[ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Headlines and Resources

¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤,¸¸,ø¤º

Please link to the Educational CyberPlayGround
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com

Add your SCHOOL OR SCHOOL DISTRICT URL
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/schools/

Please Share and Add Your Song
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ncfr/

Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Mailing List ©1993

¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤,¸¸,ø¤º


Greetings,

Happy reading

best,
<Karen>


1)
Extension of Time to File Your Tax Return
http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=98155,00.html
This page provides information on how to apply for an extension of
time to file.
From the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Auditors cite security problems with IRS wireless networks
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0407/041707p1.htm
The Internal Revenue Service has jeopardized sensitive taxpayer
information by failing to lock down its wireless networks, according to
an audit report released Tuesday.

2)
How To Destroy Data, Erase Your Hard Drive
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/erasehd.html
How Far should you go? and way past that if you're the bank.

Data Recovery
White House E-Mail Probably Not 'Lost Forever'
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199000990
Despite claims by the Bush administration that e-mails sent to a
Republican Party account have been purged, some IT forensics companies
suggest all of the messages may not be lost.
Four years of communications between political adviser Karl Rove and the
Republican National Committee were reportedly deleted in compliance with
the RNC's document retention policy, which is to purge all servers of
e-mail messages after 30 days. Democrats are trying to determine through
e-mails what role Rove played in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.


ChildNet fires 2 after laptop stolen
http://www.miamiherald.com/467/story/70966.html
The agency responsible for Broward's foster children fired two employees
on Wednesday after realizing they had previous criminal records and may
have stolen from the agency.
ChildNet had discovered the men's previous convictions, including one
for manslaughter, during background checks before they were hired four
years ago, but the agency hired them anyway, said Peter Balitsaris,
agency president.
Missing from ChildNet are $8,000 in Wal-Mart gift cards and a laptop
with personal information for about 12,000 people, including foster
parents and employees.

FBI seizes ChildNet records;
CEO fired as more allegations mount against nonprofit
<http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cchildnet14apr14,0,6355081.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines>

Stolen laptop has BofA employee data
http://charlotte.com/123/story/83747.html
A stolen Bank of America Corp. laptop has resulted in lost personal
information of current, former and retired employees, according to a
letter sent this week to those affected.
The letter said a "limited" number of people were affected, but the
Charlotte bank on Thursday would not provide a number. Employees at
various levels of the company were affected, spokesman Scott Silvestri
said. The lost data included names, addresses, dates of birth and Social
Security numbers. There is no sign the information has been misused,
according to an April 10 letter obtained by the Observer. The bank is
offering a free credit monitoring service for two years to those
affected.

It's 'too late' to assure security of patient data
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07104/777971-114.stm
A Web site containing Social Security numbers and other personal
information for nearly 80 UPMC patients was still accessible on the
Internet yesterday -- and computer security experts say the patients can
never be entirely assured the content will be gone.
"It is too late. Once something is on the public Web, the only
fundamentally safe security assumption you can make is that it is in the
public domain forever," said Art Manion, a computer security expert at
CERT, part of Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering
Institute.

A third of IT managers report data breaches: survey
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/041107-survey-data-breaches.html
In a recent survey of 83 corporate IT managers, 28 acknowledged having
had to cope with a data breach, and half of those respondents reported
significant related costs.
In its report entitled Calculating the cost of a security breach,
research firm Forrester said half of those polled cited changes to
security and auditing processes as a major cost category.

Shortcomings plague State's IT security
http://www.fcw.com/article98209-04-11-07-Web
Despite some improvements, the State Department still falls short in its
information security efforts, according to a new report from Inspector
General Howard Krongard.
Nearly half of the 34 departmental posts and bureaus audited by the
inspector general from April to September 2006 displayed shortcomings in
information technology security, according to the report. These
shortcomings were apparent in classified data being stored in
unclassified systems, inadequate separation of duties among IT employees
and missing or inadequate documentation on security settings used to
protect data.

3)
Fair Trade Certified: Fact Sheets and Research Tools
http://www.transfairusa.org/content/about/factsheets.php

4)
One Wilshire is nothing short of astounding.
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/040607backspin.html
The building houses more than 200 tenants, including AT&T, Broadwing, Cable & Wireless, Global Crossing, Level 3, PacBell, Qwest Communications, Sprint, Time Warner, Verizon and XO Communications, and provides U.S. connections for every Asian carrier of any note. 

Prepared for the Worst
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/041607backspin.html
Is it a good idea to tell the bad guys about One Wilshire -- the carrier hotel inhabited by a bunch of Tier 1 service providers -- and how to find it. 

5)
ICANN board member berates 'woefully unprepared' DHS
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/DOMAIN%20NAME/icann.html
Amid the outcry over allegations that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants the security keys to the DNSSEC encryption technology slowly very slowly being adopted by internet overlord ICANN, one ICANN board member, the refreshingly candid Susan Crawford, has recently taken her own swipe at security standards in place at the DHS. 

6)
National Response Center of the Federal Investigation
Agency (FIA) to counter cyber-terrorism
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=51301
Launched on March 13, 2003, the Cyber Crime Wing was established after
the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl. In this case, Pakistani
agencies had to rely on American investigators to trace the e-mails sent
to the media by his abductors. That is when the need was felt for such a
unit.

*********************************************************************
PLEASE ADD YOUR K12 SCHOOL OR SCHOOL DISTRICT
TO THE  MASTER DIRECTORY OF SCHOOLS ONLINE
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/schools/

The registry is organized by state and by grade level.
The registry also includes sites for charter Schools, virtual schools,
school districts, state and regional education organizations, state
departments of education, state standards and state administrators.
*********************************************************************

7)
Google's acquisition of DoubleClick
<http://www.aquick.org/blog/2007/04/14/google-has-just-bought-a-lot-of-browsing-history-of-the-internet/>
is possibly not just about acquiring DoubleClick's ad
network and customers, but also the significant accumulated browsing
history that DoubleClick's history logs represent. Since this data was
acquired and collected, it would not seem to be subject to Google's
privacy policy:

8)
US military plans to put Internet router in space
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/12/HNinternetrouterinspace_1.html
The U.S. military plan to test an Internet router in space, in a project
that could also benefit civilian broadband satellite communications.
Cisco Systems and Intelsat General, a subsidiary of Intelsat, are among
the companies selected by the U.S. Department of Defense for its
Internet Routing In Space (IRIS) project, which aims to deliver military
communications through a satellite-based router.

9)
Vista DRM could hide malware
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39286677,00.htm
A security researcher has released a proof-of-concept program that
hackers could use to exploit Windows Vista digital rights management
processes to hide malware.
Alex Ionescu claims to have developed the program  D-Pin Purr v1.0  that
will arbitrarily enable and disable protected processes in Vista,
Microsoft's latest operating system.

10)
Evil Trojan twins control most of world's botnets
http://www.vnu.co.uk/vnunet/news/2187626/evil-trojans-twins-control
Two types of Trojan are responsible for the control of most botnets
worldwide, a security firm revealed today.
The Sdbot and Gaobot malware groups were responsible for 80 per cent of
detections related to bots during the first quarter of 2007, according
to PandaLabs. Other culprits, although on a much lesser scale, included
Oscarbot, IRCbot or RXbot.

11)
Government Gets C-,Defense Department Fails Security Report Card
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199000653
Eight government agencies, including the Department of Defense, the
Treasury, and the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, got failing grades Thursday
on their annual computer security report card.
Overall, for 2006 the government got a C- grade [1], which actually is
up slightly from the last three years when it received a grade of D+,
D+, and D. A third of the agencies received an F, while the same number
received between an A- and an A+.

12)
Pioneer Press alleges corporate espionage by former publisher
http://news.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?a=290750
MINNEAPOLIS -- His password was "Mocha." But other data on Par Ridder's
laptop computer would have been even tastier to his new bosses.
Last month, Ridder left the publisher's job at the St. Paul Pioneer
Press -- the newspaper his great-grandfather bought in 1927 -- to become
publisher of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. The defection to the
larger, more stable rival across the Mississippi River was a shock,
given their intense competition for readers and advertisers.
Now the Pioneer Press claims in a lawsuit that Ridder handed over
spreadsheet after spreadsheet of sensitive data to the Star Tribune --
budgets, monthly profits, employee wage data, and perhaps most
important, how much advertisers were paying. It claims that Ridder stole
a file folder with his own non-compete agreement and that of other
Pioneer Press executives, and the Star Tribune failed to return copies
of the data he took.

13)
National Security Letters Revisited
http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearing.cfm?id=2679
Sen. Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat now chairman of the
Judiciary Committee's constitution subcommittee, is sending strong
signals that he may support legislation to rein in the government's
use of national-secur ity letters. On Wednesday he led a Senate
hearing on the topic during which he railed against the secret orders.
He cited a recent report by the Justice Department's inspector
general, who found 48 violations of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's use of national-security letters from 2003 to 2005.

14)
A Tale of Four Carriers: AT&T, Verizon, Level (3) and Sprint
http://www.renesys.com/blog/2006/03/a_tale_of_four_carriers_att_ve.shtml
AT&T is going to buy BellSouth and the ghost of Ma Bell looms large
in all of our minds. No one is really surprised by this. As usual, this deal is 
multi-dimensional, with landline, Internet, and cell phone assets all tied up
in a complicated set of overlapping bundles. But what does this really mean for the Internet? 
More specifically: Do these acquisitions really have anything to do
with the Internet at all? What will be the size and scope of these networks
when combined? Who will be the winners? We can offer some pretty convincing
answers to all of these as well as some wild speculation about the next acquisition to come. 

Level 3 continues to experience rapid customer growth on its network.
http://www.level3.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2006/20060209.html
The Level 3 global IP backbone network currently carries over 3.7
petabytes of Internet Protocol (IP) traffic every day (one petabyte is
the equivalent of 2,000,000 CDs). IP traffic carried across Level 3's
transatlantic network has doubled in the last twelve months.

15)
The history of the hymn *Amazing Grace,*
http://memory.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/html/grace/grace-home.html
and the Library*s Chasanoff/Elozua Amazing Grace Collection,
which is comprised of 3,049 published recordings of the hymn by
different individual musicians or musical ensembles.

16)
"Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers,"
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/
an online presentation containing more than 226,000 pages
of public-domain newspapers from California, Florida, Kentucky, New
York, Utah, Virginia and the District of Columbia published between 1900
and 1910.

17)
Captain Pearl R. Nye: Life on the Ohio and Erie Canal
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/nye/index.html
Captain Pearl R. Nye was a man cut from a bit of different cloth, and his
life and the music he loved so dearly are celebrated as part of this
wonderful online collection created by the staff members of the Library of
Congress's American Memory Project. Nye was born in 1872 and raised on a
canal boat on the Ohio and Erie Canal. He was committed to preserving the
songs and stories that were part of the Canal's very essence, and this
website features recordings of 75 songs sung by Nye. First-time visitors
should look over the timeline of related events that span both Nye's
personal history and that of the Canal. Then they can also read through the
two informative essays offered here, including "An Informant in Search of a
Collector: Captain Pearl R. Nye of Ohio", authored by Rebecca B. Schroeder.
Visitors should then listen to the songs, which include such ditties as
"Lord Vaniford's Life" and "Mr. Frog".

18)
University Officials Lauded for Health Literacy Study
http://www.ourmidland.com
<http://www.ourmidland.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18213124&;
BRD=2289&PAG=461&dept_id=472542&rfi=6>
Lana Ivanitskaya, associate professor of health sciences in The Herbert H.
and Grace A. Dow College of Health Professions, and Anne Casey, associate
dean of libraries, began their study six years ago on the effective use of
electronic documents, including those available through the Internet.

19)
Video Production Curriculum: Five Steps to Multimedia Reporting
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Arts/Video_Production_Curriculu.html
tutorials that will help persons learn about choosing a story, doing fieldwork, editing their piece, 
and even offer a few tips on shooting video.

20)
Yiddish Sheet Music
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/folkDavidGoldenberg.html
The Center for Digital Initiatives at Brown University has produced a number
of excellent digital collections over the past years, including strong
collections of digitized sheet music. The Yiddish Sheet Music collection
continues in that tradition by offering a wide range of pieces from the 19th
and 20th centuries. Visitors can browse the collection by creator, title or
even thumbnail images of the first page of each piece of music. The
collection offers an inside glimpse into the world of Yiddish music that
dominated many a stage in places like the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

21)
Zombies infiltrate US military networks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/16/military_botnet/
Security researchers have traced spam-sending botnet clients back to
networks run by the US military.
Support Intelligence, the firm whose research on honeynets revealed that
the networks of at least 28 Fortune 1000 companies contained
malware-infected spam-spewing PCs, has found evidence of bots running
behind military networks.
Rick Wesson, chief exec of Support Intelligence, said the firm's
honeynet system has received Viagra spam from an IP address owned by the
Randolph Airforce base. Support Intelligence has also observed bots -
running IP addresses owned by the Directorate of Information Management
- trying to connect to botnet command and control servers, evidence that
PCs run by the directorate have become spam proxies under the control of
hackers.

22)
SCADA State of Denial
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=121887
Utilities and other process-oriented companies that run supervisory
control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are starting to feel the
heat of security vulnerabilities -- and hackers.

23)
2007 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop (EVT '07)
August 6, 2007
Boston, MA, USA
Sponsored by USENIX: The Advanced Computing Systems Association, and
ACCURATE: A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and
Transparent Elections
Submissions Deadline: April 22, 2007, 11:59 PDT
http://www.usenix.org/evt07/cfpa
The Call for Papers for the 2007 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting
Technology Workshop is now available.
EVT '07 seeks to bring together researchers from a variety of
disciplines, ranging from computer science and human factors experts
through political scientists, legal experts, election administrators,
and voting equipment vendors. EVT seeks to publish original research on
important problems, including how the software and hardware in voting
might be engineered to be more robust against tampering or how it might
be written to be more easily and openly verified. Papers exploring
"end-to-end" approaches that strive to ensure that the integrity of the
election is independent of software and hardware are also encouraged.

24)
The Zimmers {warning do not view this during work hours :-) <Karen>}
http://www.myspace.com/thezimmersband
The oldest and greatest rock band in the world - meet
The Zimmers and their amazing cover of The Who's "My Generation".
Lead singer Alf is 90 - it's quite something when he sings
"I hope I die before I get old". And he's not the
oldest - there are 99 and 100-year-olds in the band!
The Zimmers will feature in a BBC TV documentary being
aired in May 2007. Documentary-maker Tim Samuels
has been all over Britain recruiting isolated and lonely
old people - those who can't leave their flats or
who are stuck in rubbish care homes.
The finale of the show is this group of lonely old people
coming together to stick it back to the society that's cast
them aside - by forming a rock troupe and trying to
storm into the pop charts.
{warning do not view this during work hours :-) <Karen>}
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqfFrCUrEbY

<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>
Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Mailing List ©1993
NetHappenings: the largest and oldest K12 Education Mailing List Email Preferences -- Subscribe - Unsubscribe - Digest 
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/NetHappenings.html

Copyright FAIR USE Statements to be included when reproducing
annotations from NetHappenings.

The single phrase below is the copyright notice to be used when
reproducing any portion of this report, in any format:

EDUCATIONAL CYBERPLAYGROUND http://www.edu-cyberpg.com
NetHappenings copyright

<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>

Other related posts: