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The
weekly newsletter for the Fed II game by ibgames EARTHDATE: January 22, 2006 OFFICIAL
NEWS |
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The
weekly newsletter for the Fed II game by ibgames EARTHDATE: January 22, 2006 OFFICIAL
NEWS |
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 WINDING DOWN An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news by Alan Lenton My faith in the impartiality of British Justice was restored this week when a hitman was jailed for failure to carry out the contract he was paid for! Honest, you can read about it at the URL in the Scanner section. I was also amazed to learn that the US government acts as the world's largest re-insurer, reimbursing nearly 90 per cent of insurance loses resulting from acts of terrorism. After the total losses reach 100 billion, it reimburses the whole loss. Look up the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act on your favourite search engine if you want to know more - it's just been extended by Congress. And how do you defeat electronic tagging that makes sure you can't leave the house? One enterprising offender in Israel came up with a low tech solution - not paying his phone bill until the phone company cut him off. Once that happened the tag monitor could no longer phone in to report that he had left the defined area. Surprising how easy it is to defeat ill-thought out hi-tech solutions, isn't it. Maybe they should just use Google Maps, instead...
More details are gradually emerging about the tax credit fraud perpetrated on the UK's Inland Revenue and Customs. I covered the basics in issue 184, shortly before Christmas - essentially crooks ripped off the IDs of staff at the Department of Work and Pensions, and used the IDs to file false tax credit claims via the revenue's web portal. It now transpires that the staff at Network Rail (a quasi-government body) were also victims of the scammers. They too had their IDs used in the scam. The quaintly named 'Paymaster General' (a government minister), Dawn Primarolo, announced in Parliament that losses had been 'limited' to a mere 2.7 million UK pounds (US$4.6 million). The Treasury, we are given to understand, considers the fact that the fraud was spotted shows how robust the tax system is! www.computing.co.uk/2148829 Still on this side of the pond, the whole patent issue has been re-opened by the EU's Internal Markets Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, who has launched a public consultation on patent policy. McCreevy is notorious for his toadying to big business and their demands for a US style patent policy. A former Eire finance minister, he was instrumental in the policy of cutting taxes for overseas companies that lies at the heart of Eire's economic growth over the last few decades. Last time round the patent proposals were soundly defeated by the EU Parliament. Looks like another struggle is about to start. http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/ethI0FypUC0FrX0EAsz0Ac Well here we are at the end of the third week of 2006, and I have in front of me another Windows security flaw - the third this year. This one concerns a method by which hackers can get into Windows 2000 and XP machines when they are starting up, using the wireless connections. Microsoft were told about this last October, and have confirmed the security hole exists, but they obviously don't think it's important because they don't plan to fix it until the next service packs are issued. Interestingly enough, Windows 2000 is not getting another service pack at all, and XP's next service pack, SP3, is not due until late 2007. So much for Microsoft's ongoing focus on security. http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/ethI0FypUC0FrX0EAs70AV Still on Windows and security, I think this must be a first. Remember Windows Vista? You know the new version that's not coming out until the end of this year? Yes, that one. Microsoft have issued a security patch for it! This has to be a first - a security patch issued nearly a year before it goes on sale. I guess they must be getting in practice ready for when Vista is launched! Nice one, Bill. http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?c=1222908-7863277&brand=techrepublic&ds=5&fs=0 In an interesting move, the UK's National Consumer Council (NCC) has called for new laws to protect consumers against the Digital Rights Management (DRM) used by the software industry. In addition to restrictions imposed by the media companies, the NCC pointed out that buyers are subject to unfair contracts, lack of information, and security risks to their own equipment. It also noted that consumers are also losing privacy rights because of the information required to enforce contracts. It's interesting that the situation has reached such a pitch that even non-technical bodies like the NCC are starting to intervene and argue for legislation to protect consumers, something that has been lacking in the past. Hopefully it's just the start of a movement to restore consumer rights in the hi-tech arena. http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/ethI0FypUC0FrX0EAsd0AG And talking of DRM, here is an interesting coda to the Sony Rootkit affair. Recent research suggests that 350,000 networks have computers infected with Sony's Rootkit. While this is down from the 570,000 networks tracked a month earlier, it is still an enormous number, and, apparently, includes a significant number of government and military networks. The figures are for networks, not computers, which is a consequence of the very clever way researcher, Dan Kaminsky, built up the information. It seems highly likely that the affected networks have more than one infected computer on them, meaning that there are still potentially millions of infected computers out there. Not a pleasant thought. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/16/sony_bmg_rootkit_still_widespread/ According to the FBI, dealing with spyware, PC theft, viruses, and the like is costing US businesses a massive US$67.2 billion a year. Looking at the methodology of the survey, I would think this is a fairly conservative estimate, even in its own terms. It's also interesting that the survey doesn't cover the full cost of staff, hardware, software and time used for preventative measures, just the reactive cost of dealing with security breaches. Furthermore it only includes business, not individuals. What it does also deal with, which is usually glossed over, is the fact that 44 per cent of the organisations responding to the survey admitted to security incidents involving staff. Internal incidents are much more likely to be hushed up than external incidents. Whatever way you look at it, it's a massive amount of money, and eventually it's the consumers or the tax payers who are going to foot the bill. So maybe hackers aren't quite the heroic figures that some try to make out, after all... http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?c=1244340-7863277&brand=techrepublic&ds=5&fs=0 Google is in the limelight again. This time it's over its decision to 'vigorously' oppose a government subpoena to turn over records of search enquiries by millions of its users. That's good. Very good. But why is it holding all this dangerous private material in the first case? There is no legal requirement for it to do so, and as long as it holds these vast amounts of privacy threatening material, then the bureaucrats and lawyers will cast their greedy eyes over it and try to get their hands on it. As an interesting footnote, readers might like to know that a spokesman from the US Justice department said that Yahoo, MSN, and America Online had all complied with requests for similar search data. If you are one of their customers, you might like to have word with them about this betrayal of your privacy. http://www.physorg.com/news10085.html
Hitman jailed for lack
of death Business IT failing
user expectations GPL version 3 draws
early praise Land Registry surveys
property web portal FAT fight far from
finished New delay to gun
register Internet Explorer Sucks Jobcentre Plus on
track, says DWP minister
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan. Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html. |
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