April 2004 Archives

by James Brightman

Watch out Spain...the eyes of Bill Gates have undoubtedly shifted in your direction...

According to The Register, console gamers in Spain can now mod their systems legally. A games retailer in Barcelona -- Innovagames -- was charged by the Guardia Civil with offering customers "alteration of PlayStation 2 and Xbox games consoles to allow them to read games from other parts of the world or downloaded directly from the Internet... by carrying out modification of their components as per diagrams found on the premises."

Despite the fact that the Spanish judge noted that these mods "might constitute a crime against the intellectual property of the equipment manufacturers," he discovered a legal loophole that essentially forced him to reject the case, thereby making the console mods legal.

By Glen Trematore

Every day we are bombarded with the fact that we are at war, and I am not talking about the battlefields in Iraq. The battle I speak of has to do with intellectual property, personal identity theft, and Internet security. Have you or someone you know had a computer attacked and paralyzed by one of the "worms" we hear about so often? Have you ever opened an email you didn't recognize? I have. What a nightmare! If you own or work on a computer, you are at war.

When you think of information technology (IT) security, what are the first names that come to mind? Perhaps it's Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC) or Network Associates (NYSE: NET). These are both large companies, recognized as leaders in this field.

By Michael Kanellos and Charles Cooper Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Paul Kocher, president and chief scientist of Cryptography Research, came to prominence in the industry by breaking things.

In 1998, the company cracked security on smart cards by monitoring how much power their internal microprocessors used. Kocher also came up with the software inside Deep Crack, a machine tailored to crack encrypted documents.

BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Police caught some underwear smugglers with their pants down in Dongguan last week.

In a joint action, law enforcement personnel from Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Security and the Administration of Industry and Commerce seized more than 30,000 fake sets of underwear labelled with the famous brand name of "Montagut".

It is the biggest such seizure in Guangdong Province this year.

By Matthew Aslett

Litigious Unix vendor SCO Group Inc will not change its methods or management despite pressure from disgruntled investor BayStar Capital Management LLC.

BayStar wrote to Lindon, Utah-based SCO on April 15 asking for a refund of its $20m investment, changes to the company's management team, and a more professional approach to its intellectual property claims against Linux.

In response SCO said it has no intention of returning the $20m, changing its management, or toning down its public statements about claims that the Linux operating system contains its intellectual property.

Contributed by: ByteEnable

WASHINGTON, D.C. - David M. Israelite, Chairman of the Justice Department’s Intellectual Property Task Force, have announced the names of those who will join him in serving on the task force, which was created by Attorney General John Ashcroft to examine all aspects of how the Department of Justice handles intellectual property issues and to develop recommendations for future efforts.

Together with David Israelite, who serves as Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to the Attorney General, the task force will include:
Daniel J. Bryant, Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy; Jack Goldsmith, Assistant Attorney General for Legal Counsel; Peter D. Keisler, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division; Christopher Wray, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division; R. Hewitt Pate, Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division; William Moschella, Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs; Paul Clement, Principal Deputy Solicitor General;
Makan Delrahim, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division; Valerie Caprioni, General Counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation;
Debra W. Yang, United States Attorney for the Central District of California; and Kevin V. Ryan, United States Attorney for the Northern District of California.

By Grant Gross, IDG News Service

Operation conducted in 27 U.S. states and 10 other countries, including France, Germany, Israel, Singapore, Sweden and the U.K.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and law enforcement officials from 10 other nations seized more than 200 computers this week in an Internet piracy sweep.

The law enforcement agencies conducted 120 searches across the globe starting Wednesday morning in an effort to break up what the DOJ called "some of the most well-known and prolific online piracy organizations." Close to 100 people are now under investigation after the sweeps, and as the investigations continue, additional targets will be pursued, according to the DOJ.

By Richard Shim CNET News.com

The U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade announced steps toward resolving several commercial issues including the development of a wireless networking security standard and the enforcement of intellectual property rights.

As previously reported, the JCCT held a briefing Wednesday in Washington, D.C., outlining actions that the U.S. and Chinese governments would take to deal with growing concerns about trade relations. The outline reached into several industries from agriculture to high tech. Various working groups will be formed under the commission to bring together trade, judicial and law enforcement groups from the two nations.

MEMPHIS, Tenn., April 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Los Angeles Police
Department officials have pledged to investigate any and all forms of piracy,
including the anti-camcorder law that went into affect on Jan. 1, 2004. The
April 14 announcement of the department's first arrest prompted Chilmark
Entertainment Group (OTC Pink Sheets: CMKK - News) CEO Steve Strauss to
declare that the time is right for the entertainment industry to employ
Chilmark Security LLC's Piracy Blocker.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) estimates that the U.S.
motion picture industry loses in excess of $3 billion in potential revenue
each year due to piracy. Although the arrest gives a clear signal to movie
pirates that such action will not be tolerated, prevention currently relies on
the work of theater employees to provide surveillance.

By Gail Repsher Emery

The United States fell from third to sixth place in an annual global survey of nations’ e-readiness, largely because other countries had greater adoption of broadband Internet access, according to survey authors IBM Corp. and the Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd.

Scandinavian nations dominated the top ranks of the survey, which was published April 19. Denmark was No. 1, followed in order by the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Finland.

The e-readiness measure shows how amenable a market is to Internet-based opportunities. It takes into account:

By Mike Clendenin and Patrick Mannion

TAIPEI, Taiwan — China and the United States will square off in Washington on Wednesday (April 21) for the annual U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, a forum where officials haggle over trade disputes and promote commercial agendas.

For the technology community, this week's meeting has taken on added importance in light of recent clashes between the trading partners over three key issues: China's 17 percent value-added tax (VAT) on imported semiconductors, its proprietary wireless-networking encryption standard and lagging intellectual-property (IP) protection.

Source: www.ameinfo.com

Business Software Alliance, the world's foremost organization dedicated to promoting a safe and legal digital world, is currently exhibiting at GITEX Saudi Arabia 2004 to help promote understanding and compliance with Saudi Arabia's recently implemented Intellectual Property Regulations (IPR).

Costing the global IT industry $13 billion last year alone, strong intellectual property protection is crucial for the successful future of technology and as such BSA works alongside governments to issue, amend and regulate IPR laws, and to train enforcement taskforce teams.

By A. José Cortina, for Local Tech Wire

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK - On March 9, 2004, the Parliament of the European Union passed the Directive on Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights. Organizations such as the Business Software Alliance and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry lobbied for the Directive, which was guided through Parliament by MEP Janelly Fourtou, the wife of the CEO of the media company Vivendi Universal, in what many argued to be a substantial conflict of interest.

There have been a number of articles written about the dire consequences that will result from this Directive, but for now all such consequences are speculative, and the speculation as to them may evidence a lack of understanding of the Directive itself.

Alcatel (www.alcatel.com) has added wireless local area network (WLAN) products to its range of LAN and Internet Protocol (IP) switches in Malaysia.

This allowed the company to deliver the industry’s most comprehensive, standards-based wired and wireless converged mobility solutions, it claimed.

Alcatel business development manager (enterprise solutions division, South-East Asia), Kenny Ng, said the new WLAN offerings were armed with features to protect users from the security threats faced by mobile users.

by Bruce Schneier Founder and CTO
Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.
schneier@counterpane.com

In this issue:
National ID Cards
TSA-Approved Locks
Crypto-Gram Reprints
Stealing an Election
Counterpane News
Security Notes from All Over:
Man-in-the-Middle Attack
BeepCard
Bluetooth Privacy Hack
News
Virus Wars
Comments from Readers

by Robin J. Moody

In years past, counterfeit goods were easy to spot. They were typically shoddy and sold in limited venues, such as open-air markets.

These days, companies like Beaverton-based Nike Inc. have seen an alarming trend toward higher-quality counterfeits that fool even legitimate emporiums.

"The goods have improved due to technological advances," said Dave Simpson, Nike's global director of security and brand protection. "What we are seeing now is the product is ending up with legitimate retailers, and that can be confusing to customers. It's having an effect on our business partners and retailers we sell to."

In ancient China, the secret of silk making was jealously guarded, and the punishment for exporting silkworms was death. Centuries later, today's businesses, especially fast-moving IT and networking companies, have information, knowledge and technologies that are critical to their profitability and even their survival. Yet all too often, top executives fail to take the right steps to identify and protect confidential information, especially trade secrets.

What constitutes a trade secret? It can be any information that derives independent economic value from not being generally known or readily ascertainable. A trade secret must be both a secret and something that generates revenue.

Counterfeit copies are on sale even before films are released

RUTH PARKINSON, an executive director of Buena Vista, has absolute proof that the movies her Hollywood studio released last year were massive hits in the UK. They were really big at the box office but they were also runaway successes in the piracy stakes.

“We have had a shocker of a year,” admits Parkinson. In a rather back-handed compliment, Buena Vista films accounted for five of the top titles among pirated copies seized by FACT — the Federation Against Copyright Theft.

By Michael Martin Network World Canada

Cisco Systems has continued its recent security push with several new products designed to better-protect Cisco networks and an acquisition geared towards enhancing the company's SSL-based remote access VPN equipment.

The security enhancements include new features in Cisco IOS in addition to the new products.

IOS Software Release 12.3T includes the Cisco IP Source Tracker, a "transparent" firewall and support for extended SMTP.