Linux Privacy - Page 45 - Results from #880

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INDUCE Act targets P2P application creators

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LS asks: if this happened in the early part of the last century, would we now be able to listen to popular music on the radio?US Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a long-time ally of the RIAA and MPAA, has formally introduced the INDUCE Act to the US Senate Judiciary Committee. Following in the footsteps of the Pirate Act, the INDUCE Act would give the green light for copyright holders to sue the creators of peer-to-peer applications. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jul 07, 2004

PC World sells "new" hard drive with personal data on

LS: Things that make you go "hmmmm":The package was sold intact with a black and white security label saying "do not open before purchase", and was for sale with other new drives in the superstore. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jul 01, 2004

E-Mail Snooping Ruled Permissible

LS: This story certainly appears at first glance to be a case of the court making a mind-numbingly stupid decision. However, the issues here are more subtle than they might first appear. The real issue is not that anyone thinks that email should not have privacy from random third parties, but rather that the law should be read to mean what it actually says. It can well be considered dangerous to allow arbitrary enforcement of laws in line with what they "should" have said, as opposed to what they do say. The best way to fix this is for wiretap privacy laws to be expanded to fit the modern age. Fortunately, if a bill preventing third parties from randomly reading each other's emails were brought before Congress, its hard to imagine that anyone would dare allow the record to show that they voted 'nay', so this situation seems fixable. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jul 01, 2004

US Supreme Court bars enforcement of Child Online Protection Act

The US Supreme Court wrapped up its session by announcing a decision which bars the enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The COPA, passed in 1998, was an attempt by Congress to keep pornography out of the reach of children on the Internet by requiring credit cards, access codes, or other means of age verification to access adult content, with fines of up to US$50,000 for violations. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jun 29, 2004

Secure Web Based Mail Services

There used to be a time when secure e-mail management was simple. "Managing" meant sorting through your e-mail messages and putting them into appropriate folders. Secure e-mail back then meant using a simple password for e-mail access. However, today, with e-mail being a business-critical application, more threats against e-mail than ever before, and government regulatory concerns, secure e-mail management takes on a whole different meaning. Viruses, spam, worms, and other malicious attacks and non-malicious events can bring e-mail infrastructures to their knees. With recent government legislation in countries such as the U.S., e-mail confidentiality has become a growing concern. One of the more common accesses to e-mail today is via Web browser and Web-based e-mail access. What security issues should be kept in mind when developing or designing Web mail systems? . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jun 23, 2004

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63934,00.html

Think looking at spam is offensive? Try listening to it. For the millions of blind and visually impaired Internet users around the world, using text-to-speech software is often the only way to check e-mail. But as the spam problem gets worse, more and more of those users are finding that having their e-mail read aloud can be a minefield. Listening to the next message in the inbox may reveal an important letter from an old friend or, more often, an embarrassing ad for penis-enhancement therapy. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jun 22, 2004

Stealth wallpaper could keep WLANs secure

UK defence contractor BAE Systems has developed a stealth wallpaper to beat electronic eavesdropping on company Wi-Fi networks. The company has produced panels using the technology to produce a screen that will prevent outsiders from listening in on companies' Wi-Fi traffic but let other radio and mobile phone traffic get through. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jun 21, 2004

Antispam authentication moves ahead

AOL, Earthlink, and Google have all previously signed on with SPF, and Microsoft's support means that adoption should move forward. The question now is what effect the SPF + Microsoft protocol will have on Yahoo's DomainKeys technology, which works differently. DomainKeys has been submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force to be ratified as an open standard, and will be supported by Sendmail (which will also support SPF). At least all of the parties are saying all the right things: . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 28, 2004

The biggest spammer on the Net? Comcast?

Comcast's high-speed Internet subscribers have long been rumored to be an unusually persistent source of junk e-mail. Now someone from Comcast is confirming it. "We're the biggest spammer on the Internet," network engineer Sean Lutner said at a meeting of an antispam working group in Washington, D.C., last week. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 26, 2004

Identity Theft - The Real Cause

To understand the crime of identity theft and to see why it is such a rapidly growing problem you need to go back a few years. At that time here were criminal gangs that needed to launder the proceeds of their crimes. In the seventies and early eighties the banking industry with its centuries old code of secrecy was just what any self-respecting criminal needed. To open a bank account was a simple matter and the banks were keen to gain new customers. The days when it was a privilege to be allowed to have a bank account went out in the early seventies and the banks were fighting each other for business. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 24, 2004

Porn spam must now be labeled

Will this new rule help rid inboxes of unwanted sexually explicit spam? It is doubtful. One of the arguments of the Can-Spam act is that it does nothing to reduce the amount of spam, only make the spam that is sent legal. This new rule does the same. Yes it may help in creating inbox rules to shuffle the spam off to the deleted items folder, but it does nothing to help curb the amount received (unless the spammers run afoul of the law and are shut down). The people who will adopt the rules will be in the minority, mainly because the majority of spam (sexually explicit or not) comes from outside of the United States and are out of the reach of the law. Luckily, there are legislators who recognize the Can-Spam act has had little effect on the spam problem and are urging the FTC to clamp down on the businesses who are using spammers to solicit their wares. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 21, 2004

New biometric approach secures ID cards

A novel biometric identification system could counter many of the objections to ID card schemes such as the one being proposed by the UK government. The system can unequivocally link a person to a particular ID card without having to match their biometric characteristics to data stored either on the card or on a central database. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 20, 2004

What's Wrong With E-Mail Accreditation?

E-mail accreditation isn't taken all that seriously as a method of spam control. I'm baffled as to why. It appears to be an effective means of helping ensure that spam filters don't accidently block e-mail that the recipient actually wants to get. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 18, 2004

Student uncovers US military secrets

Although the technique is no good for tackling larger sections of text, it does show that officials need to be more careful with their sensitive documents. Naccache argues that the most important conclusion of this work "is that censoring text by blotting out words and re-scanning is not a secure practice". . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 17, 2004

Phishing Expeditions Are Multiplying

More bad news about phishing attacks arrived Friday via message filtering firm SurfControl when it unveiled numbers showing the scams have increased nearly 500% since January. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 14, 2004

Fundamentals: Password Madness

While senior technology editor Curt Franklin was hard at work testing authentication tokens for this issue's cover story, I coincidentally ran into some questionable authentication policies and practices as a user. In lectures I've given and in classes I teach to network admins, I emphasize that people should never give their passwords to anyone. Your password and user name identify you to the network or servers. They are your digital ID and as such should be hidden through irreversible cryptography and protected from unauthorized alteration. But alas, as a customer I have dealt with two organizations, which will remain anonymous, that don't follow either principle. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 12, 2004

Bad laws, bad code, bad behavior

Instead of prohibiting bad code, a better solution is to prohibit bad behavior. That could mean, for example, a general rule against fraud instead of trusting tech-impaired politicos to draw up a list of every type of possible code that could perform fraudulent acts. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 10, 2004

Cry to beat iris scanners

An MP who volunteered to take part in the UK ID card trials says the iris scanner used is uncomfortable and made his eyes water. Poor chap, you're probably thinking, but not exactly a tragedy. However, this isn't just a whinge. The water in his eyes actually stopped the scanner from working, and it seems long eyelashes and hard contact lenses could fox it too. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 10, 2004

E-Postmark May Thwart Cyber Crook

The virtual postmarks "are intended to occupy obsolete fields in the IP packet headers and are formed from the 32-bit IP addresses of the border router," Hale explained. For IP headers less than 32 bits long, the Penn State researchers propose segmenting the border router's IP address into several overlapping fragments. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 08, 2004

Benefits of BCC

Another helpful security tip from Carnegie Mellon (via CERT): know when to use BCC when sending mail. Some of you might know some users who would benefit from this idea, and it certainly would go a long way towards making foward-chains less useful to spammers. . . .

LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 07, 2004

Linux Privacy - Page 45

Enhancing Online Privacy and Anonymity with Whonix as Your Digital Shield

Explore Tor Browser 14.0 Updates: Enhanced Privacy and Security Features

Practical Tips for Protecting Email Privacy on Linux