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Y2K To Cybercrime
While failure of Y2K to manifest itself as a wholesale
information apocalypse may have taken the issue off of the
congressional front burner, there is still strong support for
potentially morphing the Senate Special Committee on the Year
2000 Technology Problem into a permanent cybercrime committee,
a committee staffer told Newsbytes today. "Regardless of the
fact that there weren't a lot of information attacks (during
the rollover) there is still a lot of interest" in creating
some sort of permanent congressional committee to focus on
cybercrime, Senate Y2K Committee staffer Don Meyer said.
http://www.currents.net/newstoday/00/01/17/news1.html
Microsoft certificate bug crashes Netscape browser
Negotiations between server, browser over security break down.
The global, Internet economy knows no boundaries, except,
perhaps, when it comes to cryptography. A recently discovered
digital certificate bug in Microsoft Internet Information
Server (IIS) causes Netscape Communicator 4.7 browsers to
crash while negotiating encryption key lengths with affected
Microsoft servers.
http://msnbc.com/news/357775.asp
[This is really a bizarre statement. It's Microsoft's fault that
Netscape crashes? I could understand saying that Microsoft's server
failed to do the protocol correctly, but Netscape's browser should not
crash just because an untrusted (from its perspective) computer sent it
some bytes it did not like.]
Civil liberties groups slam encryption export rules
Groups charge changes remain unconstitutional; vendors applaud
new rules. Three civil liberties groups last week blasted the
new encryption export regulations released by the U.S. Department
of Commerce, charging that they still violate constitutional
protections guaranteeing the free exchange of information and
fall short of the Clinton administration's promise to deregulate
technology that secures electronic communications. The American
Civil Liberties Union in New York, the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco and the Washington-based
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said they will
continue to push for the elimination of U.S. government
regulations on Internet encryption technology.
http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/idgnet/000117E042
NSA grapples with Linux security
The National Security Agency, the super-secret arm of the
Defense Department responsible for signals intelligence and
information systems security, last week tapped Secure
Computing Corp. to develop a secure version of the Linux
operating system. Linux, an open-source operating system
that enables developers who use it to access and customize
the source code, has for the past few years been quietly
gaining ground throughout the commercial world, primarily
because of the success of Linux vendor Red Hat Inc. However,
it also has been quietly gaining ground in the government,
taking over high-end technical and network missions at
various agencies, including NASA and the Pentagon's various
research laboratories.
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/web-nsalinux-01-17-00.asp
[Trusted Linux sounds like an oxymoron to me... but I guess they
finally figured out that whatever the users use has to be protected.]
Wrestlers win fight over Internet address
The World Wrestling Federation (WWF) has won the first
international arbitration in a ``cybersquatting'' dispute
over the rights to an Internet address. Legions of
entrepreneurial Internet users have in the past raced to
be first to register addresses -- or ``domain names'' --
featuring the names of big companies or organizations
in the hope of being paid large sums to give them up.
http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/news/breaking/merc/docs/080099.htm
[Leave it to the professional wrestlers to free us all from
cybersquatters.]
Is This Man a Crypto Criminal?
Crypto maven John Young has a problem. He may be a felon,
guilty of a federal crime punishable by years in prison.
Or he may not be. He'd just like to know one way or another.
The 63-year-old architect and owner of the popular Cryptome
site has posted a copy of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
encryption software for the world to download.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33672,00.html
[The struggle to allow unlimited encryption to flow freely vs. the
desire of government to read everybody's mail is really coming to a
head, and I think that governments are going to lose this one.]
FC