disLEXia

Tuesday, 08. July 2003

Kazakh hacker who threatened Bloomberg jailed

By Gail Appleson NEW YORK

A Kazakh citizen was sentenced on Tuesday to more than four years in prison for hacking into Bloomberg LP's computer system in an attempt to extort $200,000 from the business news service and its founder, Michael Bloomberg, now New York City's mayor.

US District Judge Kimba Wood sentenced Oleg Zezev to one of the longest terms ever given for computer intrusion, federal prosecutors said.

The trial received a great deal of publicity because Bloomberg testified about meeting with Zezev in London in August of 2000 as part of a scheme to catch the defendant. Zezev was arrested at that time.

Zezev also made a surprising escape attempt during the trial as he began heading for the back of the room by jumping onto the backs of courtroom benches.

Zezev planned to use confidential information belonging to Bloomberg and its customers to threaten Michael Bloomberg, telling him that if he did not pay him $200,000 he would disclose this information to customers and the media in an effort to harm his reputation.

Reuters Middle East Times Jul 4 2003 1:32PM ET [moreover Computersecurity]
12:28 | permanent link | mail this

Sunday, 06. July 2003

Acht Jahre Haft für Ex-Ericsson-Mitarbeiter

Dienstag, 17.06.03  16:04 MET 

Ein 46-jähriger Schwede ist zu acht Jahren Haft wegen Industriespionage gegen den Mobilfunkausrüster Ericsson verurteilt worden. Zwei weitere Männer im Alter von 45 und 40 Jahren erhielten im Amtsgericht Stockholm wegen Beihilfe Gefängnisstrafen von drei bzw. einem Jahr.

In der Urteilsbegründung erklärte das Gericht, der Haupttäter habe aus Gewinnsucht technische Informationen über Mobilfunk- und andere Telefonsysteme an die russische Seite weitergegeben und damit die Sicherheit und das Verteidigungssystem Schwedens im Verhältnis zu einer fremden Macht gefährdet.  

Der Haupttäter war im November vom schwedischen Geheimdienst SÄPO auf frischer Tat bei der Übergabe geheimer Firmenunterlagen an russische Geheimagenten ertappt und festgenommen worden. Die drei verurteilten Männer waren zu diesem Zeitpunkt Beschäftigte bei Ericsson. Russische Spione bespitzelten Ericsson

        Das Diplomatendrama Sofort nach Auffliegen der Tat wurden die zwei russischen Diplomaten vom schwedischen Außenministerium "zu unerwünschten Personen erklärt" und des Landes verwiesen.

Moskau ließ das nicht auf sich sitzen und verwies drei Wochen später seinerseits zwei schwedische Diplomaten wegen Verstoßes gegen die Sicherheitsinteressen des Staates aus.    

Diplomatendrama nach Ericsson-Spionage

  [Futurezone / dpa ]
10:02 | permanent link | mail this

Spionage und Verhaftungen im Sonera-Skandal

Mittwoch, 27.11.02  05:03 MET 

Ein Skandal rund um Finnlands größtes Telekom-Unternehmen Sonera zeichnet sich ab. Am Dienstag ist der ehemalige Sonera-Chef Kaj-Erik Relander von der finnischen Kriminalpolizei festgenommen worden.

Das Unternehmen steht im Verdacht, in den Jahren 2000 und 2001 in großem Stil die Telefonverbindungen aller Mitarbeiter und einer Reihe von Journalisten überwacht zu haben. Derartige Überwachungen sind in Finnland aber nur der Polizei bei Vorliegen gerichtlicher Genehmigungen gestattet.

Möglicherweise wollte man herausfinden, wer Informationen über unternehmensinterne Meinungsverschiedenheiten weitergibt. In diesem Skandal um die ehemalige Telecom Finnland ist das bereits die sechste Festnahme.  

Finnen empört Der komplett fehlgeschlagene Erwerb einer deutschen UMTS-Lizenz der mehrheitlich staatlichen Sonera [zusammen mit der spanischen Telefonica Moviles] hatte im Sommer sogar die finnische Regierung ins Wanken gebracht. Medien in Helsinki stuften das 3G-Joint-Venture als "größten unternehmerischen Fehler aller Zeiten" ein. Regierung wackelt wegen UMTS-Lizenz

        Zwei derzeitige Manager ebenfalls unter Verdacht Ebenfalls am Dienstag hat ein Gericht in der Hauptstadt Helsinki bestimmt, dass vier der fünf zuvor Festgenommenen weiter in Gewahrsam bleiben.

Als Erstes waren der Leiter der Sicherheitsabteilung bei Sonera, Juha Miettinen, sowie zwei seiner Mitarbeiter hinter Gittern gelandet.

Am Freitag mussten sich schließlich Executive Vice President Jari Jaakkola und Vice President Henri Harmia dazugesellen.

Jaakkola war zum Zeitpunkt der vermuteten Rechtsbrüche Leiter der Abteilung Corporate Communications.    

Finnland will vier Milliarden Euro zurück Der konservative finnische Kommunikationsminister Kimmo Sasi hat sich für die Rückzahlung aller 50,5 Milliarden Euro für UMTS-Lizenzen in Deutschland ausgesprochen. Deutschland lehnt Rückzahlung ab

        Fusion mit Telia nicht in Gefahr Vizepräsident Henri Harmia ist international vor allem durch seine Rolle als Chefunterhändler für die milliardenschwere Fusion der finnischen Sonera mit der schwedischen Telia bekannt geworden.

Diese Fusion ist erst vergangene Woche von den Aktionären durch eine Annahme entsprechender Aktientauschangebote genehmigt worden.

Beide Unternehmen haben bekannt gegeben, dass das Bekanntwerden der Vorfälle die Fusion nicht beeinträchtigen würde.    

Sonera hat etwa 7.400 Mitarbeiter. Weiter gibt das Unternehmen an, etwa 2,4 Millionen Mobilfunkkunden und rund 770.000 Festnetzanschlüsse zu betreuen. Gemeinsamer Name von Sonera und Telia

  [Futurezone / Reuters ]
10:01 | permanent link | mail this

Wednesday, 14. May 2003

Swiss ISPs doing DNS-Tampering ... not anymore.

Unnoticed by the international scene ISPs in Swizerland fought a blocking order by a swiss court adressing the blocking of http://appel-au-peuple-suisse.org (propably meaning http://appel-au-peuple.org), http://de.geocities.com/justicecontrol/ and http://www.swiss-corruption.com.

The court argued that the sites contained deliberate insults and asked for DNS-Tampering and blocking at proxy level. (Looks like DNS-Tampering against geocities.com seemed to be to harsh.)

Some providers complied but together swiss ISPs appealed the courd which lifted the blocking order last week.

The case seems significant, because the sites are not about p0rn, IP infringement, building bombs or hating ethnic groups but criticism about the swiss legal system.

Court documents (in French): http://www.nrg4u.com/abuse/

Info in English:

http://www.mail-archive.com/swinog@swinog.ch/msg00861.html

http://www.mail-archive.com/swinog@swinog.ch/msg00950.html

Info in German:

http://www.siug.ch/presse/

http://www.ioz.ch/news/030214.htm

http://www.green.ch/de/green/pressemitteilungen/pdf/green_freiheit.pdf

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hob-12.12.02-000/

http://www.widmerpartners-lawyers.ch/itlaw.htm#Sperrung

http://www.symlink.ch/articles/02/12/12/1932214.shtml

http://www.nzz.ch/2003/05/09/em/page-article8UCGQ.html

https://your.trash.net/pipermail/siug-discuss/2003-May/002953.html

http://www.mail-archive.com/swinog@swinog.ch/msg01698.html
12:32 | permanent link | mail this

Tuesday, 22. April 2003

The Trojan did it - Possession of child pornography

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9023 A MAN ACCUSED of having pornographic pictures of children on his PC was acquitted yesterday after a court heard that his machine was infected with a Trojan on his PC which probably auto-downloaded the images. The acquittal followed expert testimony that said an examination of the hard drive belonging to Karl Schofield was infected with the Trojan and that was responsible for the downloads, an argument accepted by the prosecution service in Reading, in the UK.

Mr Schofield had denied making indecent images and claimed the Trojan might have infected his PC either through email or from pop up adverts. The expert testified that the Trojan arrived on Mr Schofield's system the day before the images appeared. In the run up to the case, according to the Reading Evening Post, Mr Schofield suffered vigilante attacks and had to first hide in his home then move away to avoid continued attacks.

[via CYBERIA-L]
16:22 | permanent link | mail this

Thursday, 13. February 2003

NAUGHTY HACKER, 11 YEARS OLD, CHARGED WITH FELONY IN "SCHEME TO DEFRAUD"

An 11-year old student at St. Lucie West Middle School in Florida has been charged with a felony for attempting to change his grades.

In a clear misapplication of the law, the child, who has not been named, was charged with an offense against intellectual property. It's hard to imagine how changing a grade is any kind of affront to any human being's "intellectual property," but this is what has been claimed, according to the Associated Press .

Helen Roberts Legal semantics aside, the ordeal demonstrates a disdainfully low level of understanding and tolerance among school and city officials. Helen Roberts, the school's principal, recommended that the boy be expelled. Ellen Mancini, an assistant state attorney in Florida, called the boy's actions a "scheme to defraud."

Throughout history, in all cultures, youth have been allowed to make mistakes in judgment -- and learn from those mistakes -- as part of growing up. It's a kind of instinctual hacking. In today's panic-stricken U.S.A. however, the supposed rules of childhood become more erratic by the day, and the concept of "zero tolerance" gains increasing ground.

"It's as much a fraud as anything else," Mancini spouted. The student was booked into the St. Lucie County jail on Wednesday. [The Hacker Quaterly]
00:00 | permanent link | mail this

Monday, 27. January 2003

A Google Win in SearchKing Case

In SearchKing v. Google the judge has denied SearchKing's request for preliminary injuction. In other words, SearchKing asked for their old PageRank to be reinstated while the trial was being held, and the judge said no. LawMeme has the full story, including several interesting quotes from the judge's dedcision. The author has an interesting thought in the comments:Let's step over into Bizarro world, where Badgle, the leading search engine, is run by Dr. Evil. Badgle uses familiar algorithms to rank pages, except that whenever its engineers find a page they don't like, they manually drop it down a hundred pages in the search results. And, interestingly enough, the only pages Badgle doesn't like are those that praise Austin Powers. Thus, when you run a Badgle search on "Austin Powers," you get back only pages making fun of his bad teeth. Whenever someone wonders why the leading Austin Powers fan page has a low ranking and asks Badgle what's going on. Badgle replies that the page's operator "was engaged in behavior that would lower the quality of Badgle's search results." Would this scenario change your point of view? Maybe not, but I suspect that there are many people who support Google whole-heartedly in this lawsuit, but who wouldn't be so willing to support Badgle's actions.So this decision could have much farther-reaching effects than whether search engines can demote the PageRank of "spam kings". Stay tuned.... [Google Weblog]
09:02 | permanent link | mail this

Sunday, 26. January 2003

A Google Win in SearchKing Case

In SearchKing v. Google the judge has denied SearchKing's request for preliminary injuction. In other words, SearchKing asked for their PageRank to be put back to where it was while the trial was being held, and the judge said no. LawMeme has the full story, including several interesting quotes from the judge's dedcision. The author has an interesting thought in the comments:Let's step over into Bizarro world, where Badgle, the leading search engine, is run by Dr. Evil. Badgle uses familiar algorithms to rank pages, except that whenever its engineers find a page they don't like, they manually drop it down a hundred pages in the search results. And, interestingly enough, the only pages Badgle doesn't like are those that praise Austin Powers. Thus, when you run a Badgle search on "Austin Powers," you get back only pages making fun of his bad teeth. Whenever someone wonders why the leading Austin Powers fan page has a low ranking and asks Badgle what's going on. Badgle replies that the page's operator "was engaged in behavior that would lower the quality of Badgle's search results." Would this scenario change your point of view? Maybe not, but I suspect that there are many people who support Google whole-heartedly in this lawsuit, but who wouldn't be so willing to support Badgle's actions.So this decision could have much farther-reaching effects than whether search engines can demote the PageRank of "spam kings". Stay tuned.... [Google Weblog]
23:16 | permanent link | mail this

Saturday, 25. January 2003

Courts says AOL not liable for idiot users sending 'hostile code'

IIn what legal experts describe as a first, a U.S. District Court has upheld a ruling that America Online and other Internet service providers are not liable for "hostile code" sent between subscribers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said last week that AOL could not be held accountable for a subscriber's sending of hostile code through its service. John Green, a 54-year-old electronics engineer and founder of JP Green Associates, in Edison, N.J., had accused AOL of failing to enforce its terms of service against a subscriber who sent Green a so-called punter, or malicious software instructions designed to temporarily kick someone off the service.

The court upheld a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, which had said an ISP's immunity from prosecution for a subscriber's actions covers not only the sending of actionable words, but also of hostile code. The court affirmed the lower court's definition of "information" under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That definition includes not only communication of "knowledge or intelligence," but also the sending of an electronic "signal," both courts said. The decision is the latest in a long-running legal trend that has shielded ISPs--and AOL in particular--against the claims of subscribers who have demonstrated they were libeled or otherwise harmed while using an online service. [Securitynewsportal]

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981800.html
10:52 | permanent link | mail this

Judge Rules Against Spammer

A New York court ordered a spammer to stop telling customers they asked for their e-mail.

Manhattan Superior Court Justice Lottie Wilkins permanently enjoined MonsterHut from falsely representing that it had obtained permission to e-mail consumers, following a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in May.

The suit charged that MonsterHut sent more than half a billion spam e-mails since March 2001, claiming recipients had opted in to receive them. More than 750,000 people asked to be removed from the e-mail lists.

The court rejected MonsterHut's argument that it was not liable for the misrepresentation since it purchased the e-mail addresses from third parties that MonsterHut believed acquired the names through an opt-in process. A hearing is scheudled for Feb. 11 to set civil penalites, damages and restitution.

In an earlier spam lawsuit, America Online was awarded $7 million in damages in a spam lawsuit. [TechWeb: Security]
10:29 | permanent link | mail this

Ebay Seller Sues Over Libelous "Feedback"

An eBay Seller is taking the online auction giant to court over allegedly libelous statements made about the Seller in eBay's "feedback" mechanism, which allows buyers and sellers to leave comments about each other's performance that other users are then able to see. The Seller, who had auctioned some vintage radio magazines, was accused of shipping the goods late and in poor condition. After the Seller was unable to get eBay to remove the negative feedback, he brought suit in California Superior Court against both the Buyer and eBay.

The lawsuit aims at having eBay change its feedback policies, and of course a few million bucks for good measure. Yahoo News covers the Reuters release .[GrepLaw]
10:28 | permanent link | mail this

Gericht: Meinungsfreiheit erlaubt auch im Internet keine Beleidigung

Das Recht auf freie Meinungsäußerung erlaubt auch im Internet keine Beleidigung. So brauche es niemand hinzunehmen, in einem Beitrag eines Online-Dienstes als "dämlich" oder "bescheuert" bezeichnet zu werden, heißt es in einem am Freitag veröffentlichten Urteil des Landgerichts Coburg . (Aktenzeichen: 21 O 595/02; rechtskräftig). Das Gericht gab damit einem Kläger Recht, der sich vom Herausgeber eines online erscheinenden Fachmagazins beleidigt gefühlt hatte. Das Magazin verkauft und vermittelt Fahrzeuge. [heise]
10:00 | permanent link | mail this

Thursday, 23. January 2003

Use the right language for the right effect.

Doc Searls writes about language used by the different sides in the Eldred Trial:

Catch the language. While the one side talks about licenses with verbs like copy, distribute, play, share and perform, the other side talks about rights with verbs like own, protect, safeguard, protect, secure, authorize, buy, sell, infringe, pirate, infringe, and steal.

While you shouldn't allow this fuzzy terms to lead you to fuzzy thinking you might try to use it against your opponents. Try phrases like:

• Privacy Rape
• Hardware mutiny
• DVD Player insubordination
• freedom hijacking
• monopoly enforcement tool
• subjugation contract
• anti-copy protection
• fair-use prevention device

disLEXia, a research project by Maximillian Dornseif