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-
- Computer underground Digest Sun Nov 19, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 90
- ISSN 1004-042X
-
- Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU
- Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
- Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
- Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
- Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
- Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
- Ian Dickinson
- Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
-
- CONTENTS, #7.90 (Sun, Nov 19, 1995)
-
- File 1--Masses resist the Internet, study shows
- File 2--Espionage Charges against Kevin Poulsen Dropped
- File 3--5.8 Million Are Said to Be Linked to Internet the in U.S
- File 4--Re: Attention Spammer: The War Has Started
- File 5--Internet Hacking isn't just for Unix kiddiez anymore
- File 6--The Great Decency Fake-out
- File 7--"Computer Crime: A Crimefighter's Handbook"
- File 8--Tyranny & mutation: "Giant Black Book of Computer Viruses"
- File 9-- (VTW) BillWatch #25
- File 10--FBI Targets Expected Growth In Computer Crime
- File 11--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 5 Nov, 1995)
-
- CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
- THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
-
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Date: Sun, 12 Nov 95 15:40 CST
- From: jthomas@sun.soci.niu.edu
- Subject: File 1--Masses resist the Internet, study shows
-
- Masses resist the Internet, study shows
-
- By James Coates
- Chicago Tribune Computer Writer
- Copyright Chicago Tribune (c) 1995
-
- Computer sales are booming and the whole country is abuzz with talk of
- information superhighways, but only a relative handful of Americans
- have ever gotten their modems to take them on-line.
-
- Just 14 percent of the country's households have successfully used
- modems to get on-line even once, according to a major study of
- national computing habits by the Times Mirror Center for the People
- and the Press.
-
- And most of those, the study found, go on-line only to use e-mail and
- not to take advantage of the many other wonders of the Internet.
- ....................
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Sun, 12 Nov 95 15:40 CST
- From: jthomas@sun.soci.niu.edu
- Subject: File 2--Espionage Charges against Kevin Poulsen Dropped
-
- U.S. Drops Case of Spying by Computer
- Source: New York Times, Nov. 12, 1995 (p. 26)
-
- SAN JOSE, Calif, Nov 11 (AP)--Federal prosecutors have dropped an
- espionage charge against a coputer hacker, saying the military
- document found in his possession was obsolete.
-
- The charge was dropped on Thursday in exchange for a guilty plea to
- unrelated offenses involving unauthorized intrusions into the files of
- the Pacific Bell Telephone Company.
-
- The hacker, Kevin L. poulsen, 30, is already serving a four-year
- prison term for rigging radio station contests in Los Angeles, where he
- was arrested in 1991. Prosecutors in the San Jose case agreed that
- Mr. Poulsen would be eligible for release in May, after spending five
- years in custody.
- ..............
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Sun, 12 Nov 1995 03:24:27 -0600
- From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas)
- Subject: File 3--5.8 Million Are Said to Be Linked to Internet the in U.S
-
- Source: The New York Times Sept. 27, 1995
-
- Who Uses the Internet? 5.8 Million Are Said to Be Linked in U.S.
-
- By STEVE LOHR
-
- Measuring the Internet population is a daunting challenge given the
- amorphous nature of cyberspace, with its lack of borders and its
- culture of anonymity.
-
- The latest attempt comes from O'Reilly & Associates, a publisher of
- computer books and Internet software, in a report to be published
- Wednesday. And the results look conservative: 5.8 million American
- adults are connected directly to the Internet. Another 3.9 million
- American adults use only commercial on-line services, like America
- Online, Compuserve and Prodigy.
-
- Estimates of Internet use worldwide have often ranged to more than
- 30 million, with the United States representing perhaps half of the
- total.
-
- .....................
-
- The O'Reilly research found that 67 percent of those with direct
- Internet access are male and over half are between the ages of 18 and
- 34. Their median household income was between $50,000 and $75,000, and
- nearly half work in organizations with more than 1,000 employees.
-
- .....................
-
- Copyright 1995 The New York Times
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Mon, 6 Nov 95 18:13 PST
- From: Michael Gersten <michael@STB.INFO.COM>
- Subject: File 4--Re: Attention Spammer: The War Has Started
-
- Well, I'd say that you've got one major bad assumption, and one
- questionable assumption.
-
- The first major bad assumption is that you can open a connection to
- the mail port (25) on any real system.
-
- I'm running a system where you can't. Lots of people have systems like
- this.
-
- You can, if you knew the "real" name of my system, open a connection
- to port 25. It's just that the name of my system changes every time I
- connect to my ISP. This is called dynamic addressing. The name
- "stb.info.com" actually uses an MX record to a friend's site, and a
- uucp connection (over the net, of course) for final delivery. Other
- sites I'm told use POP or some other remote fetch protocol. I've seen
- plenty of real systems that can be pinged, that do not run smail at
- all -- they rely on the MX records to send mail elsewhere.
-
- The point is, just parsing the headers from mail will only tell you
- what system to try to mail back to, not necessarily what the real IP
- location is.
-
- So, if you actually implemented what you said there, then any posting
- from my site would be discarded as a forgery. Not good.
-
- The questionable assumption is that everyone is two hops or less. I
- really doubt that is true for FIDO hosts. Back when I was a UUCP host
- (3 years ago) it was very untrue -- I saw lots of mail with more than
- two hops. I don't know how much of a problem this is today. But I'd go
- with more than two hops. Problem is, I think that defeats the whole
- point of this proposal.
-
- Another questionable assumption: The list of three and two letter top
- level names is known.
-
-
- This is not a joke. What happens when a new top level domain is
- introduced? Yes, it's rare, but when a country breaks up and a whole
- bunch of new countries are created, it happens. It almost happened
- about a week ago, but we still have just "ca", and not "qb".
-
- Another bad assumption: You can even tell if something is a valid name.
- Many sites run smail/sendmail with the "vrfy" command disabled -- so
- you can't tell what user id's are at a particular site.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Sun, 12 Nov 1995 09:48:04 +1494730 (PST)
- From: Christopher Klaus <cklaus@ISS.NET>
- Subject: File 5--Internet Hacking isn't just for Unix kiddiez anymore
-
- |Subject--Internet Hacking isn't just for Unix kiddiez anymore
-
- |[To get on mailing list, Alert, send a message to alert-request@iss.net
- |and within the message, type: subscribe alert ]
-
- File Sharing: Dangerous on your network.
-
- We have begun looking into Windows NT/95 OS and what it offers in its
- networking capabilities. What we have found might be of interest
- to others security-wise.
-
- You can quickly scan a network, identify any win95/NT machine,
- grab a list of the resources available through the machine,
- and attempt to access those resources. Once we achieve access to a file shared
- resource, we attempt to see if the ".." bug exists. There is also
- the users on the machine itself that we send a message to that they have
- been scanned.
-
- Some of the problems with Win95/NT/WfWg is the same problem that exists
- in almost every configurable device on the network: that the users
- have not configured it securely. We have found most people who set up
- sharable directories have left them passwordless. This allows
- any intruder on the Internet to steal to those files and possible
- modify them/delete them.
-
- The password mechanism on these systems has another flaw no one has talked
- about before. We have automated a password checking scheme in our scan.
- Here is the choice of possible passwords we try:
-
- - Typical user passwords such as WORKGROUP, WINDOWS, USER, etc...
- - Passwords derived from the list of resources and users logged in.
- - Passwords attempted from a dictionary file supplied by the administrator
- or the standard Internet Scanner dictionary.
-
- As you are well aware of, that even when a password is used, the chance
- of finding a easily guessible password is quite high. With the scans we
- have done, we are doing the brute force attack at about 200 passwords/second.
- We do about 18,000 passwords attempts in under 2 minutes.
-
- Windows 95 has no control of locking out further access attempts
- so the intruder can endlessly pound away on your machines.
-
- Windows 95 has no logging of any of these attempts. An intruder can not only
- try quite a large number of passwords in a short period of time, there
- is no log of these attempts. Knowing someone is attempting to attack
- is as important as fixing the problems themselves.
-
- Once the scan accesses a file shared directory, it attempts
- to determine if the machine is vulnerable to the ".." bug. This bug
- allows intruders to access the rest of the hard drive, even though
- the machine is configured to only allow access to a certian directory.
- The bug is effective because the OS does not properly check for "..", "...",
- and "..\" which would give you access to directories above the directory file
- shared. This same type of bug is found on older NFS implementations on Unix.
- Microsoft has put out patches for this bug at http://www.microsoft.com/windows
-
- The scanner will now also send a message through the popup program to let
- the users know they were scanned. The problem with this utility
- is that the popup program lacks any authentication, therefore an intruder
- could masquarade as the administrator and tell everyone to make their
- directories sharable because he/she needs access to it. It would not
- be the first time a user fell prey to this type of attack.
-
-
- Here are some future improvements in security for the resource sharable
- file system:
-
- (Some of these features may be on NT, but were not seen on Win95.)
-
- - better logging of bruteforce attempts
- - put a delay in there after each bad password attempt to slow down
- brute force attacks
- - possibly locking out file sharing attempts after X number of tries
- - allow/deny capabilities based on host addresses
- - better authentication of popup messages
-
- User education needs to take place to ensure proper configuration.
- Here are some essential procedures to follow to have a more secure network:
-
- - users need to password protect all resources
- - users must pick difficult to guess passwords
- - users should never give others access or passwords to their systems
- unless it is through an authenticated process
- - users should install the security patches provided by vendors
-
- Firewalls:
-
- The SMB protocol, through which file sharing takes place, is on udp/tcp
- ports 137, 138, and 139. Make sure your firewalls/routers block
- these ports.
-
- -------------------------------------------------
-
- Copyright
-
- This paper is Copyright (c) 1994, 1995
- by Christopher Klaus of Internet Security Systems, Inc.
-
- Permission is hereby granted to give away free copies electronically.
- You may distribute, transfer, or spread this paper electronically. You
- may not pretend that you wrote it. This copyright notice must be
- maintained in any copy made. If you wish to reprint the whole or any
- part of this paper in any other medium excluding electronic medium,
- please ask the author for permission.
-
- Disclaimer
-
- The information within this paper may change without notice. Use of
- this information constitutes acceptance for use in an AS IS condition.
- There are NO warranties with regard to this information. In no event
- shall the author be liable for any damages whatsoever arising out of
- or in connection with the use or spread of this information. Any use
- of this information is at the user's own risk.
-
- Address of Author
-
- Please send suggestions, updates, and comments to:
- Christopher Klaus <cklaus@iss.net>
- of Internet Security Systems, Inc. <iss@iss.net>
-
- Internet Security Systems, Inc.
-
- Internet Security Systems, Inc, located in Atlanta, Ga., specializes in the
- developement of security scanning software tools. Its flagship product,
- Internet Scanner, is software that learns an organization's network and probes
- every device on that network for security holes. It is the most comprehensive
- "attack simulator" available, checking for over 100 security vulnerabilities.
-
-
- --
- Christopher William Klaus Voice: (770)441-2531. Fax: (770)441-2431
- Internet Security Systems, Inc. "Internet Scanner lets you find
- 2000 Miller Court West, Norcross, GA 30071 your network security holes
- Web: http://iss.net/ Email: cklaus@iss.net before the hackers do."
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Tue, 31 Oct 95 22:29:01 PST
- From: jblumen@interramp.com
- Subject: File 6--The Great Decency Fake-out
-
- The Great Decency Fake-out
-
- Congressmen and senators are meeting with each other right now
- to decide which of two competing versions of the Telcom Reform Act
- should be adopted as law. Whichever they choose, they will be able
- to send you to prison for saying "Fuck" on the Internet.
-
- We got to this serious and dangerous pass by way of a five act
- comedy.
-
- Act I: June. Senator Exon waved his blue book of pornography on the
- Senate floor, frothing at the mouth about "pornographers, pedophiles
- and predators." The Senate passed the Communications Decency
- Act (CDA) by a vote of 84-16, banning unspecified "indecent" speech
- online. Numerous commentators point out that the CDA is
- ridiculously vague and would certainly ban speech that is
- perfectly legal offline.
-
- Act II: June. White knight and futurist Newt Gingrich goes on TV and
- announces that the CDA is unconstitutional. Everyone breathes a
- sigh of relief because it is well known that this man runs the
- House with an iron hand--the CDA will not get through.
-
- Act III: August. The House passes its version of the Reform Act.
- True to Gingrich's word, the CDA never even comes up for
- consideration. Instead, the unusual Cox-Wyden act is adopted, vaguely but
- gloriously praising the Internet as a method of communication,
- education and community building but not actually implementing
- any legal measures. Spectators declare victory--Gingrich has killed
- the CDA.
-
- Act IV: August. The discovery is made that a last minute "manager's
- mark amendment" added to the Reform Act would ban the depiction or
- description of sexual or excretory organs or functions online.
- Most of the Congressmen voting in favor of the final version of
- the bill don't even know its there. No-one's name is on it, no-one
- knows how it got there. Fewer still understand that this is the
- exact language Congress passed into law some years ago to define
- indecency on television.
-
- Act V is happening now. The conference committee is looking to
- create a compromise version of the Act. Whether it adopts the
- CDA (unlikely) or the manager's mark version, it will become illegal
- to say anything on the Net you couldn't say on the radio or TV.
- The phrase "Fuck the Telcom Reform Act" would get me sent to
- prison.
-
- Question: If Gingrich runs the House as tightly as they say, could
- this have possibly happened without his knowing? Or have we just
- witnessed the Great Decency Fake-out, the ceremonial death of the
- CDA and its quiet replacement with something equally lethal?
- Why, if the Cox-Wyden bill opposes the F.C.C.'s intervention in the
- Internet, did the House adopt a television-style decency standard?
-
- The only reason the Supreme Court has permitted greater regulation of
- broadcast media than print is because of scarcity: the government
- is already involved in allocating bandwidth, so its not a big step
- to regulating content. THIS IS THE WRONG METAPHOR FOR THE INTERNET.
- The net is a constellation of printing presses and bookshops and
- should be regulated like print media. The indecency standard
- adopted by the manager's mark amendment would be clearly
- unconstitutional if applied to print media. Let's not let the
- Congress put one across on us by applying a more restrictive standard
- to the Internet.
-
- Where are the petitions, the mobilization, the concern? The
- manager's mark amendment is more dangerous than the CDA,
- which had two strikes against it: it was unconstitutionally vague,
- and it attempted to apply broadcast standards to the Net. The
- manager's mark amendment avoids the vagueness problem. WRITE YOUR
- CONGRESSPERSON NOW, especially if he or she is on the conference
- committee (CuD has printed the list in a recent issue). Or write to
- Mr. Gingrich at georgia6@hr.house.gov.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Wed, 01 Nov 1995 17:15:30 EST
- Message-ID: <00998C06.1C7432C0.24275@mukluk.hq.decus.ca>
- Subject: File 7--"Computer Crime: A Crimefighter's Handbook"
-
- BKCMPCRM.RVW 951004
-
- "Computer Crime: a Crimefighter's Handbook", David Icove/Karl Seger/William
- VonStorch, 1995, 1-56592-086-4, U$24.95
- %A David Icove
- %A Karl Seger
- %A William VonStorch
- %C 103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA 95472
- %D 1995
- %G 1-56592-086-4
- %I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
- %O U$24.95 519-283-6332 800-528-9994 rick.brown@onlinesys.com 800-998-9938
- %O 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com
- %P 464
- %S Computer Security
- %T "Computer Crime: a Crimefighter's Handbook"
-
- As a guide for law enforcement personnel and systems managers, this
- provides a good overview and introduction to computer crime and the
- actions to take against it. Touching on crime, prevention and
- prosecution, the book is practical and helpful to those needing to get
- a quick handle on the problem.
-
- It is, however, easily evident that the authors are law enforcement,
- rather than systems, professionals. Those expecting a technical
- discussion, from the O'Reilly imprimatur, will be disappointed. The
- book started life as an official FBI training manual. The
- explanations and concepts are elementary--and are intended to be so.
- Thus, while it might be possible to argue (rather weakly) for the
- definitions of viruses, worms and other malware as described in the
- book, security experts will likely feel a bit uncomfortable with them.
- The abdication of discussion on encryption is not going to help those
- who want to help protect their systems. (On the other hand, there is
- nothing to indicate any political bias in regard to encyption.) The
- bibliography, though, is of good quality, and should make up for the
- technical shortcomings in this work.
-
- I am delighted to see, for once, not only mention but actual listings
- of computer laws from outside of the US. The coverage is still a bit
- lopsided, with 130 of US federal and state statues and less than
- twenty devoted to the rest of the world, but it's a start.
-
- copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995 BKCMPCRM.RVW 951004
-
- ======================
- DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group
- newsletters roberts@decus.ca slade@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
- Rob_Slade@mindlink.bc.ca Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer
- Viruses" 0-387-94311-0/3-540-94311-0
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Fri, 10 Nov 1995 00:48:01 -0600 (CST)
- From: Crypt Newsletter <crypt@sun.soci.niu.edu>
- Subject: File 8--Tyranny & mutation: "Giant Black Book of Computer Viruses"
-
- In 1990 Mark Ludwig published "The Little Black Book of Computer
- Viruses." It contained the source code for four computer
- viruses, one of which - Stealth Boot - has become one of the more
- common computer viruses infecting business and home PC's worldwide.
- [The virus, known as Stealth Boot C, is the same as the copy
- published in the second printing of "The Little Black Book of
- Computer Viruses."] As a result, by 1992 Ludwig (also my publisher,
- incidentally) was a pariah in conservative computing circles, fit
- predominantly for freak-flag-fly-type stories on viruses as artificial
- life in WIRED magazine or bad craziness and hate parties at assorted
- computer security conferences. In 1990 Ludwig wrote, rather
- accurately in retrospect, "[Stealth Boot] is _highly contagious_ . . .
- once it's infected several disks, it is easy to forget where it's gone.
- At this point, you can kiss it good-bye." Even the printing business
- Ludwig uses for his books was infected with Stealth Boot during
- production runs, according to the author.
-
- The introductory parts of Ludwig's new "Giant Black Book of
- Computer Viruses" (American Eagle trade paperback, 664 pages)
- feature a tone more baldly revolutionary than his previous books.
- It's a pitch that resonates with many outsiders - the militias, tax
- resisters, Internet anarchists, true believers of New World Order
- conspiracy orthodoxy - convinced a big takeover by the
- military-industrial complex is imminent. In a segment on "military
- applications" of computer viruses Ludwig writes, "Putting military
- grade weapons in the hands of ordinary citizens is the surest way to
- keep tyranny at bay." We are moving toward an "Orwellian god-state"
- he says, and "the Orwellian state is vulnerable to attack -- and it
- should be attacked . . . Perhaps we have crossed the line [of this
- state] or perhaps we will sometime between when I [write] this and
- when you are reading. In such a situation, I will certainly sleep
- better at night knowing that I've done what I could to put the tools
- to fight in people's hands." Ironically, even extremist Soldier of
- Fortune magazine has dropped Ludwig's advertising with nary a word of
- explanation. For it, computer viruses are now apparently more feared
- than serrated truncheons, pepper spray, assault weapons and
- advertising for military adventurers and hit-men.
-
- Dire stuff this is, and the remainder of the "Giant Black Book" is
- no exception, with segments devoted to boot sector-infecting
- computer viruses, writing "droppers" for them - for example,
- the complete source code for Stoned and a diskette-infecting
- launcher for it; file-infecting viruses for a multiplicity of
- operating systems, virus stealthing; complicated, exotic encryption
- schemes aimed at defying anti-virus scanning; and anti-security
- measures designed to make clumsy or incomplete disinfection of
- Ludwig's viruses a task fraught with the possibility that the
- replicating programs will destroy the data structures on the infected
- machine in retribution. Portions of the book are reprints or
- clean-ups of articles which have appeared over the past couple of
- years in Ludwig's Computer Virus Developments Quarterly and its
- successor, Underground Technology Review, which have ceased
- publication.
-
- The only other books in the arena even remotely reminiscent of
- Ludwig's newest - beside his own stuff - is Ralf Burger's
- "Computer Viruses -- A High-Tech Disease," published in 1988 by
- a company, Abacus, also in the business of marketing Burger's
- anti-virus software. However, Burger's chapters on simple
- overwriting viruses and the mutilation of computer data coupled
- to simulation of horrible hardware problems with software - besides
- being simplistic and dated - lacks the weird joie de vivre Ludwig's
- "Giant Black Book" flashes in assembly language-illustrated tracts
- on choosing between formulations of sudden, unexpected data
- incineration or creeping file corruption - routines perhaps perfected
- while Ludwig was writing destructive code for a US Army group
- attached to NATO a couple of years ago.
-
- Those who worry about presumed virus-writing churls from the Internet
- getting a copy should stop right now. Real life probably won't be
- quite as predictable. Even though the "Giant Black Book" is genuinely
- menacing-looking (the cover's straight outta DOOM), for the truth
- to be told experience suggests most would-be and practicing
- virus-writers are either too penniless to purchase it, too oblivious
- to everything but their own transient concerns to read it carefully
- enough so it really hurts, or too bitterly envious of Ludwig for
- making a living selling viruses which they've been unable to trade
- for even a bag of chipped wampum, to make much of the virus code
- and tutorials which constitute the backbone of the book. History
- also indicates that it's not a big jump to see that as with
- "The Little Black Book," one or two of the "Giant Black Book's"
- Ludwig viruses could wind up in circulation on
- national computers within two to three years, resulting in an
- indeterminate amount of garment rending, trashed data and lost money,
- blood on the floors of information systems departments, insane
- shouting, and kill crazy editorializing in computer security
- publications, none of which will have any impact on the perverse
- reality of the world of computer viruses.
-
- There's a part near the end of the "Giant Black Book," written
- with an X-file-ish sci-fi whiff of looming future techno-anarchy.
- Those comfortable with the reading material found in comic books
- devoted to the current fascination with cyberpunk, computer network
- dystopia, mysterious helicopter flights over the hinterlands, and
- rental vans packed with bags of fuel oil-soaked ammonium nitrate will
- be interested. As for the bottom line on "The Giant Black Book of
- Computer Viruses": Like all Ludwig's books, it's a distinctly
- unusual acquired taste requiring a small but significant amount of
- technical acumen to crack. But it's also as interesting a read as
- you'll find if you're one with the stones for it.
-
- "The Giant Black Book of Technological Booby Traps, er, Computer
- Viruses" -- $39.95 cash money from American Eagle, Show Low, Arizona.
- (ISBN 0-929408-10-1)
-
- ----Crypt Newsletter
- http://www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Mon, 20 Nov 1995 13:39:09 -0500 (EST)
- From: Voters Telecommunications Watch <shabbir@VTW.ORG>
- Subject: File 9-- (VTW) BillWatch #25
- VTW BillWatch #25
-
- VTW BillWatch: A weekly newsletter tracking US Federal legislation
- affecting civil liberties. BillWatch is published at the end of every
- week as long as Congress is in session. (Congress is in session)
-
- BillWatch is produced and published by the
- Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org)
- (We're not the EFF :-)
-
- Issue #25, Date: Mon Nov 20 13:35:16 EST 1995
-
- Do not remove this banner. See distribution instructions at the end.
- _________________________________________________________________
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Announcements
-
- The dangers of the new censors
-
- Subscription and Redistribution Information (changed 10/21/95)
-
- _________________________________________________________________
- ANNOUNCEMENTS
-
- We continue to put off the Health Care Records Privacy examination. We're
- just really occupied with our core issue, the net censorship legislation.
- You should have an alert in your mailbox about it right now.
- This issue contains:
-
- -an essay from Steven Cherry (VTW Board) about another flavor of censor
-
- Remember, take this opportunity to call Congress and ask them to not
- censor the net. The net is literally fighting for its life right now.
-
- There will be no BillWatch this week due to Thanksgiving.
-
- Shabbir J. Safdar
-
- PS This issue can be found in HTML form at
- URL:http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/issue.25.html
-
- _________________________________________________________________
- THE DANGERS OF THE NEW CENSORS
-
- BillWatch has recently descried the Christian right as embodying the
- forces of censorship. Besides being taken to task, quite properly, for
- there being no real organization represented by the phrase "Christian
- right," we have been reminded recently that there are other forces of
- censorship at work.
-
- Perhaps the most pernicious is the force of self-censorship. One instance
- of this is the demand that "responsible" corporations and individuals
- restrict their own speech, so that the government doesn't have to. We have
- even heard it asserted that search engines shouldn't show the location of
- indecent material "because children rely on these search tools." (Note
- that this is not meant to be an exact quote.)
-
- Leaving aside the question of whether children really do rely on search
- engines (I wish my own child would do more of that instead of surfing!) we
- have to ask ourselves, once again, whether we really want to child-proof
- the Net, placing unscrewable caps on seach engines, three-foot high locked
- fences on every newsgroup, and guard-rails on every Web client.
-
- Imagine calling for childproofing the New York City Subway system, or the
- Smithsonian museum. I don't mean ridding these of their 17th century nude
- art or their graffiti, I mean, imagine childproofing these public spaces
- in the way you do your home when you have a baby that's just beginning to
- walk.
-
- Right now, we rely on parents to keep their toddlers off the statuary and
- the third rail. Why is it not appropriate to ask parents to keep their
- children out of certain places on the public Internet?
-
- Steven Cherry
- VTW Advisory Board
- stc@vtw.org
-
- _________________________________________________________________
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- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1995 03:24:27 -0600
- From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas)
- Subject: File 10--FBI Targets Expected Growth In Computer Crime
-
- The Washington Post
- November 14, 1995
-
- FBI Targets Expected Growth In Computer Crime
- New Offices to Focus On Scams on the Internet
- By Michelle Singletary; Elizabeth Corcoran
- Washington Post Staff Writers
-
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation is beefing up its fight
- against computer crime. In the next few weeks, the agency said it
- will open an office in New York dedicated to investigating
- computer crime. Law enforcement officers opened a similar office
- in San Francisco last month.
-
- A Washington office, which handles international cases, was
- established in 1993.
-
- The San Francisco office will keep a close eye on activities in
- Silicon Valley, while the New York squad will handle
- financial-related computer crimes. Each computer crimes squad
- will have a staff of 14 to 15.
-
- ...................
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Sun, 5 Nov 1995 22:51:01 CDT
- From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
- Subject: File 11--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 5 Nov, 1995)
-
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- ------------------------------
-
- End of Computer Underground Digest #7.90
- ************************************
-
-