Security
Port
A Security Port Blog
China Threatens US |
04/29/2007 | |
U.S. complaints to the WTO over commercial
piracy in China will "badly damage" cooperation, Vice
Premier Wu Yi warned on Tuesday, insisting that China
has made great strides in protecting patents and
copyrights. |
Teens Concerned About Security |
04/27/2007 | |
Turns out it isn't just parents,
politicians, and lawyers worrying about teen safety
online. The majority of teens themselves actively manage
their online profiles to keep the information they
believe is most sensitive away from the unwanted gaze of
strangers, parents and other adults.
complete article
|
Top
10 Internet Crimes |
04/26/2007 | |
The IC3 (Internet Crime Complaint Center),
a partnership betweeen the FBI and the NW3C (National
White Collar Crime Center) issued a report for the year
2006. It's brimming with interesting statistics,
including the Top 10 IC3 Complaint
Categories:
Category
|
% of
complaints
|
Auction Fraud
|
44.9%
|
Non-Delivery
|
19%
|
Check Fraud
|
4.9%
|
Credit/Debit Card
Fraud
|
4.8%
|
Computer Fraud
|
2.8%
|
Confidence
Fraud
|
2.2%
|
Financial
Instiitutions Fraud
|
1.6%
|
Identity Theft
|
1.6%
|
Investment
Fraud
|
1.3%
|
Child
Pornography
|
1.0%
|
|
Yahoo Sued For Helping Chinese
Authorities |
04/25/2007 | |
The wife of a Yahoo user jailed in China
for promoting democracy online is suing the Internet
search engine company for helping Chinese officials
track him down and convict him. |
US
Editor Charged with Sex Crimes |
04/25/2007 | |
A former editor at the entertainment
magazine Us Weekly was sentenced on Friday to six years
in prison for attempting to seduce an undercover FBI
agent posing as a minor on the Internet.
|
What
Can Colleges Due to Keep Students Safe |
04/24/2007 | |
Campus wide text messaging systems
that notify students and staff of lock downs or campus
emergencies. The technology is there, and there is
really no excuse for colleges and universities to not
implement a messaging system, so that they can instantly
text all students and faculty with the single click of a
mouse. PageGate has been around since 1996,
why are campuses not using it? |
Privacy Advocates Attempt to Block
DoubleClick Deal |
04/23/2007 | |
Consumer privacy groups on Friday sought
to derail Google Inc.'s $3.1 billion deal to buy online
ad supplier DoubleClick Inc., filing a complaint with
U.S. regulators to block the merger on privacy grounds.
|
Feds
Leak Social Security Numbers |
04/23/2007 | |
The Social Security numbers of 63,000
people who received Agriculture Department grants have
been posted on a government Web site since 1996, but
they were taken down last week. Free credit monitoring
is being offered to those affected.
|
Children are Not Cattle |
04/20/2007 | |
California's state Senate has struck a
major blow against the enemies of mankind in the
inevitable war against The Machines.
Legislation
approved Monday would prohibit public schools from
requiring the implementation of radio-wave devices that
broadcast students' personal identification and monitor
their movement around campus — information the
mechanical horrors could theoretically use to turn our
children into livestock.
complete article
|
Child Porn on the Rise |
04/19/2007 | |
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has
reported a fourfold rise in online images depicting the
most severe form of child sexual abuse.
The IWF 2006 Annual Report (PDF)
warns of a growing demand for more severe images, and
claims that nearly 60 per cent of commercial child abuse
websites sell images of child rape.
complete article
|
Security Phones |
04/18/2007 | |
Cell phones have long served as the mother
of all convergence devices, swallowing our PDAs, digital
cameras, MP3 players and more. Now phones are becoming
the terminal of choice for monitoring home security.
When a perp breaks into your house, your security system
calls your phone, and shows you the live video.
|
Communication Software for Emergency
Personnel |
04/17/2007 | |
Take a look at how emergency services are
using text messaging to overcome
communication issues.
EMS Communications: PageGate is a
modular paging gateway that allows for messaging to
encompass a number of different aspects in Police or
Fire Departments. Messages can be sent from workstations
on a network, via web pages or e-mail accounts. This
software is modular and can be scaled to meet the size
of a Department. PageGate can also be integrated with
existing applications to add messaging or paging
functionality to existing dispatching applications.
|
MS
Word Defects are a Feature |
04/16/2007 | |
Security vulnerabilities which cause
Word 2007 to crash and burn are being defended by
Microsoft:Word 2007 was designed to crash when it runs
out of ideas as far as opening up malformed documents,
so that it doesn't have to think as hard.The 'flaw' was
caused by-design behaviour that improves security and
stability. |
Student Hacked School Computers - It
Was Easy |
04/16/2007 | |
A Mauldin High student has been charged
with violating the state Computer Crime Act, after
telling police he accessed personal data in the
Greenville County school district's computer network to
show the district how easy it is to do, according to a
warrant and incident report.
Robert Charles Sipes, 17, of
Simpsonville told police he had warned the district
months before that its system wasn't secure, according
to a Mauldin police report.
Ten
days earlier, a district official told police that two
students at J.L. Mann High had hacked into the
district's secure computer network, according to a
Greenville police report. |
Discipline for Spyware |
04/15/2007 | |
The Federal Trade Commission told Congress
yesterday that it needs more authority to issue civil
penalties, and it outlined a strategy to put more
spyware purveyors in jail. But the agency doesn't bring
many actions itself: only eight spammers were targeted
last year, and 11 spyware operators in the the last two
years. |
Security Logos |
04/14/2007 | |
Collection of security logos for security websites.
Not a bad collection. |
14
Steps to Secure Wireless Network |
04/13/2007 | |
Many have installed wireless network in
their homes. The freedom from tangled cables is sweet
but comes with a price. A wireless network can broadcast
far outside your building. With a powerful antenna and
some widely available hacking software, anyone sitting
near your installation—or even driving by—can
passively scan all the data flowing in your network.
Keeping your wireless network secure is no small task,
but there are precautions you can take to secure your
network as much as possible.
The following are
some steps you can take to best secure your wireless
network. Here are 13 steps to lockdown your AP (access
point) and make your wireless network more
secure.
complete article
|
|
Massachusetts-based Internet security
company, Kaspersky Lab recently found a virus designed
to infect iPods. The company claims that this is the
first iPod virus, but says we shouldn't worry about it
too much. The Podloso virus can only affect iPods with
Linux installed on them, and the virus can't
automatically infect the popular digital audio player.
The only way for Podloso to get on your iPod is if you
install it.
Podloso will scan your iPod's
hard drive and will affect .elf files. If you try to
open these files, you'll just get a message on the
screen that says, "You are infected with Oslo the first
iPodLinux Virus." |
Anti
Hack Exercise Points to Holes in Canadian
Security |
04/11/2007 | |
An anti-hacker exercise simulates the leak
of social insurance numbers, an aviation control
meltdown and tampering with government websites exposing
serious weaknesses in how Canada responds to
emergencies. |
Second Class Citizens Poised for
Attack |
04/10/2007 | |
The United States fears that the next
September 11-style attack on America could be launched
by Muslims from Britain or Europe who feel "second-class
citizens" and alienated by a "colonial legacy",
according to the US Homeland Security chief.
|
What
Could Google Do if They Were Evil? |
04/10/2007 | |
What could Google do if they were evil?
Note that the following is only hypothetical:
Google could favor its own
products and websites Google could prefer
websites from its own services in the search results:
websites that run Google ads, websites that use Google's
payment service, Blogger sites, Google Base,
etc. All websites that pay Google in some way
could be preferred in the search results while others
are downranked.
Google could
punish websites at discretion
What Could Google Do If They Were
Evil? |
Ayman al-Zawahiri Fears
Communication |
04/09/2007 | |
Al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, has not used a telephone, e-mail or
internet connection for more than 4 years, according to
an associate.
Zawahiri fears that
such communications could reveal his location, the
associate said in a statement to the London-based
international Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat, the paper
reported Thursday.
Ayman al-Zawahiri fears communication
|
Software Piracy |
04/08/2007 | |
The Business Software Alliance is offering
up to $200,000 in cash rewards for bona fide reports of
software piracy in the workplace.
|
US
Outsourcing Its Brain |
04/04/2007 | |
Due to its increasing practice of
contracting out to private firms and agencies, the U.S.
government is quickly losing its expertise and
competence in vital national security and defense
programs, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
|
Search Security Databases |
04/03/2007 | |
Search these online security databases for
specific security information. The available databases
include: The Patriot Act to Katrina
Responses.
Searchable Security Databases
|
DHS
Claims Kids Movie is Sensitive to National
Security |
04/03/2007 | |
Reports are emerging from members of
the movie industry that the Department of Homeland
Security has designated the 1982 film TRON as
"sensitive", and ordered Walt Disney Studios to turn
over all copies of the film in its posession. Retailers
are also receiving notices to remove all copies of the
film from stock shelves and turn them over to Federal
officials. The reports have industry insiders bewildered
and outraged.
TRON is a science
fiction film that takes place within a computer's
circuits.
complete article
|
|
The organizers of CanSecWest, a fixture on
the security conference circuit, are organizing a "PWN
to OWN" contest. Two Apple MacBook Pro computers will be
set up as hacker targets. The person who successfully
breaks into the machine can keep it. The conference will
be held April 18-20 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
|
Employers Are Checking Online |
04/02/2007 | |
According to the research, one in five
employers finds information about candidates on the
internet and 59 per cent of those said it influences
recruitment decisions.
A quarter of HR
decision-makers said they had rejected candidates based
on personal information found online.
|
Russian Teach Facing Piracy
Prosecution |
04/02/2007 | |
A Russian school principal accused of
installing pirated Microsoft software in school
computers was ordered Tuesday to stand trial for a
second time, in a case widely seen as a misguided
attempt to crack down on software bootlegging.
complete article
|
Paint for Protection |
04/01/2007 | |
Electromagnetic paint is said to protect
wireless networks from hackers.
Paint Protection
|
Supreme Court Looks at Child
Porn |
03/31/2007 | |
The Supreme Court will review a child
pornography case reversed by the 11th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals. In the appeals court's view, the
pandering provision could even apply to an innocent
e-mail sent by a grandparent and entitled "Good pics of
kids in bed," showing grandchildren dressed in pajamas.
|
SiteAdvisor with 38 Million
Downloads |
03/30/2007 | |
An Internet scorecard application which
rates potential risks on Web sites has been downloaded
more than 38 million times since it was launched 12
months ago.
The application, SiteAdvisor, which was introduced by
McAfee Inc., integrates with Firefox and Internet
Explorer. It applies 320 million daily potential
risk ratings to Web sites for search results, browsing
and e-transactions, and is based on scanning results for
spyware, adware, exploits, excessive pop-ups and spam.
|
Parents Critical to Security |
03/29/2007 | |
Parents who would never leave their
kids unattended in New York City don't think twice about
giving their children computers with high-speed Internet
connections and Web cams, said Flint Waters, Wyoming's
leading investigator of online child exploitation
crimes.
Those who investigate and
prosecute such crimes say no matter how effective law
enforcement is, parents need to educate their kids about
Internet safety.
complete article
|
Children Cannot Be Protected from
Porn |
03/28/2007 | |
The American Civil Liberties Union and
Focus on the Family agree on little. But both say it
will be difficult for U.S. lawmakers to craft new
legislation to keep children away from online porn after
a judge last week ruled a 1998 act unconstitutional.
|
Prepare for Emergency |
03/27/2007 | |
A new website Prepare for Emergency has launched.
The site is designed to help people dealing with
emergencies.
Preparation for any emergency is
half the battle. This site will help guide visitors
through dealing with emergencies. Whether you are facing
an impending hurricane, just encountered a tornado or
medical emergency this site will provide you some
assistance. |
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