World News Part 2
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Mitnick gets 22 months
Computer Hacker Mitnick to Get 22-Month Term Courts:
In addition to sentence for cellular phone fraud and probation
violation, former fugitive faces a 25-count federal indictment on
software theft.
Los Angeles Times (LT)
TUESDAY June 17, 1997
By: JULIE TAMAKI; TIMES STAFF WRITER
Edition: Valley Edition
Section: Metro
Page: 4 Pt. B
Story Type: Full Run
Word Count: 398
A federal judge indicated Monday that she plans to sentence famed
computer hacker Kevin Mitnick to 22 months in prison for cellular phone
fraud and violating his probation from an earlier computer crime
conviction.
The sentencing Monday is only a small part of Mitnick's legal problems.
Still pending against him is a 25-count federal indictment accusing him
of stealing millions of dollars in software during an elaborate hacking
spree while he was a fugitive. A trial date in that case has yet to be
set.
U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer on Monday held off on formally
sentencing Mitnick for a week in order to give her time to draft
conditions for Mitnick's probation after he serves the prison term.
Pfaelzer said she plans to sentence Mitnick to eight months on the
cellular phone fraud charge and 14 months for violating his probation
from a 1988 computer-hacking conviction, Assistant U.S. Atty.
Christopher Painter said. The sentences will run consecutively.
Mitnick faces the sentence for violating terms of his probation when he
broke into Pac Bell voice mail computers in 1992 and used stolen
passwords of Pac Bell security employees to listen to voice mail,
Painter said. At the time, Mitnick was employed by Teltec
Communications, which was under investigation by Pac Bell.
Copyright (c) 1997, Times Mirror Company
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Judge denies Mitnick computer access
Daily News of Los Angeles (LA)
Tuesday, June 17, 1997
By: Anne Burke Daily News Staff Writer
Edition: Valley
Section: News
Page: N3
Word Count: 564
San Fernando Valley hacker Kevin Mitnick wants to log on while in the
lock up, but a judge said Monday she doesn't think that's such a good
idea.
"I have real apprehension about any situation where Mr. Mitnick is near
a computer," U.S. District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer told the
33-year-old and his attorney.
After all, Mitnick was in court Monday for sentencing on digital crimes
he committed while leading the FBI on a manhunt through cyberspace and
the nation.
While Pfaelzer refused Mitnick access to a computer, she said she is
going to give him something else - 22 months behind bars for violating
his supervised release from prison on an earlier computer hacking
conviction and illegally possessing telephone access codes. Mitnick is
expected to be sentenced formally Monday, after the judge considers the
terms of his supervised release.
In custody since February 1995, Mitnick now faces a 25-count indictment
charging him with a 2-1/2-year hacking spree from June 1992 to February
1995.
Speaking Monday through his attorney in court, Mitnick said he now needs
access to a computer for strictly legitimate reasons - helping to
prepare his defense for the upcoming trial.
Randolph said Mitnick is not a thief, but rather an electronic
eavesdropper. The difference is that Mitnick never tries to profit, the
attorney said.
At Monday's sentencing, Mitnick got 14 months for violating his
supervised release by breaking into Pacific Bell's computers and
associating with an old buddy named Lewis De Payne, his co-defendant in
the coming federal trial. He received eight more months for the
cellular telephone fraud in North Carolina.
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Feds Say They'll Go After E-mail Fraud
By David E. Kalish, The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (June 12, 1997 4:44 p.m. EDT) -- Federal regulators Thursday
put the junk e-mail industry on notice that they will punish businesses
that put false information in the unsolicited mail sent to millions of
World Wide Web users.
The Federal Trade Commission also asked the industry to figure out ways
to stem the flood of commercial mail that has clogged the Internet,
making it difficult for users to go online.
The FTC said it would ask industry groups to supply lists of junk-mail
senders to help its new drive to detect fraud. Penalties for junk
mailers who break the law could include court injunctions to stop the
practice, the agency said. Repeat offenders could face fines of tens of
thousands of dollars.
"We will try to go after them and prosecute some fraud," FTC
commissioner Christine Varney said in an interview Thursday, the third
day of the agency's week-long hearings to address concerns about an
array of online privacy intrusions.
Concern about junk e-mail has mounted as more and more businesses try to
make money off the Internet. Sending mass volumes of e-mail is vastly
cheaper than traditional mass mailings. A mailing list of Web users
costs as little as $11 per million names, an industry player testified
at the hearing.
The low cost of e-mailing has led to network bottlenecks that have
slowed the flow of information across the Internet.
In addition, users increasingly are reporting e-mail scams from
con-artists seeking money or credit-card numbers.
FTC officials plan to focus on two types of scams: businesses that use
a bogus name or Internet address, leaving consumers with no way of
stopping the junk mail because their messages bounce back from the false
addresses, and junk mailers who lie to consumers in an effort to lure
them into investment, business opportunity or other scams.
Several major e-mailers and industry groups said they would cooperate
with the FTC and would supply names of fellow mailers.
"We have to play by the rules," said Sanford Wallace, president of
Cyberpromotions Inc. "We want to set an example."
For now, at least, the FTC has decided to let industry figure out how to
slow the flood of unsolicited mail instead of pushing for government
rules, such as an outright ban on junk mailings. Regulators at
Thursday's hearing asked industry and consumer groups to create a group
to examine the problem and report back in six months.
Junk e-mail costs Web users money because many pay for each minute of
Internet connection time, including the time it takes them to read and
delete the offending messages.
In addition, companies that provide Internet service are hit with the
cost of sending the messages unscrupulous mailers relay through their
computers to other recipients. Some junk mailers use the method to
disguise their identities.
On another Internet privacy front, the FTC is pressuring information
services companies to let ordinary Americans see the companies' records
containing their personal information.
Lexis-Nexis and other information services assemble and sell the private
details to law-enforcement agencies, private investigators and other
professionals. But they don't allow consumers to see the records and
check to see if they contain inaccuracies.
"The message was, 'You have to show it to the consumer,"' said David
Medine, associate director of the FTC's division of credit practices.
Copyright 1997 Nando.net
Copyright 1997 The Associated Press
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Computer Group Unites To Break Computer Code
But It Took 4 Months
June 19, 1997
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Using the Internet to harness the combined power
of their machines, thousands of computer users broke a
government-endorsed code that protects electronic money transfers.
The group, organized by programmer Rocke Verser, took four months to
read a message that had been scrambled using the code, known as the Data
Encryption Standard. The code was finally broken Tuesday.
The national standard, or DES, was considered almost unbreakable when
introduced in 1977. It is required in most federal agencies but not the
military, and is also widely used in the private sector.
Critical information in computers is protected by the national standard
and other encryption programs that use very large numbers to scramble
information. Only the correct "key" can unlock the encrypted
information. The longer the key, the harder it is to crack.
Given the fact that it took four months to break through the standard
code, experts say the nation's financial institutes are hardly at risk.
Most of them use what it known as dynamic key exchange, which changes
the keys almost constantly during a transaction. Taking months to crack
the code wouldn't do thieves much good.
Verser and his group were responding to a $10,000 challenge offered in
January by RSA Data Security Inc., a Redwood City, California, company
that sells encryption programs.
The actual attack on the code was quite simple. Verser wrote a program
that ran through every possible combination that might unlock the coded
message -- 72 quadrillion of them in all.
Then he put a copy of the program on his Web site and invited others to
work on cracking it. Anyone could download the program, which would
then run in the background as they went about their work.
The project began with 20 computers and ended with 14,000 working on the
problem. All told, they used 10 million hours of computer time. Had
they started with 14,000 computers it would have taken about 30 days,
Verser said from his Loveland, Colorado, home.
While the code-cracking doesn't have much practical uses, it's a
harbinger of things to come, said David Weisman, director of money and
technology strategies for Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester
Research.
"It's not something to cause a panic. But people have known that as
computing power increases, key lengths have to increase," he said.
The incident is likely to prompt more calls for relaxing U.S. laws that
restrict the export of longer codes.
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