Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Headlines and Resources


Happy Reading for today



<Karen>


French Embassy Web site for Libya said to be serving up malware
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/121307-libya-site-malware.html
The French Embassy Web site for Libya has been compromised and is
serving up malware to visitors, according to McAfee.
McAfee researcher Francois Paget discovered Thursday and the company
says it has reported its findings to the French government. The site has
been attacked using an iFrame exploit that inserts an invisible frame in
the page in order to re-direct some Web browser connections to another
location, which serves up a "downloader," code that attempts to reside
on the victim machine. If the downloader is successful, the attacker can
then remotely attempt to download other malware, "typically a bot or a
password-stealing Trojan," says Dave Marcus, McAfee security researcher
and communications manager.


2.
Test feds' info security savvy, report suggests
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151066-1.html
A majority of federal workers continue to violate information security
policies despite being aware of threats to agency systems and knowing
the importance of following data security policies, a survey by
SecureInfo found.


3.
Attackers Targeting Zero-Day Access Flaw
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2234056,00.asp
Attackers are going after Microsoft Office Access databases, US-CERT
warned earlier in the week, taking advantage of an unpatched stack
buffer overflow to deliver malicious databases that are leading to
system hijacking in an undetermined number of cases.

4.
Britain teams bound for Beijing put on alert as hackers spark web of intrigue
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article3048428.ece
Computer hackers in China have broken into the information databases of
the governing bodies of two British Olympic sports and, The Times can
reveal, the Olympic family in the UK has been alerted that, with the
Beijing Games less than eight months away, those threatening their
security may be doing so to gain an illegal competitive advantage.

5.
SWAT team goes to wrong home in 911 scam
http://www.montereyherald.com/ci_7719737
It turned out the 15-year-old boy in the apartment had been "chatting"
on his computer with someone claiming to be a young man from Chicago.
The person apparently used software or an Internet calling system to
generate a phony call to Monterey County's 911 dispatchers, making them
believe the call really came from the boy in Salinas.
Teen had no idea

6.
Judge: Man can't be forced to divulge encryption passphrase
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9834495-38.html
A federal judge in Vermont has ruled that prosecutors can't force a
criminal defendant accused of having illegal images on his hard drive to
divulge his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) passphrase.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with
transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border
has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to
prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid
self-incrimination.

7.
Ohio Elections Official Calls Machines Flawed
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/us/15ohio.html
CINCINNATI - All five voting systems used in Ohio, a state whose
electoral votes narrowly swung two elections toward President Bush, have
critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general
election, a report commissioned by the states top elections official has
found.
It was worse than I anticipated, the official, Secretary of State
Jennifer Brunner, said of the report. I had hoped that perhaps one
system would test superior to the others.
At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks
to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote
counts into machines. At boards of election, they were able to introduce
malignant software into servers.

Report Election Problems

Vote: Election Education and Fraud

Pew Research Center Topics: Publications on Election '08
Compilation of backgrounders, analysis, and other publications related to the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Some of the topics include debates, political endorsements, presidential primaries, religion, specific candidates, news coverage, and candidate websites. From the Pew Research Center.
http://pewresearch.org/topics/election'08/


8.
Botnets linked to political hacking in Russia
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/14/botnet_hacktivism/
Security researcher Jose Nazario has uncovered circumstantial evidence
of the use of botnets in politically-motivated denial of service
attacks.
Political events in the wider world are sometimes accompanied by hacking
incidents in cyberspace, such as defacements and the like. Nobody paid
much attention to the issue until the Estonian DDoS events of earlier
this year when government and commercial sites in the small Baltic
country were taken offline for days in April amid a row with Russia
about relocation of a Soviet-era memorial to fallen soldiers and war
graves.
Botnets orchestrated by Russian hackers are reckoned to have been used
to fire up the Estonian attacks. Involvement of elements from the
Russian government is suspected by some, though there's nothing by way
of evidence that the Kremlin had a hand in the assaults.

9.
Computer hackers hit into UM-Flint system
http://www.mlive.com/news/flintjournal/index.ssf?/base/news-47/119769647063950.xml&coll=5
FLINT - Computer users on the campus of the University of Michigan-Flint
have been told to consider changing their passwords after hackers broke
into several servers recently.
University computer technicians from the Flint and Ann Arbor campuses
are working with the Flint office of the FBI to determine who was
responsible for the unauthorized access.
The hack was discovered Dec. 6 and university officials said it is still
unknown what data might have been compromised.


10.
Admin Faces Prison for Trying to Axe California Power Grid
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140587-c,hackers/article.html
A California man pleaded guilty Friday to charges that he shut down the
data center responsible for managing the state's electrical supply.

11.
LSU's Emergency-Notification System Malfunctioned
Just hours after two graduate students at Louisiana State University were shot to death Thursday night in a campus apartment building, LSU officials used their new emergency-notification system to send text messages to about 8,400 students who had signed up for the service. Because of a technical glitch, however, an undetermined number of those messages never arrived. "Some folks who are part of that system did not receive a notification by that particular means," said Sean C. O'Keefe, the chancellor, at a Webcast news conference on Friday morning. "We notified and consulted with the provider of that particular service at about 2 o'clock this morning and worked through a series of issues there. There are some technical challenges that they obviously encountered." LSU officials did not know how many of the registered users failed to receive the message, Mr. O'Keefe said. But he noted that the university also sent e-mail notifications to everyone with a campus e-mail address, as well as voice-mail messages to those who had signed up for that. Additionally, officials went door-to-door notifying residents of the apartment complex, which is reserved for graduate students and married students. Stuart Watkins, a sophomore who is a member of the student government, said in an interview today that he had never received the emergency text message, despite having signed up for the service. He added that after asking around, "I haven't spoken to anyone who did receive the text message." "They did a big thing trying to get as many students as they could to sign up for it" in the spring, when the service was introduced, said Mr. Watkins. "This is a safety precaution that LSU was taking, and it didn't work." Brian Nichols, chief IT-security and policy officer at the university, declined to answer questions about the emergency-notification service, referring a reporter to the public-relations office. An official there also declined to elaborate. An announcement on LSU's Web site notes that the service is provided by ClearTXT. Officials of that company did not return calls for comment. --Jeffrey R. Young

Find Security information, tools, and resources on the Educational CyberplayGround.
SECURITY IN A DISASTER: Command and Control Communications always breaks down;  "Hello? Hello, Dimitri? Listen, I can't hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?

12.
HealthyToys.org: The Consumer Action Guide to Toxic Chemicals in Toys
Test results released in December 2007 for toxic chemicals in "over 1,200 toys and children's products." Search by product name, or browse by brand or toy type. Listings include general information (such as country of manufacture), and levels of lead, cadmium, chlorine/PVC, arsenic, and mercury. Also includes a FAQ, background on the chemicals, and a place to submit suggestions for other toys to be tested. From the Ecology Center (Michigan), with the Washington Toxics Coalition. http://www.healthytoys.org

13.
Michael Geist a technology-law scholar in Canada, has been vigorously campaigning against a proposed copyright reform bill via YouTube and Facebook. The measure, he warns the public, would mirror the controversial U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act by restricting the use of digital works, and making it illegal to bypass copyright protection devices on digital books, recordings, and other material. In a video he posted on YouTube this month, he urges people to write letters to government officials, university presidents, and media outlets to denounce the copyright proposal. Mr. Geist also started a Facebook page called Fair Copyright, which has signed up over 2,000 people. Now it appears that his offensive may be working. Mr. Geist, research chairman of Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, wrote on his blog Thursday that the Canadian government has decided to hold off introducing the bill at least until late January. "An astonishing number of people have voiced their concern over the past two weeks and the government seems to have listened. Now it must act by openly consulting and engaging with a country that genuinely cares about copyright," Mr. Geist wrote. ---Andrea L. Foster

example:
Video Humor
> Looks like you can still view it at
> http://www.metacafe.com/watch/958560/here_comes_another_bubble/
> ...at least for now...

And here's the update on why it got yanked at YouTube:
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/12/copyright-claim.html

Background History - Plagiarism in Dylan, or a Cultural Collage?

US Copyright Law - Do's and Don'ts
The video uses 400 cuts from 27 different Disney films to mock copyright law as overly protective of the interests of copyright owners -- Disney among them. Eric Faden, an assistant professor of English and film studies at Bucknell University, who produced the video with help from seven of his students, said it took eight months to make.

14.
Social Explorer
This site "provides easy access to demographic information about the United States, from 1940 to 2000," by featuring "thousands of maps and hundreds of reports with thousands of variables." Includes interactive census maps (showing population, age, race, occupation, and other factors) and related reports. Additional features are available for a fee.
http://socialexplorer.com/

15.
ReadThisToMe.org
Site for this "free reading service for blind and low-vision people, powered by volunteers and Internet collaboration. ... [It] allows blind and low-vision people (clients) to have printed documents read to them over the phone. All a person needs is a phone line and a fax machine (no computer is required)." Includes a FAQ and details about volunteering.
http://readthistome.org/

16.
Special Needs and 508 compliance Guidelines for Web Sites
Find Special Needs Guidlines for Gifted, Deaf, Autisim, ADD, ADHD, LD, Dyslexia and 508 Compliance assitive Technology accommodations and modifications in testing situations.
Special Education Links
SPECIAL NEEDS FOR THE GIFTED CHILDREN  and the GIFTED STUDENT
SPECIAL NEEDS ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY
FOR STUDENTS WITH IEPs AND /OR 504 PLANS
are allowed to use their accommodations and modifications in testing situations. Deaf, Autisim, ADD, ADHD, LD, Dyslexia, learning different, learning disabled, special education Know Your Rights and Sue for Assistive Technology

17.

DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries
http://www.delos.info/
Welcome to the DELOS Network of Excellence
DELOS is a Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries
partially funded by the European Commission in the
frame of the Information Society Technologies
Programme (IST). The main objectives of DELOS
are research, whose results are in the public domain,
and technology transfer, through cooperation
agreements with interested parties.


Six areas of emerging technology that
will impact higher education within three adoption horizons
over the next one to five years. To identify these areas, the project
draws on an ongoing conversation among knowledgeable persons
 in the fields of business, industry, and education; on published
resources, current research and practice; and on the expertise of the
NMC and ELI communities.
The Horizon ProjectCall to Scholarship - 2007-8
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/Horizon-Project-Call-to-Scholarship.pdf

18.
Google Debuts Knowledge Project
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7144970.stm

19.
Rose-Colored Glasses on China?
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/07/china
With millions of students who want an American-style education (or
an American diploma), China is a very attractive market for
American colleges and universities that want to offer full degree
programs abroad. Some institutions have been there for a long time
-- Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University this year marked
the 20th anniversary of their joint degrees in international
relations. New programs keep being announced. The State University
of New York at Stony Brook announced a program this year. Kaplan
Inc., the for-profit higher education company, announced a major
expansion of its China campuses just last week.

20.
Academic Freedom and Evolution
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/10/evolution
Opponents of evolution have of late been trying to frame their
arguments as being about academic freedom and free expression. As a
result, the anti-evolution Discovery Institute is ecstatic over the
recent discovery of e-mail messages among professors at Iowa State
University criticizing the views of a pro-intelligent design
professor whose tenure bid was denied. "Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez and
Academic Persecution" is the title of the institute's Web page
about the case. (Iowa State says that the professor's views on
evolution were not a decisive factor in his dismissal.)

21.
What TO DO ABOUT CYBERBULLIES - ANSWERS

When the Bullies Turned Faceless
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/fashion/16meangirls.html
Other children are afraid of becoming the next victim.
"Once you're on MySpace, you're trapped," said Jake Dobson, 12, a
seventh grader at West Middle School. "You spend all your time
online just trying to keep the negative stuff about you from
spreading."
Megan, who had escaped the old cliques, retained her old MySpace
page. "She technically wasn't old enough, because you have to be
14," Ms. Meier said. "But I was the only one who knew the password.
I read every message she received or sent. I thought I could keep
it safe, and Megan could meet some friends."
But controlling the Web can be almost impossible, experts on
children say, and most adolescents are simply not mature enough to
handle the virtual world and its anonymous attacks. For instance,
"Adolescents take what is said online as the literal truth," said
Justin Patchin, assistant professor of criminal justice at the
University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, who studies cyberbullying.
And, as in the Megan Meier case, the victim of cyberbullying is
often isolated, yet never free from attack. "The target sees this
entire cyberuniverse where everybody is against them, and no one
will come to their defense," said Dr. Walter Roberts, professor of
counselor education at Minnesota State University, Mankato. "The
harassment is not limited to the portion of the day when the kids
are in school. The targeted kids have no escape."