Wednesday, 11. September 2002
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]
Thin Line Splits Cheating, Smarts
Students try to get their papers written by Google Answers. [Wired News]
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]
Betrug mit Pferdewetten-Software
Australien - Ein australisches Gericht hat drei Männern den weiteren Vertrieb einer Software für Pferdewetten untersagt. 12,500 australische Dollars sollten die Käufer berappen für eine Software, mit der sich "todsicher" der Ausgang von Pferderennen errechnen lässt. Neben dem Verkaufsverbot verhängte das Gericht auch Schadenersatzzahlungen an Käufer der Software. Einer der Verurteilten hat sich zudem bereit erklärt, für Spielsüchtige Spenden zu sammeln. [Newsbyte.ch]
Attack Anniversary Cyberthreats Unfounded - says VMyths
See http://www.vmyths.com/ for urther ranting [Security News Portal]
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]
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]
Internet censorship in Germany
http://md.hudora.de/blog/bgems/images/zensur.png"
align="right">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.
Greek court finds Government ban on electronic games unconstitutional
(Re: Pareas via Max, RISKS-22.23)
One of the advantages of Greek law is that every court (no just special ones as in many countries) can decide on the constitutionality of a law. This has it's own risks - inconveniences but, I am glad to report that in this case it worked well. The stupid law banning electronic games has been found unconstitutional by the court that was judging the "criminals".
Giorgos Epitidios, Athens, Greece gepiti@gepiti.com ["Giorgos Epitidios" <gepiti@gepiti.com> via risks-digest Volume 22, Issue 24]
Air passenger jailed for using mobile
A passenger who played a game on his mobile phone during a flight has been jailed for four months. (BBC coverage at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2248683.stm)
The risks of playing Tetris! [George Roussos <gr@dcs.bbk.ac.uk> via risks-digest Volume 22, Issue 26]
27.-29.12.: Chaos Communication Congress
"IMGccc" in Berlin, Germany, CfP started.
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...]
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...]
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...]
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]
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]
disLEXia, a research project by Maximillian Dornseif
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