November 2004 Archives

The Asahi Shimbun -

VIENTIANE, Laos-Of all the issues addressed by an action strategy adopted by Japan, China and South Korea here on Monday, none is more important to Tokyo than Beijing's agreeing to discuss trade and investment rules for foreign firms doing business in China, analysts say.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun agreed to hold further talks on issues such as environmental protection and peace on the Korean Peninsula, but it was the possibility of making headway on trade and investment discussions that created the biggest buzz back in Japan.

By Johna Till Johnson -

Security specialist Andreas Antonopoulos likes to talk about the Darknet - the shadowy network of malware applications that operate at a layer above (or below, depending on your perception) the traditional Internet. Encompassing everything from peer-to-peer applications to instant messaging and VoIP vulnerabilities and distributed denial-of-service attacks, the Darknet poses a greater threat to companies than is commonly assumed.

At a recent conference on IP security, Carl Landwehr, program director for the US National Science Foundation's CyberTrust program, pointed out that as of last year, CERT has ceased publishing the number of known security incidents because there are simply too many to count. The number of attacks rocketed from hundreds per year in the 1990s to 137,529 in 2003 (the last year in which attacks were reported).

By Sam Varghese -

The US-Australia free trade agreement which comes into effect in 2005 will hit Australia hardest in the area of intellectual property rights, according to three academics who have authored a book detailing the specifics of the agreement.

The book, by John A. Mathews, who holds the chair of strategic management at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney, Linda Weiss, professor of government and international relations at the University of Sydney, and Elizabeth Thurbon, a lecturer in the school of politics and international relations at the University of NSW, has not received much publicity.

p2pnet.net News:- With Alberto Gonzales of torture ‘May Be Justified’ fame as the new US attorney general, America is soon to also have a federal copyright enforcement czar to officially look after the entertainment industry’s business interests and work against p2p file sharers.

Under a “massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved during the weekend” the president can appoint a copyright law enforcement officer whose job is to coordinate law enforcement efforts aimed at stopping international copyright infringement and to oversee a federal umbrella agency responsible for administering intellectual property law, says the Hollywood Reporter.

By Drew Clark -

The omnibus appropriations bill that Congress passed late Saturday includes funding for various technology-related federal programs in fiscal 2005 but occasionally at lower funding levels than some industry players sought.

The Justice Department won $5.2 billion for the FBI, including new funds for training and information technology.

By John Farmer -

Imagine this: A guy walks into the office of a commercial real estate broker and says he wants to buy and develop a piece of commercial real estate as his new business venture.

"Fine," says the broker. "What kind of real estate did you have in mind? Office building? Strip shopping center?"

"Office building," replies the customer. "I'm all set up. I've got my office leased and set up, computer system ready, staff hired, letterhead printed, architects retained and coffee brewing. I'm ready to roll."

The United States is very pleased with the way the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum meeting in Santiago turned out, according to a senior administration official.

During a press briefing November 21, the official, who spoke on background, said: "APEC can be a powerful mechanism of addressing issues, both in the area of security and economy and trade in a way that are mutually reinforcing and complementary. ...[W]e were very pleased that the APEC leaders and the APEC process were able to come together on a number of very important initiatives that are very, sort of, concrete and will help advance the broader goal of promoting prosperity and security."

FOR the people who count in Washington, DC, Latin America is an afterthought. There are some exceptions. Mexico matters, because it is part of the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and a big source of immigration. So do war-torn, drug-soaked Colombia and Communist Cuba. But, for the most part, the region “is not relevant to the strategic interests of the US,” says Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian ambassador to Washington, now a consultant in São Paulo. The “main focus is economic.”

So it is a mild shock that George Bush's first foreign trip after his re-election will be to Chile, which had planned to vote against the abortive UN Security Council resolution authorising war in Iraq. The main event is the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation group, but Mr Bush also plans an official call on Chile's president, Ricardo Lagos, and a stop in Colombia on his way back. This is a signal of American goodwill toward Latin America. It does not portend greater commitment.

By Roger Cochetti -

The word "czar" sounds so anachronistic. It conjures up images of leaders in some long-ago hinterland, living behind moats and writing decrees on parchment.

So, in the Internet Age, how did we settle on the title of cybersecurity "czar" for the nation's top IT champion, cop, teacher and Cassandra?

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 17, 2004--Clearswift, the MIMEsweeper company and world's No. 1 in content security, is urging businesses to consider deploying a multi-layered defense against viruses following ThreatLab analysis of the Bofra variant of MyDoom.

Antivirus experts have commented on the fact that this week's Bofra worm exploits an unpatched buffer overflow vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer to infect systems. The worm uses proof-of-concept code that was posted to the Full Disclosure security list just seven days earlier, on Tuesday, Nov. 2. This in itself is noteworthy as it indicates the speed at which virus writers can create their wares.

By Scott Carlson -

Siva Vaidhyanathan, one of academe's best-known scholars of intellectual property and its role in contemporary culture, sits under a portrait of Elvis Presley painted on black velvet and talks about file sharing on campuses, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, pressures on libraries from the USA Patriot Act, and the ground that arts and culture are losing to corporations and governments in the digital age.

The file-sharing controversy, he says, offers a perfect opportunity to discuss how easily swapping songs, files, and ideas can benefit and strengthen society.

By Bruce Schneier -

Information insecurity is costing us billions. We pay for it in theft: information theft, financial theft. We pay for it in productivity loss, both when networks stop working and in the dozens of minor security inconveniences we all have to endure. We pay for it when we have to buy security products and services to reduce those other two losses. We pay for security, year after year.

The problem is that all the money we spend isn't fixing the problem. We're paying, but we still end up with insecurities.

By Rodney Gedda -

Despite concerns by local open source industry groups that an Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) will result in US-led intellectual property laws being applied here, Austrade is confident the agreement will open a $US30 billion homeland security market to Australian technology companies.

Austrade senior ICT export advisor Katharine Heather said the US government market, while not a new opportunity with a "heap of" Australian companies already selling into it, it has traditionally been a complex process.

By Jack Kapica -

Ottawa is about to blunder in cyberspace, lawyers and academics warn.

Last week, the standing committee on Canadian Heritage resubmitted its recommendations for updating the Copyright Act of 1998 and ratifying the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty. Copyright lawyers say that if the changes are made into law, you will not even be able to own your own wedding pictures or save a Web page without paying for it.

By Liam Lahey -

IBM Canada says it will expand its initial $35 million investment in IT security services announced last June to $40 million over the next five years. Moreover, Big Blue announced the opening of a new IT security operations centre at its Markham, Ont.-based headquarters on Tuesday.

Michael Small, national security practice executive for IBM Global Services Canada in Toronto, said that though more Canadian organizations regard IT security and services as a business issue and not just an IT issue, there remains a false sense of security among businesses here as to what holistic security is.

The recent official release of global figures for counterfeit items by Gieschen Consultancy states that 25,064,295 counterfeiting items were seized and sold worldwide, up 143% from September, valued at US $79,775,852.

The release also informs that the top countries which aggressively pursued counterfeiters were the United States (38%, $30,254,132), Taiwan (20%, $15,783,000), Italy (9%, $7,000,000), UK (7%, $5,198,800), Columbia (6%, $5,101,000), South Africa (6%, $4,982,900), and India (5%, $3,956,450). China ranked 8th.

By Jim Wagner -

Despite feeling safer now than a year ago, 20 percent of businesses in a network security survey of 300 IT staffers in companies with more than $30 million in annual revenues admitted to unauthorized breaches into their company networks.

The survey, conducted by security software vendor Britestream Networks and Q&A Research, reported that 76 percent of the companies surveyed feel safer than they were last year.

By Joris Evers -

Novell has launched a website devoted to "unbending the truth" about Linux in the enterprise to counter the latest salvo of Microsoft's Get the Facts campaign against open-source software.

Novell chief executive officer Jack Messman is also sending an e-mail to Novell customers. In that e-mail, Messman debunked a memo that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent to customers last week.

By Brian Krebs -

A former technology company executive charged with hiring hackers to attack a competitor's Web site has joined the FBI's most-wanted list, the latest sign of the federal law enforcement agency's growing interest in cyber-crime.

In August, a federal grand jury indicted Saad "Jay" Echouafni, 37, the former chief executive of Sudbury, Mass.-based Orbit Communication Corp., on charges of hiring the hackers to take down the Web sites of a large television services company called weaknees.com. The attacks, FBI investigators said, made the company's Web site temporarily unavailable, as well as the Web sites for Amazon.com and the Department of Homeland Security. The attacks caused more than $2 million in damage, prosecutors said.

BREA, California, November 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Apani Networks, a leading provider of in-depth security solutions for enterprise and small-to-medium business, announced today their In-depth Network Security (INS) System for safeguarding data traveling inside the network or via remote access points. The INS System uses network encryption and centralized management for authentication, access, and administration, so that businesses can seamlessly employ point-to-point security and shield critical data transmission from attacks.

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TippingPoint Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: TPTI), the leader in intrusion prevention, today announced the availability and open source release of Tomahawk(TM), the first test tool designed specifically to evaluate the unique capabilities of network-based intrusion prevention systems (IPS).

"TippingPoint is contributing Tomahawk to the public to make IPS testing easier and more affordable for end users," said TippingPoint's Chief Technology Officer Marc Willebeek-LeMair. "By enabling users to evaluate security, performance, and usability in real world environments, we believe it will accelerate the adoption of intrusion prevention and confirm its necessity in today's threat environment. We believe the benefit of open sourcing the tool to facilitate IPS testing outweighs the potential benefits of commercializing the tool."

By Sara D. Vinarov -

Over the past decade, the economy has been experiencing an accelerated shift in the importance of intangible assets, such as patents. A patent for a novel medical device, an internet-based business method or a “killer app” software tool to facilitate rational drug design in the pharmaceutical industry can form the basis for an entire business platform.

Today there are highly profitable companies whose assets consist almost exclusively of intellectual property, licensed to generate royalties at a marginal cost of production. Some established companies have discovered that licensing their portfolio of intellectual property assets can generate significant profits more easily than producing tangible goods and in some cases have modified their entire business strategy as a result.