disLEXia

Wednesday, 04. December 2002

E-mail warning for workers

Burglars could use out of office e-mail replies to target homes when workers are on holiday, a technology industry body has warned. [BBC News Online]
10:39 | permanent link | mail this

China 'blocks 10% of websites'

Chinese authorities are using increasingly hi-tech filtering methods to prevent access to websites on sensitive subjects, a study shows. [BBC News Online]
10:39 | permanent link | mail this

An Introduction to Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

This article will explain the concept of DDoS attacks, how they work, how to react if you become a target, and how the security community can work together to prevent them. [Help Net Security]
12:38 | permanent link | mail this

Who will rid us of fake error message ads?

A class action suit has been filed in Spokane County Washington against Bonzi Software, the maker of the fake error message banner ads you have all seen thousands of times.

The law firm orchestrating the action is called Lukins and Annis. And here is the nub of its Bonzi scheme:

A nationwide class action lawsuit was filed on November 25, 2002, in the Superior Court of Spokane County against Bonzi Software, Inc. Bonzi is among the world&146;s most prolific issuers of internet advertising banners. Bonzi&146;s website has been ranked as one of the most frequently visited websites in the world.

The class action complaint alleges that Bonzi deceptively and fraudulently commandeered millions of internet users to Bonzi's commercial websites through dissemination of tens-of-millions of fraudulent internet advertising banners that impersonated computer error messages. The Complaint states that through use of such Fake User Interface ("FUI") dialogs that gave the false appearance of being computer error messages, Bonzi tricked millions of internet users into interrupting the work they were performing to respond to the fraudulent error message, only to unexpectedly find both computer and computer user thus hijacked to defendants' commercial website.

Bootnote

FUI Fake user interface. GIF advertisements that have phony interface elements (search boxes, pulldown menus, input fields, et cetera) to trick you into clicking on them. Not to be confused with TFUI (touch-and-feel user interface), a gimmick used by a porn CD-ROM publisher.

The above definition appeared in a 1998 Jargon Watch column in Wired. [The Register]
12:40 | permanent link | mail this

Holiday E-Cards: Handle With Care

Online greetings were once considered a free and relatively harmless alternative to paper cards. Now companies are charging users to send them, and recipients have to worry about fake e-cards that carry viruses. By Kendra Mayfield. [Wired News]
12:43 | permanent link | mail this

18-Jähriger vertrieb illegal kopierte Spielfilme übers Internet

[Kid selling pirated Movies on CD busted]

Die Polizei hat bei einem 18-Jährigen in Olpe 220 illegal kopierte Spielfilme sichergestellt. Der junge Mann hatte die aktuellen Filme auf CDs gebrannt und diese dann über das Internet verkauft, berichtete die Polizei am Mittwoch. Aufmerksam geworden waren die Ermittler durch einen Tipp der Gesellschaft zur Verfolgung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen (GVU). Neben einem Strafverfahren muss der Olper nun auch mit zivilrechtlichen Forderungen der Filmrechtsinhaber rechnen. [heise]
15:38 | permanent link | mail this

E-Mail as Trespass

As posted on How Appealing, the LA Times reports that the California Supreme Court will soon hear an interesting case about whether emails sent on or to a privately owned computer system constitute "trespass to chattels" (that is, trespass on private property other than real estate). In this case, a disgruntled former Intel employee began sending lots of emails to to current Intel employees for what seems (at least to me) to be a legitimate purpose: advising employees about Intel's workers' compensation policies and other employment practices. Intel claims there was damage caused by this "use" of their private servers, by (for instance) reducing worker morale.

An appeals court has already ruled 2-1 that the former employee's emails do constitute trespass to chattels, a decision that raised an immediate outcry from people afraid of the consequences of such a decision on email as a medium of communication. For instance, from the article, "The ruling against Hamidi [the employee], if allowed to stand, could potentially turn millions of Americans who use the Internet into law breakers, McSwain said. 'You cannot have a situation where anything, even the movement of electrons, constitutes trespass,' he said. 'The court needs to put a stop to this madness.'" Corporations, on the other hand, are stumping strongly for the California Supreme Court to affirm the lower court's decision. [LawMeme]
15:58 | permanent link | mail this

Identity Theft More Often an Inside Job

[LinuxSecurity.com]
22:32 | permanent link | mail this

New law bans "wangiri" calls

TOKYO &151; The Diet enacted Wednesday a law on outlawing so-called "wangiri" mobile phone calls, or random single-ring calls by commercial businesses aimed at making profits on return calls.

In a Wednesday morning plenary session, the House of Councillors approved a bill to revise the Wire Telecommunications Law, which already passed the House of Representatives.

Under the revised law, offenders could face up to one-year prison terms or 1 million yen in fines.

The new law will take effect 20 days after the government publicly promulgates it.

The law defines an act of wangiri as "the ringing of a telephone by a commercial business operator who uses a machine that rings a phone user and then immediately hangs up without conversing."

Wangiri operators use computer programs to make a massive number of random calls in the hope of having return calls to their paid telephone services.

Often made by operators of adult services, the wangiri calls ring only once, but because the caller's number remains on the mobile phone's display, receivers often return the call.

They are then usually directed to a taped phone sex message or information on other types of adult entertainment, and those who stay on the phone are often later charged hefty fees.

The term wangiri is derived from combining the English word "one" pronounced "wan," and the Japanese word "kiri" meaning " cutting off."

Such operators inundate the switching stations of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) with calls, thus disrupting the ordinary phone services for many citizens. (Kyodo News) [Japan Today: Crime]
22:40 | permanent link | mail this

disLEXia, a research project by Maximillian Dornseif