Security News Curated from across the world
In previous years, DHS has made general recommendations that states and other grant recipients conduct cybersecurity planning.
The largest grant program, a $2.5 billion State Homeland Security Grant Program, sends money to the states for anti-terrorism planning, equipment, exercises and training. The second largest is $862 million for the Urban Area Security Initiative, which distributes grants to major cities.
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/27757-1.html
In the same roadmap, Microsoft posted the second half of 2006 as the anticipated release frame for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2).
Last week, Microsoft extended support for Windows XP Home through 2008, a change from earlier plans to drop support for the OS by the end of 2006.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177100974&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_news
This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act.
Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.
“The use of the word ‘annoy’ is particularly problematic,” says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “What’s annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else.”
A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. “Whoever…utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet… without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person…who receives the communications…shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called “Preventing Cyberstalking.” It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.” The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.
An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an “interactive computer service” to cause someone “substantial emotional harm.”
Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals. In each of those three cases, someone’s probably going to be annoyed. That’s enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won’t file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)
Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled. He added: “If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?” Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material “with intent to annoy.” But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn’t have to worry. “I’m certainly not going to close the site down,” Fein said on Friday. “I would fight it on First Amendment grounds.”
Our esteemed politicians can’t seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else. It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets. If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he’d realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold. And then he’d repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it. Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans’ personal freedoms. Now we’ll see if the president rises to the occasion.
http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-annoyance%2C+go+to+jail/2010-1028_3-6022491.html?part=rss&tag=6022491&subj=news
“Then last month they more than doubled their spending outlook when users realized the economy was still perking along,” John Gantz, IDC’s Chief Research Officer, said in a statement.
IDC’s forecast of 5 percent growth in U.S. IT spending growth in 2006 is double the 2.5 percent forecast earlier this week by Merrill Lynch.
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3575466
The perception that the threat of mobile malware was much less than that of its PC counterpart would encourage virus writers to come up with even more sophisticated threats, the McAfee AVERT Labs added.
Apart from mobile malware, phishing scams would also continue to rise this year, with attacks to become more targeted through the use of spyware programs and password stealers, McAfee AVERT Labs said.
http://news.inq7.net/infotech/index.php?index=1&story_id=62081
The data relates to 206,000 employees, timeshare owners, and timeshare customers of Marriott Vacation Club International, the company said in a statement. They contained Social Security numbers, bank and credit card numbers, according to letters the company began sending customers in late December.
Vacation club officials reported the missing data to authorities and began their own investigation into the tapes’ disappearance, according to the statement.
http://www.securitypipeline.com/news/175700611