, according to a letter from the secretary. The secretary, Spencer Abraham, said in the March 14 letter to Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the director of the Office of Management and Budget, that the request, for $379.7 million, was "a critical down payment to the safety and security of our nation and its people." The money, for guarding nuclear weapons, weapons materials and radioactive waste under the Energy Department's supervision, was...

<p>WASHINGTON -- If Hollywood and the music industry get their way, new software and hardware will sport embedded copy protection technology.</p> <p>A bill introduced by Senate Commerce Chairman Fritz Hollings would prohibit the sale or distribution of nearly any technology -- unless it features copy-protection standards to be set by the federal government.</p>

<p>Nearly a century ago, the music industry argued that its future was threatened by a new method of creating and distributing multiple copies of a performed song.</p> <p>The new technology? The player piano roll.</p> <p>Two decades ago, the movie industry fought against an innovative device that it claimed was as dangerous as the Boston Strangler: Sony's Betamax videocassette recorder.</p>

<p>Last month, Sen. Fritz Hollings (D., S.C.) introduced a bill that is a bigger threat to America's information technologies industry than the recession or any external challenge yet encountered in its history. Misleadingly called the "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act," the bill was stimulated by the entertainment industry in order to protect its copyrighted content from the encroachment of digital technology; in fact, some wags refer to it as the "Disney bill."</p>