NewsScan Daily, 26 August 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 26 August 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        Organized Crime Behind Sobig Mess?
        More Theories About Sobig Vandal's Motivation
        New Zealand Spammer 'Outed' -- Says He'll Give It Up
        MIT's Opencourseware Experiment
        Free Speech Trumped by Trade Secrets
        A Society in Search of Itself

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Worth Thinking About: Your Father
        New Dispatch From Maelstrom

ORGANIZED CRIME BEHIND SOBIG MESS?
Antivirus specialist Peter Simpson warns that the Sobig.F virus is the 
latest in a series of attempts on the part of organized crime to shift some 
of their illicit activities online. "Sobig smashed all the records in terms 
of pure numbers, but that's not nearly the whole story. This is the sixth 
in a series of controlled experiments. This isn't about some kiddy writing 
viruses in his bedroom -- this is really a very sophisticated example of 
organized crime," says Simpson, a manager at Clearswift's ThreatLab. 
Simpson explained that the purpose of a virus such as Sobig isn't to cause 
damage, but to gain control of the machine in order to access information 
such as financial details for the purpose of fraud. It also comes in handy 
for disguising the source of spam by hijacking the victim's machine and 
identity. "The real question here has to be about the motives of the virus 
writer. This isn't just about writing a virus that will spread rapidly and 
break records; the motives here are very different and are clearly 
criminal. It's all about the hidden agenda." (ZDNet/Silicon.com 25 Aug 2003)
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5067494.html

MORE THEORIES ABOUT SOBIG VANDAL'S MOTIVATION
Is money the real motivation for the spread of the Sobig virus? Sobig is 
transmitted as an e-mail attachment and is the sixth variant of the 
malicious code by an unknown attacker. Mikko H. Hypponen, director of 
antivirus research at F-Secure corporation in Finland says: "I think the 
motivation is clear: it's money. Behind Sobig we have a group of hackers 
who have a budget and money." Computer security expert Russ Cooper suggests 
that the vandal is acting out comic book fantasies: "You can liken this guy 
to Lex Luthor and we're all Supermen. Luckily, we've been able to get the 
kryptonite from around our necks each time so far." One popular theory is 
that Sobig is the work of an e-mail spammer who is aggressively trying to 
build a clandestine infrastructure for blitzing the Internet with junk 
e-mail. Antivirus software researcher Joe Hartman of TrendMicro says, "If 
machines remain infected they could be used in any kind of attack. The 
question we ask ourselves is, What is he trying to achieve? We don't think 
it's planned for a specific threat, rather its more likely a money-making 
spam scheme." And Bruce Hughes of Trusecure points out: "There is some 
evidence that he's been tied in with spammers." Sobig spreads further only 
when a computer user selects the attached program that then secretly mails 
itself to e-mail addresses stored in the user's computer. The Computer 
Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University says, "Our current 
advice is: Don't open an attachment unless you are expecting one." (New 
York Times 26 Aug 2003)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/08/26/technology/26VIRU.html

NEW ZEALAND SPAMMER 'OUTED' -- SAYS HE'LL GIVE IT UP
Shane Atkinson, a New Zealand man who was recently identified in a local 
newspaper as a major spammer, says he's giving up his business after being 
inundated with threatening phone calls and having his personal information 
posted on the Net. And while vigilantes may rejoice at such intimidation 
methods, industry analysts says the potential for wrongful targeting is too 
great and, in any event, there's always a steady supply of replacements. 
"You'll put a dent in it but somebody else will be there to take his 
place," says Gartner research director Maurene Caplan Grey. "The spam kings 
know how to get around the system. The only ones you'll frighten are the 
occasional spammers trying to make a few extra bucks this weekend." 
According to a recent estimate, about 200 spammers are responsible for 90% 
of the spam-mail sent out globally. Meanwhile, it's not just the spammers 
who profit from their activities; other beneficiaries include the providers 
of e-mail addresses, suppliers of spamming software, offshore Internet 
service providers and even legitimate spam-filtering software vendors. 
(TechNewsWorld/E-Commerce Times 25 Aug 2003)
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/31421.html

MIT'S OPENCOURSEWARE EXPERIMENT
MIT caught distance educators by surprise in April 2001 when it announced 
plans to post the content of some 2,000 classes on the Web, saying it hoped 
to spur a worldwide movement among educators to share knowledge and improve 
teaching methods. In a world where most institutions are seeking to squeeze 
a few extra bucks from their Internet activities, here was a preeminent 
university willing to give it all away for free. "It's a profoundly simple 
idea that was not intuitive," says Anne Margulies, the former Harvard 
assistant provost and executive director of information systems who now 
heads up the MIT OpenCourseWare project. "At the time, the world was 
clamping down on information, limiting it to those who could pay for it." 
In September, MIT will officially launch OpenCourseWare with 500 courses, 
but during the past year's beta phase, it's already learned a few lessons, 
such as how do you discourage Third World scam artists from hawking MIT 
degrees as if they were Rolex knock-offs? Despite these problems, the test 
was hailed a success, and OpenCourseWare is now set to expand its outreach 
by offering translations of 25 courses into Spanish and Portuguese, 
courtesy of Universia, a Madrid-based consortium of universities. Similar 
offers from the Middle East, the Ukraine and Mongolia are under 
consideration. The real test, however, will be whether the project will 
sprout the online communities needed to support individual courses. "We'd 
like to see self-managed OpenCourseWare communities," says Margulies. "Our 
vision is to have this open source software on the site, as well as 
information that helps people build a learning community, whether it's in 
Namibia, Thailand, whatever." (Wired.com Sep 2003)
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/mit.html

FREE SPEECH TRUMPED BY TRADE SECRETS
The California Supreme Court has ruled Monday that courts may block 
Internet users from posting computer code that could be used to illegally 
copy DVD movies if the code revealed legitimate trade secrets online. 
Justice Janice Rogers Brown, in reversing a lower court ruling on a 7-0 
vote, said the California Supreme Court's action "does not violate the free 
speech clauses of the United States and California constitutions." 
Companies such as Boeing, Ford and AOL Time Warner filed briefs urging the 
justices to side with the plaintiff, which had argued that trade secret 
protections trump First Amendment speech protections. (AP/San Jose Mercury 
News 25 Aug 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6614893.htm

A SOCIETY IN SEARCH OF ITSELF
Google was founded in 1998 by Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin 
and since that time has gone on to become the dominant Internet search 
engine: Danny Sullivan of the Search Engine Watch newsletter says that 
Google represents 75% of all searches: "It's gotten to the point where 
people think if it's not in Google, it doesn't exist." Google now offers 
such services as comparison shopping, news, and weblogs. It answers 200 
million search requests a day in 88 languages and indexes 3.1 billion Web 
pages. And what about new competition (from Yahoo, Overture, and others)? 
Larry Page says: "Search is going to get a lot more interesting. And that's 
all to the good. We're a society that's used to losing information to new 
generations. Now more than ever, search is really important." (USA Today 26 
Aug 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-08-25-google_x.htm

*****

FLASH CARD
      "Them that kills their fathers is a vain lot surely." (John 
Millington Synge, in "Playboy of the Western World")

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: YOUR FATHER
      Tom Brokaw was surprised and humbled by the response he received from 
his book about the generation of Americans who grew up during the 
depression and fought in World War II ("The Greatest Generation"):
      "The Greatest Generation seems to have inspired within many families, 
communities, schools, and even corners of the political arena a 
reevaluation of the past, and a dialogue about the core values of that time 
and of the present.
      "Children and grandchildren of the Greatest Generation are telling me 
they now understand the values reflected in the lives of the people they 
know from the World War II era, values that to many may have seemed a 
little tiresome in these more permissive times -- the older generation's 
strict code of conduct and discipline; their frugality; and their 
expectation that once the teenage years were over, the serious grown-up 
years would begin.
      "My favorite reaction to The Greatest Generation, however, is 
expressed to me in unexpected moments -- on a ski slope, in an airport, on 
a street in New York, in the Pentagon. Men about my age -- cops, business 
executives, military men, construction workers -- grab my hand, look me in 
the eye, and say, 'I read your book. Thank you for helping me understand my 
father.' Then they turn and walk away."
                                  ***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385334621/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections" 
--or look for it in your favorite library. [We donate all revenue from our 
book recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

NEW DISPATCH FROM MAELSTROM
      Here's a new dispatch from our hacker friend "maelstrom," in reply to 
reader comments on maelstrom's "Patch Your Windows" memo 
(http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&id=9033).
                       ****
      For over ten years I and many other individuals and groups have been 
harping on Microsoft to make Windows products "secure." So what does 
Microsoft do? It releases products like Windows XP with marketing language 
that states it is the "most secure operating system ever." Even though MS 
is currently responding to pressure by creating new security divisions 
in-house (such as the Security Business Unit), they will never do what they 
really *need* to do -- a complete line-by-line review of their source code. 
So get over it, people. If you want the simplicity of an integrated 
operating system with colorful user interfaces and lots of bells and 
whistles, you'll just have to put up with Windows' security holes.
      Although I did not make it clear in my last message, I meant that 
patching the operating system is only the first line of defense. Most 
people put in a firewall first and ignore the reason they need a firewall 
(holes in the operating system). Of course there are configuration changes 
you can make that will help secure Windows, but how many businesses have 
the wherewithal to be able to do that? If you want a really "secure" 
operating system, buy a Mac with OSX or OpenBSD. (The new Mac OSX is based 
on FreeBSD which is somewhat similar to OpenBSD.) OpenBSD has only had one 
security hole in its default installation in SEVEN YEARS.
      A long time ago we didn't lock our front doors when we went out. Then 
people got burglarized and we locked our doors. A long time ago we didn't 
lock our cars and sometimes left the keys in the ignition. Cars were 
stolen, so we locked our cars and took the keys with us. A long time ago we 
didn't have to worry about our home computers being hacked. Thanks to 
broadband connections, we now need to secure our home PCs because hackers 
will use home computers as an attack base against corporate and military 
networks... and the home users are not even aware of the fact that their 
computers are involved. These are the people who have no idea that their 
systems need patching.
      As the recent flood of worms indicate, unpatched Windows systems are 
the weakest link in the security of home computers, small business 
networks, corporate networks, and unclassified military networks. So a 
patch sometimes won't install or causes other problems -- does that justify 
not doing it? If your front door key sometimes sticks and you have to 
jiggle it to get it to turn the lock, would you just say "The heck with it" 
and leave the door open? I don't think so.
      As for hackers... all of us have our motives for hacking. Some do it 
to be purely malicious and to gain notoriety. Others do it out of a sense 
of altruism. As far as I'm concerned, I am trying to teach people about 
computer security through example. If I find a gaping hole in a network, I 
advise the administrators and anyone else who will listen. I have found Web 
sites with unrestricted access to credit card numbers and names. When I 
told the administrators about the problem, they simply refused to listen to me.
      Not all hackers are social misfits, either. I am married and have 
been for many years. I have a daughter (who hates computers). I lecture for 
a masters degree program in information security. I don't take drugs, 
rarely drink, don't make disparaging remarks about people I don't 
personally know, and would love to spend six months volunteering for 
Medicins Sans Frontieres (www.msf.org). Just because I have a deep 
understanding of computer technology doesn't mean I have purple hair, 
pierced nipples, and wear my pants so low that my underwear shows.
      I would be more than happy to enter into communications with any 
reader of NewsScan who wants to know more about hacking and computer 
security. My email address is maelstrom <at> pobox.com.

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