A forensic science graduate and her father caught his terminally ill mothers care assistant stealing by putting a camera in a teddy bear's eye.
Robert Sampson, 46, and Emma, 21, fixed the tiny camera in the Liverpool home of his mother Thelma Sampson, 75.

The Ministry of Defence today announced the winners of its Grand Challenge, a contest to identify promising battlefield robot technologies.

The contest began in 2006, with a shortlist of seven contestants battling it out 16-18 August.

The final phase included sniffing out a range of threats placed in a mock battle theatre.

Saturn, the winner, included integrated ground and aerial robots with visual, thermal, and radar sensors.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has blamed a private contractor for losing the details of thousands of criminals, held on a computer memory stick.
Ms Smith said the government had held the data securely but PA Consulting appeared to have downloaded it, contrary to the rules of its contract.

One of the biggest risks of shopping online is clicking on a link to what appears to be a legitimate site that turns out to be a forgery run by criminals interested in your credit-card number. An estimated $3.2 billion was lost to such phishing sites in the U.S. last year, according to a survey by Gartner Inc.

Watching for fraudulent sites is the crucial first step in a secure online-shopping experience. The key in most cases is to type in the Web sites address independently, and not to follow links sent in e-mails, as those often can be malicious spam sent by the creators of the bogus sites.

Most Web browsers will alert you when you are navigating to known phishing sites or those serving up viruses, but the key word there is known. Many harmful sites are set up and dismantled within 24 hours, so it's often a cat-and-mouse game to identify and block them before the criminals have a chance to inflict too much damage.

Three defendants pleaded guilty today to selling counterfeit computer software on the Internet in violation of criminal copyright infringement laws, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Matthew Friedrich, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas Johnny Sutton and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent-in-Charge in San Antonio Jerry Robinette announced.

Thomas C. Rushing III, 24, of Wichita Falls, Texas, and Brian C. Rue, 29, of Denton, Texas, pleaded guilty to one count each of criminal copyright infringement before U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks in Austin, Texas. William Lance Partridge, 24, of Royse City, Texas, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal copyright infringement before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew W. Austin, in Austin. Rushing, Rue and Partridge each face a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release. Sentencing for all three defendants is scheduled for Dec. 19, 2008.

The federal government is telling emergency managers to be on the lookout for fake emergency and commercial vehicles, as security tightens in the two cities hosting this years presidential conventions.

Terrorists could used these cloned vehicles to conduct surveillance or to carry out an attack, according to an Aug. 21 bulletin from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Just over a week ago, security researcher Mike Perry presented information at the DEFCON security conference about a vulnerability that affects many SSL-secured Web sites, including Amazon, Facebook, Gmail, addons.mozilla.org, most Drupal sites, and many online merchants and banks.

The attack works something like this: As Perry explained at DEFCON, a Gmail user might login to Gmail using the ostensibly secure URL. If subsequently surfing CNN.com, for example, via an open wireless connection, an attacker could inject a Gmail image URL and prompt the users browser to transmit an unprotected Gmail GX cookie in conjunction with the image fetch operation. The attacker could then sniff the unprotected cookie and later use that file to access the victims Gmail account.

A hacker broke into a Homeland Security Department telephone system over the weekend and racked up about $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia.

The hacker made more than 400 calls on a Federal Emergency Management Agency voicemail system in Emmitsburg, Md., on Saturday and Sunday, according to FEMA spokesman Tom Olshanski.

At least eight American blogger-activists and several other foreigners have been detained in Beijing as the government intensifies a crackdown on pro-Tibetan protests in the home stretch of the Olympics, rights groups said on Wednesday.


Students for a Free Tibet earlier said authorities detained five self-styled citizen journalists who were in Beijing to promote Tibetan freedom on Tuesday. The New York-based group said activist-artist James Powderly had also been nabbed.

The Defense Department has further tightened the rules for its almost 6,000 armed security contractors in Iraq, a move that appears to shift more risk to hired guards and is intended to avoid shooting incidents that could jeopardize U.S.-Iraqi relations.

The issue is crucial to negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq over the continued presence of American forces in the country. The Pentagon relies on security contractors to augment U.S. forces in Iraq, assigning them roles that range from protecting supply convoys to manning checkpoints.

The poll show that a majority of Americans thought McCain would be better than Barack in handling the Georgian situation. Even a large minority of Dems thought McCain would be better.

A federal judge Tuesday lifted a gag order on three MIT students who were barred from talking publicly about security flaws they discovered in the state' automated mass transit fare system, even as a lawyer for the agency acknowledged the system was compromised.

U.S. District Judge George OToole Jr. rejected a request by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to impose a five-month injunction blocking the students from revealing anything about the security system. OToole also dissolved a temporary restraining order that had prohibited the students from speaking about their findings this month at DefCon, an annual computer hackers convention in Las Vegas.

The MBTA plans to continue with its lawsuit against MIT and the three students, who are all undergraduates and did not attend the hearing Tuesday. The MBTA claims the students violated the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.

Russia has rejected a draft resolution circulated at the UN Security Council calling for an immediate withdrawal of its forces from Georgia, which Moscow said goes against the terms of a previous cease fire agreement.

Russia has insisted its forces began leaving Georgian territory on Tuesday, following a cessation of fierce fighting that started on Aug. 7. But Moscow said any UN declaration should include the initial six-point plan brokered by France last week.

Georgian officials have accused Moscow of ignoring its obligations under a French-brokered agreement that both sides withdraw to positions held before fighting began 11 days ago when Georgian forces moved to retake control of the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

With the economy in a questionable state, everyone is looking for a good deal. Savvy business owners have jumped at the opportunity to carve out a niche for themselves in the struggling economy. Coupon and Deal-Of-The-Day websites have become extremely popular. Everyone is getting into the action, from large conglomerate websites to small specialty shops, and many now have some sort of Deal-Of-The-Day special where an item is offered at a significant discount for a specified and limited period of time. While the Deal-Of-The-Day websites were originally designed to capture impulse purchasers, many financially-conscious penny-pinching shoppers are now monitoring these sites regularly, in search of good deals on products they might need.

Everybody loves a bargain! Where should you look for a bargain?

Deal of the Day Websites

Experts are encouraging those that visit China to encrypt their data. A computer security expert said that visitors to Beijing also needed to protect their data from prying eyes.

People who are going to China should take a clean computer, one with no data at all, said Phil Dunkelberger, chief executive of security software firm PGP Corp.

Staying ahead of the competition can be an on-going struggle. While it is not healthy for a company to focus too much time and attention on the competition, it is important to stay abreast of what your competition is doing. When evaluating the competition, assess the industry giants and companies closest to your space. But be sure that you don't exclude the small companies in your assessments. Sometimes a small competitor can have innovative ideas or marketing concepts, but may lack the capital to really benefit from the concept. This may present you with an opportunity.

When evaluating the competition pay attention to the following:

Tips to Stay Ahead of the Competition

The Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC) announced that its anti-censorship software tools are ready to help journalists and tourists during the Olympics, to circumvent Chinas Internet blockade.

The software, which is available free of charge, can be downloaded onto a hard drive or USB drive to safely and effectively overcome the Internet censorship in China.

U.S. lawmakers are questioning the biggest U.S. Internet companies about whether they track their customers visits online and use the information to tailor Internet advertisements for them.


Senior members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote to broadband Internet providers and other online companies on Friday, asking whether they have tailored, or facilitated the tailoring of, Internet advertising based on consumers Internet search, surfing, or other use.

Security news dominated last week, and that will undoubtedly be the case this week as well, with the Black Hat and Defcon conferences under way in Las Vegas.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge made no deal with Beijing Olympic organisers over Internet censorship, a senior IOC official said.
Kevan Gosper, an IOC executive board member, said he had been personally assured in a meeting with Rogge that no deal to block controversial websites had ever been agreed.

This is a new website with all types of PowerPoint templates, there is even a section on PowerPoint Security Templates. Individual templates are available for $19.95 or a 90 day subscription for all PowerPoint templates can be purchased. The PowerPoint Templates can be used with any version of Microsoft PowerPoint.

The Homeland Security Department will soon tell its employees to review security and emergency plans as the country enters into a period of heightened alert lasting until next summer because of the Olympics and U.S. presidential election.

China has installed Internet-spying equipment in all the major hotel chains serving the 2008 Summer Olympics, Sen. Sam Brownback charged Tuesday.

Brownback, citing hotel documents he received, said journalists, athletes families and others attending the Olympics next month will be subjected to invasive intelligence-gathering by China's Public Security Bureau.

One document said, In order to ensure the smooth opening of Olympic in Beijing and the Expo in Shanghai in 2010, safeguard the security of Internet network and the information thereon in the hotels . . . it is required that your company install and run the Security Management System.

Tourists visiting Beijing Tiananmen Square, site of the 1989 violent crackdown on student demonstrators, will have to pass through a security check, a government official said Wednesday.

The boost in security checks at the iconic square comes as more visitors arrive for the Olympic Games, said Jia Yingting, deputy director of the Tiananmen Square management committee. His comments were from a transcript of a news conference posted on the Web site of the Beijing International Media Center.

Security researchers should stop publishing vulnerabilities in the traditional way because cyber-criminals are using the code to generate zero-day exploits at record speeds, says a recent report.

The chain of command of a cybercrime gang is not unlike the Mafia, an evolution that shows how online crime is becoming a broad, well-organized endeavor.


The latest research from Web security company Finjan, outlines a pyramid of hackers, data sellers, managers and malicious programmers, all working in a fluid management structure in order to profit from cybercrime.

Domain Name System, or DNS, administrators around the world are racing to patch their systems for a critical flaw that could leave millions at risk. Although the technology for a more secure DNS has been available for years, it has not yet been widely deployed.

DNSSEC or DNS Security Extensions provides a form of signed verification for DNS information, which is intended to assure DNS authenticity.

Google has given its application security assessment tool that it uses internally its independence. It has made Ratproxy open source code to help developers of Web applications assess their codes security profile.

Ratproxy was developed by Google security expert Michl Zalewski, who will continue to help maintain it. In a July 1 blog posting, Zalewski said Google had made Ratproxy available for free   as an open source code . Unlike some security tools that determine the security of an application by firing test penetrations, Ratproxy operates passively, inspecting the application for security exposures.

Despite being one of the nations core intelligence agencies assigned to protect the country from terror attacks and intelligence breaches, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has not done an adequate job of securing itself, according to a new Senate report. The report, part of the 2009 appropriations bill, says that FBI Headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington DC, lacks adequate security features as well as criteria for handling the massive loads of classified and sensitive material.

Businesses, governments and universities reported a 69 percent increase in data breaches in the first half of 2008 compared with a similar period in 2007, according to a study by a non-profit fraud-prevention group.

The Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego tracked 342 data-breach reports from Jan. 1 to June 27 that involved almost 17 million consumer records. More than one-third of the reports came from businesses in the first half of this year, a 27 percent increase over total breaches in 2007.

The Coast Guard just rolled out the most sophisticated ship it has ever commissioned, packed with new technology to help in the hunt for drug smugglers and terrorists.

The cutter Bertholf — 418 feet from stem to stern — is set to patrol the Pacific from California to Ecuador — a patch of ocean as large as the United States.

China plans to use unmanned security drones to patrol the skies over the Olympic sailing venue of Qingdao, state media reported Friday.

The drones were tested for the first time during a drill Wednesday in Jinan, the capital of eastern Shandong province, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. They are intended to scout out suspicious activity and transmit photos and videos back to a command station.

Website usability is more than just a good navigational structure. A large number of people have visual or hearing disabilities, so you should design your website in ways that allow those with either minor or significant impairments to view and navigate your web content.

Taking Website Usability to the Next Level

If you are like most PC users, you may feel that your PC is slow or unstable. You can not run many applications or your PC will slowdown. Or you have to reboot frequently due to crashes or application freezes.

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Small businesses and entrepreneurs often repeat the same mistakes. If you are an entrepreneur, the following is a list of critical mistakes to avoid in your new venture:

Business Mistakes to Avoid

The Red Sox and Major League Baseball have dispatched security teams to St. Petersburg, Fla., for the next three days due to a recent threat made against the clubs players.

According to sources, the Sox recently received a mailed threat, believed to be postmarked in Memphis, Tenn., which targeted black and Latin players, citing at least two by name. The named players have been informed about the threats and will likely have security accompaniment away from Tropicana Field, including at the teams hotel in St. Petersburg.

Thousands of security personnel checked Beijing subway passengers for explosives and other banned items on Sunday, the first day of a three-month campaign to guarantee Olympic security, state media said.

China has said terrorism is the biggest threat to the Olympic Games opening on Aug. 8, and has introduced a flurry of measures in recent months to boost security.

With the economy in a questionable state, everyone is looking for a good deal. Savvy business owners have jumped at the opportunity to carve out a niche for themselves in the struggling economy. Coupon and Deal-Of-The-Day websites have become extremely popular. Everyone is getting into the action, from large conglomerate websites to small specialty shops, and many now have some sort of Deal-Of-The-Day special where an item is offered at a significant discount for a specified and limited period of time. While the Deal-Of-The-Day websites were originally designed to capture impulse purchasers, many financially-conscious penny-pinching shoppers are now monitoring these sites regularly, in search of good deals on products they might need.

Everybody loves a bargain! Where should you look for a bargain?

Be sure to check out the new Software Deal of the Day Website.

Although a large Internet service provider has backed away from technology that tracks subscribers Web use in order to deliver personalized advertising, two other broadband companies said Wednesday they are still considering whether to deploy it.

The largest U.S. Internet provider that had been actively looking at Web tracking, Charter Communications Inc., announced Tuesday that it had canceled its planned test because customers had raised concerns.

The technology gathers data on the interests of Web surfers by looking at the sites they visit. It passes the information to online advertising companies, without revealing a surfer's identity, so they can display more relevant ads on Web sites. For instance, a surfer who visits sites about dogs might see more banner ads for dog food.

Five of the biggest names in the technology industry have teamed up for a new security initiative.

Known as the Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI), the group will examine ways in which multiple companies can respond to a single security threat.

Founding members of the nonprofit group include Cisco, Intel, IBM and Juniper Networks.

The aim of the project is to deal with security threats that may affect multiple companies. The group plans to seek out better ways to cooperate with one another and notify users in the event of an attack.

The United States and the European Union are moving toward agreement on sharing personal information on individuals for law enforcement and security purposes.
The agreement would allow law enforcement and security agencies to obtain information -- including credit card transactions, travel histories and Internet browsing habits -- about most people in Europe and the United States.

Web templates offer webmasters a great opportunity to minimize development time and get new sites on the web sooner rather than later. The structure of web templates allow webmasters to focus on the proprietary content development, and optimizing the website for search engines, rather than struggling with layout and graphics.

Why Use Web Templates

There are 2 educational sessions one about software protection another about online fraud at this years Software Industry Conference.

The Software Industry Conference is coming to Boston July 17th through 19th, 2008. This exciting event, now in its 18th year, will be held at the Boston Marriott Quincy in Quincy MA.

The Software Industry Conference features three days of informative sessions that cover a wide range of subjects of interest to software developers. There will be sessions on marketing, foreign markets, ecommerce, outsourcing development, copyrights and trademarks, and much more.

The Software Industry Conference provides lots of time to network with other attendees. Registration is only $249.00 for the 3 day conference!

Website usability is more than just a good navigational structure. A large number of people have visual or hearing disabilities, so you should design your website in ways that allow those with either minor or significant impairments to view and navigate your web content. The following tips will help expand your websites usability so that all users, regardless of their sensory perception and abilities, are able to take advantage of your web content...

Take Website Usability to the Next Level

Ex-White House security adviser Richard A. Clarke, who became a high-profile critic of the Bush administration, has resigned as chairman of a Massachusetts blank check company that netted $55 million in an initial public offering, but failed to make good on its plans to buy security firms.

Clarke and other key officials at Good Harbor Partners Acquisitions Corp. resigned on June 16, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Earlier this year, the company returned nearly all of the money it raised in a 2006 IPO after failing to buy any companies.

The race is on to get businesses and consumers to pay for security for their cellphone the way they do for their PCs.

Tech security companies see a lucrative emerging market for cellphone security products. Researcher IDC predicts businesses and consumers will spend $958 million by 2011, up from $214 million in 2006 spent mostly by corporations. Symantec, Kaspersky Lab, Trend Micro and others have stepped up consumer marketing of anti-virus subscriptions for mobile devices. Typical annual cost: about $30.

An Australian man has discovered security vulnerabilities in his Internet-connected coffee maker that could allow a remote attacker to not only take over his Windows XP-based PC but also make his coffee too weak.

Craig Wright, a risk advisory services manager at professional services firm BDO, found several security holes, including a buffer overflow in the Internet Connection software that links his Jura F90 coffee maker to his PC.

complete article

Many data thieves may not be so sophisticated after all, according to a study to be released today.

At a time when the theft of personal information is a growing problem for companies and consumers, the study by a consulting unit of Verizon Communications Inc. analyzed more than 500 data breaches since 2004 and found 87 percent could have been prevented with commonplace security practices.

Attackers could gain control of water treatment plants, natural gas pipelines and other critical utilities because of a vulnerability in the software that runs some of those facilities, security researchers reported Wednesday.

Experts with Boston-based Core Security Technologies, who discovered the deficiency and described it exclusively to The Associated Press before they issued a security advisory, said theres no evidence anyone else found or exploited the flaw.

Forget that warm and fuzzy slogan about reaching out and touching someone. The biggest U.S. telephone company is increasingly pitching its ability to keep the bad guys away.

Every day, all over the Internet, computers are bombarded with spam and malware, forcing corporate information technology staffs into constant battle, and often overwhelming home users.

But help is emerging from an unlikely source. Telecommunication carriers, who for years have passively transported voice and data communications, are offering to patrol their giant networks - for a price.

More than 4-million Social Security and Supplemental Security Income recipients who do not have bank accounts now have the option of getting a prepaid MasterCard debit card with their benefits instead of a paper check. A pilot project in Illinois last year has been expanded to 10 Southern states, including Florida. Here's a look at it.

Software security breaches add up in recent headlines alone: $13 million in losses; 45.6 million credit cards stolen; recovery costs at $256 million dollars and mounting; and companies driven into bankruptcy or out of business. Financially motivated targeted attacks are becoming more prevalent, and new vulnerabilities continue to be reported, according to industry research firm Gartner.

Censorship practices by governments and other private actors are becoming more increasingly more sophisticated, and their effects are increasingly being felt globally.

A case in point, the YouTube incident in Pakistan was a recent example affecting both users and the DNS at a national and global level. Likely other incidents will occur in the near future. As such, I believe censorship should be considered as a threat to the stability and security of the DNS.

In the context of Internet governance discussions, I believe the issue should be raised both at ICANN and the Internet Governance forum. Do others agree?

The ease of accessing banking services after hours has seen a big jump in New Zealanders embracing online banking.

A Nielsen survey shows a 62 per cent jump in internet banking over the past three years. Telephone banking has also risen, up 13 per cent, while branch visits are down 23 per cent.

Printers and copiers could be the weak link in many corporate cyber defenses, the European Unions information security agency warned Tuesday.


The EU said companies are often unaware of the dangers posed by printers that are connected to the Internet, which can serve as conduits to penetrate networks or a window to stored documents.

The Federal Government kicked-off National E-security week today with the launch of a new security alert service for internet users and small businesses.

The National E-security Awareness Week is a Government initiative aimed at boosting awareness of e-security risks.

The alert service, announced today, is a free subscription-based service that provides vulnerability and threat information while advising users how to manage outbreaks.

Canadian farm-input retailers are looking for government financial help in upgrading security at their facilities to prevent fertilizer from falling into the hands of terrorists and makers of illegal drugs.

The Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers said Friday that its members and Canadian farmers will soon find themselves at an even greater competitive disadvantage compared to their American counterparts, as the new U.S. federal farm bill includes tax credits and grants to enhance security of crop nutrients, herbicides and pesticides.

The association notes that fertilizers have been used for sinister purposes by criminal and terrorist elements, notably in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 which killed 168 people and injured more than 800. Anhydrous ammonia is also used in making methamphetamine.

Airport security has been taken to a whole new level at Denver International Airport with a new passenger imaging technology that gives security officials a snapshot of what's underneath passengers clothes, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced.

TSA started testing the new system -- that scans the body for weapons and explosives -- at DIA security checkpoints Friday.

DIA is the sixth airport in the nation to implement the technology which will be used randomly on passengers traveling through security.

A low-level TJX employee has lost his job for speaking in public about information security problems he uncovered while working for the company.

The employee, Nick Benson, is a University of Kansas student who worked at T.J. Maxx Pine Ridge Plaza store in Lawrence, Kansas. In an e-mail interview, he said he was fired Wednesday for violating corporate policy by disclosing proprietary information.

Muslim gangs are threatening to take control of one of Britain's top security prisons where inmates include Al-Qaeda terrorists, a report reveals. Staff at Whitemoor jail, Cambs, believe a serious incident is imminent as several wings become dominated by Muslim prisoners. There is an on-going theme of fear and instability among employees, says the Prison Services Directorate of High Security report. "There is much talk around the establishment about the Muslims,it says.

Some staff believe the situation has resulted in Muslim prisoners becoming more of a gang than a religious group. The sheer numbers, coupled with a lack of awareness among staff, appear to be engendering fear and handing control to the prisoners, the report says. The situation has become so bad that white prisoners are warned about the Muslim gangs by staff on arrival.

An anti-terrorist special team consisting of engineers and experts will shoulder the security work for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, according to the General Staff Headquarters of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA).

The team from the PLAs engineering troop will be responsible for security checks, emergency rescues and anti-terrorist technology applications during the August Olympiad.

In addition, 10 engineering experts in anti-terrorist technology have been selected to provide technical support and information for the security troops during the Games.  

Olympic security has been the focus of the Chinese armys daily drills. Among them are activities preventing guns and explosives from nearing important targets, searching for and defusing explosives, rescuing victims stranded in damaged buildings and leading emergency evacuations, among others.

While schools in Lynn and across the country are fighting a war against Internet predators and bullying, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley announced a breakthrough safety and security agreement with one of the Internets most successful Web sites this month.

Coakley, along with her 49 counterparts from across the country, reached an agreement with Facebook.com this month to better protect children from predators and inappropriate content on the Web site. As part of the agreement, Facebook.com will also participate in the Internet Safety Technical Task Force that was established under a similar agreement reached between Myspace.com and the attorneys general in January.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been knocked off the Internet, thanks to a faulty server. However, website measurement company Netcraft said that the problem had now been fixed.

The website was temporarily unreachable because of a problem with the NSAs DNS servers, said Danny McPherson, chief research officer with Arbor Networks. DNS servers are used to translate things like the web addresses typed into machine-readable Internet Protocol addresses that computers use to find each other on the Internet. The agency's two authoritative DNS servers were unreachable last Thursday morning, McPherson said.

After attempting to work with Apple for several months on what it claims are serious security flaws in iCal, security firm Core Security Technologies (CST) published the flaws late on Wednesday. The company published notice of the bugs, and a log of contacts between Apple that debate the severity of the flaws and threaten publication unless Apple commits to a date for fixing the flaws

Use PageGate integrated with existing applications to notify IT staff on wireless devices about outages or system problems. Alerts can be sent to PageGate from network monitoring, HVAC or other systems. There is a free trial version of PageGate available and a step by step tutorial detailing how the software can be integrated to add another layer of notification.

While it may still be debatable whether all the major search engines currently employ a duplicate content penalty, all have made it abundantly clear that they do not have any desire to provide search results that rehash the same content over and over. Actively avoid any potential penalties by taking a proactive approach to building unique content.

Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties in Search

A 23-year-old Oregon man has pleaded guilty to charges that he used identity theft to set up bogus accounts on eBay, where he sold counterfeit software with a retail value of more than US$1 million, the U.S. Department of Justice said.


Jeremiah Joseph Mondello of Eugene, Oregon, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count each of criminal copyright infringement, aggravated identity theft and mail fraud before Judge Ann Aiken in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. He faces up to 27 years in prison and a fine of $500,000, the DOJ said.

Boston-based security firm Core Security has discovered a serious hole in the Suitelink software that is used to automate operations at power stations, oil refineries and production lines, according to a report in New Scientist.

Attackers exploiting the vulnerability could crash the software by transmitting an outsize packet data to a certain port on the computer running Suitelink, the article says.

Fortunately, Wonderware, the company that makes Suitelink, has issued a software patch for the vulnerability. Now it is up to the plants to update their software.

Major elements of the Bush administration's proposed $17 billion cyber security initiative have little to do with protecting government networks, and a lot to do with spying, according to a budget report released by the Senate Armed Services Committee this week.

The so-called National Cyber Security Initiative is also wrapped in unnecessary secrecy, and would spend billions on unproven, embryonic technology, and possibly illegal or ill-advised projects, according to the analysis -- which is part of a broad look at the proposed 2009 defense budget.

Workers in some subway stations in Olympic host city Beijing have started asking passengers carrying bottled drinks to take a swig to prove they are not carrying banned liquids like petrol, local media reported on Friday.

China last year said terrorist attacks posed the biggest threat to the Games and has intensified security measures at airports, train and subway stations after the government said a flight crew foiled an attempt to blow up a plane over the countrys restive northwest region of Xinjiang in March.

Subway workers were asking passengers to take a drink if security equipment was unable to detect the content of the fluids in their bottles, the Beijing News said.

Spanish police have arrested five hackers they describe as being among the most active on the internet.

The hackers, who include two 16-year-olds, are accused of disrupting government websites in the United States, Asia and Latin America.

Police say they co-ordinated attacks over the internet and hacked into 21,000 web pages over two years.

This cyberbullying case could have significant implications:

A Missouri woman who allegedly used a fake MySpace profile to bully a girl who later committed suicide has been indicted by a federal Grand Jury.

Lori Drew, 49, allegedly posed as a boy on the website to befriend Megan Meier, 13, who hanged herself after he broke off the virtual relationship.

Al Qaeda and other radical groups have dramatically increased their use of the Internet in recent years to lure and train recruits worldwide, a U.S. Senate report warned on Thursday.

The report by the Senate Homeland Security Committee found that these groups run production houses and distribution centers that digitally send anti-American messages to thousands of Web sites around the globe.

Top US state attorneys announced Thursday that Facebook has agreed to get tougher on keeping its young website users safe from bullies, porn, pedophiles and other online hazards.

Facebook has agreed to a child protection pact similar to the one sealed with leading social-networking website MySpace in January, according to Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal.

A TorrentSpy lawyer vowed Thursday to appeal a 110-million-dollar legal judgment against the website for directing people to unauthorized online copies of films and television shows.


Valence Media shut down its TorrentSpy website in March and filed for bankruptcy last week in the face of a lawsuit brought against it by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Police officers practice their firearm skills on a shooting range, so why should government computer security experts not have the same kind of training ground?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, on Monday issued a call for research proposals to develop the National Cyber Range, or NCR, a virtual network environment for cyberwar simulation.

software dealer who Microsoft charged with engaging in the sale of pirated software is vowing to fight back. Next week he plans to file a complaint with the European Commission alleging abuse of power and anti-trust violations.

Microsoft this past Monday filed a legal complaint against Samir Abdalla, an entrepreneur from The Netherlands, claiming that he illegally sold software in the U.S. that was intended for educational markets outside the United States. He is alleged to have made US$3.6 million from the business. The suit was filed in Los Angeles, together with seven complaints against other software dealers from Canada, Egypt and the U.S.

The software maker is asking for damages as well as an injunction that prevents Abdalla from importing software that is intended for students.

Internet security experts say the Web has become so overrun with identity thieves that users have no way of knowing which sites are safe.

The San Francisco Chronicle said last Wednesday that even the largest and most-familiar destinations are vulnerable to thieves who swipe identification numbers, business e-mails and medical records.

The Internet Archive revealed Wednesday that the FBI dropped an effort to secretly obtain information about the online activities of one of the digital librarys users.
The Archive revealed that it had been served a National Security Letter by the FBI last year about one of its patrons. The San Francisco-based nonprofit organization prevailed after enlisting the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.

U.S. senator accused the Chinese government on Thursday of ordering U.S.-owned hotels in China to install Internet filters that can spy on international visitors coming to see the summer Olympic games.


Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, made the charge at a Capitol Hill news conference where he and other lawmakers denounced Chinas record of human rights abuses and urged President Bush not to attend the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing.

Even criminal hackers want to protect their intellectual property, and they have come up with a method akin to copyrighting — with an appropriate dash of Internet thuggery thrown in.


Professional virus writers are now selling a suite of software on the Internet with an unusual attachment: a detailed licensing agreement that promises penalties for redistributing the malicious code without permission.

A Woodbury, Connecticut, man has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for operating Web sites where users could download unauthorized copies of movies, music and software titles, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

David M. Fish, 26, was sentenced Monday on criminal copyright infringement and circumvention charges in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, the DOJ announced late Tuesday.

Pack up the image of the lone hacker. Internet crime is highly organized -- outsourcing complex work and using sophisticated pricing, like bulk discounts for stolen credit cards.

What should be particularly worrisome to legitimate businesses is a shift in tactics. Rather than targeting computer networks, which have strengthened defenses considerably, Internet criminals now try to get to individual computers and customers of Internet services and sites with Web-based attacks. One reason: Few Web sites address their vulnerabilities, and the few that do, react slowly.

Microsoft Corp. denied the recent incident, in which more than half a million websites were hacked, was caused by vulnerabilities in its Web and SQL Server software, according to U.S. media reports Monday.

Earlier last week, more than 500,000 websites, including several hosted by the United Nations and the UK government, were hacked and modified in order to download malware to visitors computers, according to Finnish anti-virus maker F-Secure, which caused numerous governmental and commercial Web pages were shut down. Security researchers said those websites were hacked by SQL injection attacks.

A dangerous flaw in Hewlett-Packard Software Update, a tool that automatically updates HP software and drivers, could be exploited by an attacker to read sensitive information or gain access to a system.

The tools contain several ActiveX flaws that could be exploited by tricking Internet Explorer users into visiting a malicious website.

Chinese police have seized $750 million worth of pirated computer software and broken up a piracy ring in southern China, state media said as Beijing vows to crack down on a problem which has soured trade ties.

The Internet is slowly inching closer to ratcheting up the security of its Domain Name System (DNS) server architecture: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) plans to go operational with the secure DNS technology, DNSSEC, later this year in one of its domains.

ICANN officials said the organization plans to add DNSSEC to its .arpa Internet domain servers, and that the .org domain servers (run by PIR) as well as the .uk servers also will go DNSSEC soon. Country domains .swe (Sweden), .br (Brazil), and .bg (Bulgaria ) already run the secure version of DNS for their domain servers.

DNSSEC, which stands for DNS Security Extensions, digitally signs DNS records so that DNS responses are validated as legitimate and not hacked or tampered with.

By some measures, China has tied the United States as the online population leader with its government reporting that the number of Internet users there has soared to 221 million.

U.S. company Raytheon announced last week that it bought the software security company SI Government Solutions.

SI Government Solutions has been a major supplier software security expertise to U.S. intelligence agencies. The amount Raytheon paid for the company was not revealed.

Chinese police have seized $750 million worth of pirated computer software and broken up a piracy ring in southern China, state media said as Beijing vows to crack down on a problem which has soured trade ties.

Google engineers have adapted a software program to help track child sex predators and search for patterns in images of abuse on the web.

Google has created the technology for the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

It was originally developed to block copyrighted videos on the company's YouTube division.

The program uses pattern recognition to enable analysts to sort and identify files containing child sex abuse.

Google says its aim in teaming up with the centres Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography is to develop solutions that would make it harder for people to use the web to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.

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Web payment firm Paypal has said it will block unsafe browsers from using its service as part of wider anti-phishing efforts. Customers will first be warned that a browser is unsafe but could then be blocked if they continue using it.

Paypal said it was an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4.

Web designers making very old mistakes are letting malicious hackers hijack visitors to their sites, say experts.
Many of the loopholes left in the code created for websites have been known about for almost a decade say the security researchers.

The poor practices are proving very attractive to hi-tech criminals looking for a ready source of victims.

According to Symantec the number of sites vulnerable in this way almost doubled during the last half of 2007.

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Despite all the antivirus software, all the extra security features in your computers operating system and all the government regulations intended to make the Internet a safer place, your personal computer and your personal data are as threatened as ever.

Cybercrooks Winning Web

Performing and perfecting search engine results can save web surfers lots of time and energy. Understanding the nuances of searching allows researchers to immediately drill down and locate the information they are seeking, without having to wade through a myriad of irrelevant search results in the process. The increasing complexity of search engines has made understanding search engines a necessity for those who spend any amount of time online. The following search tips are standards that will work in most of the major search engines.

Performing Better Searches

HTML Web templates for security firms and online security consultants. This website has a number of web templates specifically for security firms.

While it may still be debatable whether all the major search engines currently employ a duplicate content penalty, all have made it abundantly clear that they do not have any desire to provide search results that rehash the same content over and over. Actively avoid any potential penalties by taking a proactive approach to building unique content.

Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties

Shifting to a hosted software model can cut IT costs and ease administration and upgrades, but managers must prepare users for its significant effect on work processes and job roles, said CIOs sitting on a panel at Computerworld USs recent SaaSCon conference.

Lane said IT managers should hammer prospective hosted software providers with questions about their security tools, datacentre location, backup and recovery capabilities, and how the hosting facility is set up to deal with unexpected outages. He also suggested that the audience look closely at the vendor's service level guarantees.

The former Manhattan hospital employee accused of stealing the records of nearly 50,000 patients sold the information, prosecutors said Saturday.
Dwight McPherson, 38, used his position in the admissions department at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell to obtain lists of patient names, phone numbers and Social Security numbers over a two-year period, according to a complaint filed yesterday.

He confessed to his role in the identity theft scheme when he was arrested Friday night, the complaint says.

The last time a pope visited the United States in 1999, an audiotape of an Islamic extremist that accused the pontiff of leading a crusade against Muslims would not likely have created a huge stir.

But that was before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, after which people worldwide became aware of the murderous threat of Osama bin Laden.

So the release last month of bin Laden's comments about Pope Benedict XVI probably heightened further the awareness of those assigned to protect the pope during his six-day visit to Washington and New York that begins Tuesday, a former Secret Service agent said.

They wear bright blue tracksuits, and Beijing Olympic organizers call them flame attendants. But a military bearing hints at their true pedigree: paramilitary police sent by Beijing to guard the Olympic flame during its journey around the world.

Torchbearers have criticized the security detail for aggressive behavior, and a top London Olympics official simply called them thugs.

They were barking orders at me, like Run! Stop! This! That! and I was like, Oh my gosh, who are these people? former television host Konnie Huq told British Broadcasting Corp. radio about her encounter with the men in blue during Londons leg of the relay last week.

Beijing will have at least 94,000 security staff – but only 10,500 athletes. After the protests that greeted the torch relay, China is getting ready to put on the greatest show of security the world has ever seen. What used to be called the Olympics are likely this summer to become the Paramilitary Games. China is planning to deploy more than 94,000 security personnel at the Beijing celebration in August, which means that uniformed and plain-clothes operatives will outnumber the 10,500 athletes by nearly nine to one.

Nearly $250 million worth of individual losses from Internet fraud was reported by Americans to the FBI last year, the bureau said.

The figures were released by the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI and the non-profit National White Collar Crime Center, in its seventh annual report on Internet crime this week.

The $239 million loss represents a 20 percent growth from fraud losses reported to the center in 2006, and officials say it represents just a fraction of the total costs of cybercrime to the U.S. economy.

Security has been increased at a Simpsonville middle school after a student was arrested and suspended for wearing a T-shirt with a noose and a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.

Greenville television station WYFF says some students at Bryson Middle School stayed home yesterday. The students say they feared violence after the T-shirt worn by an eighth-grader angered both black and white students the day before.

The student lifted another shirt revealing the racist T-shirt in the lunchroom.

The student has been charged with disturbing school and recommended for expulsion.

Conventional wisdom is that security spending will be sheltered from economic volatility. But not according to a Goldman Sachs survey of 50 chief security officers.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he plans to meet with the U.S. Secret Service soon about getting body guards.

The Arizona senator, who has won enough delegates to win the partys nomination, has gone without Secret Service protection. However, agency Director Mark Sullivan testified publicly before Congress this week that McCain had no security detail, prompting the candidate to say perhaps the time has come, the New York Daily News reported Saturday.

Businesses are giving users greater freedom with corporate IT systems, according to a recent report, but many of those users lack the necessary security training.
The study, conducted by a consortium, led by PricewaterhouseCoopers, on behalf of the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR), found that firms are placing greater trust in their staff.

Seven out of eight firms now have information security policies in place according to newly released findings from the annual Information Security Breaches Survey (ISBS). Those policies are loosening controls over users.

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Warnings have been issued by a great many online security authorities that Flash has security flaws, yet the warnings have fallen upon deaf ears.

The problems are not with the new versions of Flash files, but with the slightly older ones, made with older authoring programs that were, are full of vulnerabilities. These files are vulnerable to XSS (Cross-site Scripting) attacks.

Shareware Promotions has posted a very important and revealing post about Google and how they want to use Google Analytics data and Adwords!  Anyone with half a brain should have seen this coming.

In fact I wrote a piece about this awhile back, here is an excerpt:

Google Analytics is free, no one can beat the price, but what is the real cost? The cost is your data. While not terribly important when analyzed alone, when aggregated with other information Google has access to, it could be damaging. Data mining has made the collection of data meaningful. It has become easier to find patterns and trends in large volumes of data.

While any of that information independent of other data, might be non-threatening or irrelevant to someone doing analysis, when combined with other data Google has access to, it can paint a very clear picture of how, not only individual companies are performing, but the aggregate data could possibly paint a picture of how entire business sectors or industries are performing.

If you are using Analytics consider yourself warned yet again!

Full Shareware Promotions Blog Post
Full Article Google As Big Brother

The security of the most widely used standard in the world for transmitting mobile phone calls is dangerously flawed, putting privacy and data at risk, two researchers warned at the Black Hat conference in Europe on Friday.

This year, identity thieves are not just trying to gain access to your bank account or to open lines of credit in your name. Scammers are on the prowl for ordinary citizens' identities that they can they can use in filing phony tax returns, and fraudulently claiming refunds, as well as swipe rebates, associated with the 2008 federal economic stimulus package.

The college gossip Web site JuicyCampus.com has criticized a consumer fraud investigation launched by the New Jersey attorney general.

JuicyCampus publishes anonymous, often malicious gossip about college students, with language ranging from catty to hateful and potentially offensive.

Last week the New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram subpoenaed the company as part of a fraud investigation.

Expensive legal battles have caused TorrentSpy, the search engine for the BitTorrent file-sharing service, to shut down.

TorrentSpy was a search engine that helped visitors find torrent files on the Web. Torrent files are often music or movie files stored in an easily shared file format. The search engine came under legal fire from the entertainment industry, which in general does not want licensed content to be distributed royalty-free.

People who use software to breach security measures on the Internet and purchase tickets for profit would be fined as much as $5,000 under a proposal advancing in the Legislature.

A security lapse made it possible for unwelcome strangers to peruse personal photos posted on Facebooks popular online hangout, circumventing a recent upgrade to the websites privacy controls.

The Associated Press verified the loophole Monday after receiving a tip from a Byron Ng, a Vancouver, Canada computer technician. Ng began looking for security weaknesses last week after Facebook unveiled more ways for 67 million members to restrict access to their personal profiles.

Steve Jobs is using Apple Software Update to slip his Safari browser onto Windows machines. And Mozilla CEO John Lilly is peeved.
Presumably, Lilly is peeved because Safari browsers on Windows machines would eat into the market share of Mozilla' very own Firefox browser. But Lilly says he is peeved for different reasons. He says he's peeved because Steve Jobs little Software Update trick undermines the security of the entire internet.

Unauthorized software that was secretly installed on servers in Hannafords supermarkets across the Northeast and in Florida enabled the massive data breach that compromised up to 4.2 million credit and debit cards, the company said.

New Security Web Templates have been added. If you need a new security website have a look at these easy to use HTML templates.

Backup Platinum is easy-to-use and powerful backup program designed for Microsoft Windows. Makes a reserve copy of your critical data to hard or USB drives, CD-R/W, DVD, FTP or LAN with 128-bit file encryption and ZIP compression. Can run in service mode under NT, 2000, XP, and 2003.

Backup Platinum is 40% off on Software Deal of the Day

MySpace said that it has launched a new public service announcement campaign focused on Internet safety. According to the social networking sites security head, Hemanshu Nigam, the firm is stepping up its safety education efforts to promote online safety awareness among parents, educators and teens. MySpaces outreach will include 10, 15, and 30 second video spots on Fox broadcast and cable networks, as well as efforts with nonprofit iKeepSafe for online flash tutorials aimed at parents.

Terrorists linked to the al-Qaeda network are increasingly turning to the Internet to spread propaganda against their enemies and convince sympathizers to join their cause.

Diane Russel Ong Junio, an analyst with the newly-launched Philippine Institute for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, said that in the past couple of years, al-Qaeda-funded terrorists have increased the output of videos and other propaganda material on the Internet.

The Pentagon says the Street View feature in Google Maps can compromise military security. It has banned Google vehicles from entering any military installation after detailed images of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Tex., appeared on Google Maps.

We don't have any issues regarding Google and their products, which are very useful tools, said Gary Ross, a public-affairs officer for the U.S. Northern Command. But the Street View provides clear imagery of control points, barriers, headquarters and security facilities that pose a risk to our force-protection efforts.

Computer files with confidential data on about 5,000 employees at MTV Networks were breached by someone outside the company, the network told employees on last week.

MTV later said in a statement that the security breach occurred after an Internet connection in an employees computer was compromised.

PageGate integrates with many monitoring applications, to offer a level of notification. Alerts can be sent directly to cell phones or pagers, signaling individuals of any anomalies. Integration is typically done by passing messages to PageGate using commandline, or PageGate can poll a predetermined directory for messages.

A computer science student at the University of Virginia asserts that he has found a security flaw in the technology behind the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authoritys CharlieCard system.

German-born graduate student Karsten Nohl specializes in computer security. Nohl and two fellow security researchers in Germany say they have cracked the encryption scheme that protects the data on the card. The team warns that their breakthrough could be used to make counterfeit copies of the cards, which are used by commuters to pay for MBTA bus and subway rides.

The 2008 Software Industry Conference  will be in Boston, Massachusetts at the Boston Marriott Quincy from July 17-19, 2008.

The Software Industry Conference is a three day event, that culminates with the Shareware Industry Awards ceremony. There are also dozens of informative, educational breakout sessions covering a wide variety of topics. And if that is not enough there are three nights jam packed with plenty of time to mingle with other attendees, exhibitors, and sponsors including an Exhibit Night featuring the best software development products and services.

Attendee registration is only $199 if you register before April 1st!

Almost a year after the deadliest shooting on a college campus, Congress is still haggling over legislation that would provide federal dollars to colleges and universities to help pay for improved campus security.

Security is now a top priority at colleges across the nation after a student gunman at Virginia Tech University killed 31 students and a faculty member in April before shooting himself.

Advocates for safer campuses and improved security are frustrated that Congress has not acted to provide federal aid.

College Security

EBay is trying to help chief information security officers (CISOs) build a common front in the war against cybercrime


The company played host to chief security officers and a handful of technology vendors a few weeks ago, holding its annual Red Team security conference at the companies San Jose campus, billing it as a networking opportunity for security professionals where they could discuss areas of common concern.

A large organization decides that blogs cut productivity, provide misleading information and could compromise security. It discontinues access for its personnel, even though information is a key weapon in competition. The question is whether this is a smart policy for a large organization, especially the U.S. Air Force.


According to a report last week in Wired, the Air Force is eliminating access for its troops to virtually any site that uses the term blog. Sites are also being blocked because of a negative review of content by supervising personnel.

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This story presents five mistakes that companies commonly make when writing and implementing security policies. As simplistic as some of these errors sound, they happen often enough and cause heavy damage to companies bottom lines.

Company Security Mistakes

In a move intended to improve the security of its virtualization platform, VMware has provided ways for third-party security vendors to integrate their applications into the platform.

Basically, VMware has provided a set of application program interfaces (APIs) to such security companies as McAfee and Symantec. The APIs, collectively called VMsafe, give the security programs the access needed to monitor and protect the memory, CPU and disk operations, and systems of virtual machines set up with the VMware hypervisor.

AVG Technologies (formerly Grisoft) has released version 8.0 of its security suite, AVG Internet Security. The suite includes AVGs flagship antivirus product as well as spyware protection, personal firewall, antispam, and protection against malicious Web sites.

The University of Hawaii at Manoa is in line for up to $12 million over the next six years to co-manage a research center for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

UH Manoa was selected along with 10 other universities for five new Centers of Excellence. The centers will study such areas as border security, explosives detection, maritime and port security and natural disasters.

MyUSBOnly is a unique product that provides security for USB storage devices that are so prevalent nowadays in any environment. Technically, it acts as something similar to a firewall that monitors the USB ports for any storage device that is connected to the protected computer. The discount offer is only good for a limited time!

Since January, the Bush administration has committed to spending billions to keep the governments computer networks safe from cyber-spies and other malicious hackers. But to keep digital intruders away from sensitive government information, some worry the government will have to do some spying of its own--on the U.S. private sector.

The House Committee on Homeland Security plans to hold the first public hearing Thursday on Presidential Directive 54, a project that could cost as much as $30 billion over seven years as it expands cyber-monitoring of all federal agency networks. Many former officials believe that the plan will go further, extending government surveillance to private companies, such as military contractors, that possess sensitive government information.

Everyone who understands Internet Marketing will tell you to analyze your web logs... but what does that really mean? What particular things should you pay attention to when analyzing your web logs?

Web Log Analysis

Large collection of security related web templates for online security companies. Get a new look for your online security presence!

This years Software Industry Conference will be held July 17-19, 2008 in Boston Massachusetts. The conference attracts industry leaders, software companies, and MicroISVs.

European data privacy regulators confirmed Thursday that Internet search engines based outside Europe must also comply with EU rules on how a persons Internet address or search history is stored.

Lawmakers in the United States and elsewhere should not to try to censor Islamic extremists' use of the Internet, says a new report from a global think tank.

There is no censorship option, Greg Austin, vice president of the East West Institute, told United Press International. Trying to suppress anything (on the Internet) except direct operational use by terrorists is a mistake.

Austin said a careful distinction had to be drawn between extremist sites advocating violent ideologies or asserting the right to use violence in general and terrorist sites that call for or support specific terrorist attacks.

The report urges that, rather than try to close extremists sites, the private sector and religious and community groups should step up, countering extremists propaganda strategy with messages that promote peaceful dialogue and emphasize the human cost of extremist violence.

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These days computer security is very important due to extensive use of Internet. People who use shareware and freeware software and utilities need to be very sure about their computer's security. A firewall is a software package that keeps track of any internet traffic pieces that go in and out of your computer.

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The increasing use of the Internet by political campaigns presents hackers and spammers with growing opportunities for abuse, according to two Internet experts.
Oliver Friedrichs is director of emerging technologies for Symantec.

Oliver Friedrichs, director of emerging technologies for Symantec, a computer security firm, said he has seen attacks of only moderate severity but warns much more damage could be done.Those attacks include: phishing, or e-mails designed to look legitimate but which take respondents to fraudulent sites; adware, or ads that appear through pop-ups or banners on Web pages; and spyware, which secretly monitors computer users. Fraudulent Web sites and plain old lies are also used.

Microsoft Corp. says it will publish more information about how its products work, a move that will help competitors do a better job of building Microsoft-compatible software products. This is a major shift for Microsoft.

The SIIA created a list of titles most pirated by companies last year. They include:

Symantec Norton AntiVirus
Adobe Acrobat
Symantec pcAnywhere
Adobe Photoshop
Autodesk AutoCAD
Adobe Dreamweaver
Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator
Roxio Toast Titanium
Ipswitch WS_FTP
Nero Ultra Edition

The most frequently pirated software titles on the Internet last year were:

McAfee VirusScan
Symantec Norton AntiVirus
McAfee Internet Security Suite
Intuit TurboTax
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Acrobat
Intuit Quicken Home and Business
Symantec Norton pcAnywhere
Symantec Norton Ghost
Adobe Creative Suite.

A pink MacBook, a computer repair shop, an internationally renowned actor, and eight female pop stars are at the center of what is being described as the biggest Internet sex scandal in China.

It all began last year, when Edison Chen, a star of Infernal Affairs--the movie that inspired Martin Scorseses The Departed, dropped off his custom pink MacBook at a repair shop. Then in late January, thousands of sexually explicit images began appearing on the Internet that showed Chen in rather compromising positions with eight of the regions most popular actresses and singers. Authorities say the images were illegally copied from the computer by repair technicians.

The best anti-virus software is not free. Here are some fee based options, though they are discounted for a limited time:

Norton Anti-Virus - http://www.software-dod.com/2nd-chance-norton-antivirus.htm

BitDefender Anti-Virus - http://www.software-dod.com/2nd-chance-bitdefender-antivirus.htm

Computer Associates Anti-Virus - http://www.software-dod.com/2nd-chance-ca-antivirus-spyware.htm

New York City prosecutors on last Tuesday endorsed the United States first proposed law to ban registered sex offenders from social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, officials said.

The district attorneys from all five of the citys boroughs announced their support for New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's proposal, which would ban thousands of the states sex offenders from communicating with minors online.

CA is seeking beta testers for the 2008 version of its Internet Security Suite Plus, its all-in-one application for protecting against viruses, phishing attacks, spyware, spam and other Web borne threats. The software bundles together CAs other products, including eTrust and the popular PestPatrol program (now known as CA Personal Firewall and CA Anti-Spyware, respectively).

Everyone who understands Internet Marketing will tell you to analyze your web logs... but what does that really mean? What particular things should you pay attention to when analyzing your web logs?

Web Log Analysis

Top 10 Viruses for 2007

According to AVG global security strategist Larry Bridwell, the 10 viruses exhibiting the most staying power in 2007 are:
W32/Detnat
W32/Netsky
W32/Mytob
W32/Bagle
W32/MyWife
W32/Virut
W32/Zafi