Nehappenings News Headlines and Resources

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NetHappenings News Headlines and Resources

enjoy,
<Karen>


1)

Dear colleagues,
On behalf of the GENI community of interest, they want to bring to
your attention the first public release of an early conceptual
design for the GENI project. With the active engagement of many
leading network researchers and the NSF, GENI is focused on
developing a platform for testing a wide array of next generation
network concepts in the context of a 'clean slate' design.
< http://www.geni.net/GENI-10-JAN-06.pdfhttp://www.geni.net/GENI-10-JAN-06.pdf >
For more information:
<http://www.geni.net >
< http://www.nsf.gov/cise/geni/>

2)

New England Region http://www.ner.org of the
Sports Car Club of America http://www.scca.org
MIT Formula SAE team (for those who don't
know, here is a pic, its the red one ;-) :
http://ehsan.mit.edu/motor/pic/2005-11-10_Red_Bull/target38.html
And if you want more info: http://web.mit.edu/fsae
and here for more pics: http://ehsan.mit.edu/motor/pic

Thanks
Ehsan Farkhondeh

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Educational CyberPlayGround
RSS NEWS FEEDS Updated Daily Area
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/news/
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3)

The Recording Industry's Confusion
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060123/france_music_downloads.html?.v=1
" But for record companies, the growth of legitimate downloads and the
partial victory against piracy have come at a price. Many in the
industry are concerned that the scramble to license out catalog for digital
sales has done lasting damage to profitability."

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National Children's Folksong Repository Project
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/NCFR/
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4)

Wiretapping, FISA, and the NSA
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/379
Mark Rasch examines the laws related to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Presidential directive
authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept the
international phone calls of American citizens without a warrant.
The scope of the program has been described as widespread
surveillance by some, while the White House says it has a narrow
focus. The Bush administration points to the wartime powers
granted in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)
passed on September 18, 2001, as the basis for the NSA wiretaps,
since it authorizes the President to "use all necessary and
appropriate force" against "nations, organizations, or persons"
involved in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. However, US
law prohibits wiretaps on American citizens, unless a party to
the communication consents, the service provider consents, or a
court issues a warrant. Court orders under the Title III wiretap
statute or the Electronic Communications Privacy Act require a
lot of work to obtain, however, a secret FISA court handles
warrants for foreign intelligence and terrorism investigations,
checking Presidential power. Rasch questions why the Bush
administration did not seek FISA warrants for the NSA wiretaps.
The White House argues that the FISA process is too slow, but
FISA courts can legally issue warrants after surveillance is
conducted. One FISA court member has resigned in protest, and
Congress will hold hearings examining the NSA wiretaps.

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PARENTS, TEACHERS, ADMINISTRATORS, SCHOOL BOARDS
WHO IS COLLECTING AND SELLING children's information?
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com//Technology/SECURITYprivacy.html
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5)

Calif. refuses to recertify Diebold voting machines
The secretary of state has put the company's application on hold
until Diebold submits its source code for additional testing.
http://newsletters.101com.com/c.asp?id=598627&l=14&c=080c6bfbc9186f5a


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Black History Month All Year Long
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/culdesac/bhm/bhm.html
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6)

The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70040-0.html
By Kevin Poulsen Jan 19, 2006
At half-past noon on Jan. 9, cable TV contractors sinking a half-mile
of cable near Interstate 10 in rural Arizona pulled up something
unexpected in the bucket of their backhoe: an unmarked fiber-optic
cable. "It started pulling the fiber out of the pipe," says Scott
Johansson, project manager for JK Communications and Construction.
"Obviously, we said, 'Oop, we've hit something.'"
As the fiber came spooling out of the desert soil like a fishing line,
long-distance service for millions of Sprint PCS and Nextel wireless
customers west of the Rockies blinked off. Transcontinental internet
traffic routed over Sprint slowed to a crawl, and some corporations
that relied on the carrier to link office networks found themselves
electronically isolated.
In the end, a hole dug out of a dirt road outside a town called
Buckeye triggered a three-and-a-half hour outage with national impact.
It wasn't even a very deep hole. "We ran into their line right away,"
says Johansson.



7)

High-Tech Hunger
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10756796/site/newsweek/
By Melinda Liu Newsweek International Jan. 16, 2006 issue
Don't be fooled by Wang Xiaoyun's demure demeanor. The 39-year-old
mathematician is an instrument of China's campaign to become a tech
power. She is also a legend among Western cryptographers. "Please
don't write too much about my research; it's so difficult for
journalists to get the technical details right," Wang pleads in
rapid-fire English and Shandong dialect. She has a point: let's just
say she and two colleagues shocked the cryptography world last year
when they exposed a weakness in a key U.S. government encryption code
called SHA-1, thought to be virtually unbreakable. Renowned MIT
cryptographer Robert Rivest, who helped develop the SHA-1 algorithm,
calls the breakthrough "stunning." (The SHA-1 "hash" is used, among
other things, in technologies that transmit credit-card numbers over
the Internet.)
Which explains why experts from Wall Street to Washington, from
Downing Street to Delhi, are beginning to pay attention to Chinese
scientists like Wang?and the government campaign that helps sponsor
their work. The "863 Program"?so named because in March 1986 Deng
Xiaoping decreed Beijing would begin bankrolling key science and
technology research?aims to vault China into the ranks of developed
nations. When Deng, eager to make China a high-tech power, asked how
much funding should be earmarked to jump-start the effort, some
scientists suggested 5 billion yuan (about $625 million today),
recalls People's University professor Mao Shoulong, who was involved
at that stage. "But Deng said the program needed 10 billion yuan. So
that's what was invested."
Since then, Beijing has funneled 863 funds to new cutting-edge
projects each year, boosting research on everything from aviation
systems to mapping the rice genome. Nanjing University professor Wang
Yuanqing, who won funding for his work on 3-D computer monitors,
believes individual 863 projects are now "too numerous to be counted."
During the same period, China's economy has racked up white-hot growth
rates?in 2005 GDP expanded 9.8 percent. Beijing's boom has prompted
some Western strategists to warn that China might supplant the United
States as a tech leader in the not-too-distant future, and threaten
Washington's Asian friends militarily. As China continues its economic
rise, senior U.S. officials are asking publicly whether Beijing can
become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international community.

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Educational CyberPlayGround  Technology
<http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/Home_TECHNOLOGY.html>
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8)

Is Your Firewall Spying on You?
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/13/73792_03OPcringley_1.html
The company says it will fix the "bug" soon. In the meantime you can
work around it by adding:
# Block access to ZoneLabs Server
127.0.0.1 zonelabs.com
to your Windows host file.
The "bug" seems to be present in the retail version of Zone Alarm, so
there's no telling what the freebie gets up to.

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Security  and Classroom Resources
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/SECURITY.html
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9)
Oracle no longer a 'bastion of security': Gartner
<http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Oracle_no_longer_a_bastion_of_security_Gartner/0,2000061744,39234277,00.htm>
By Munir Kotadia ZDNet Australia 24 January 2006
Analyst group Gartner has warned administrators to be "more
aggressive" when protecting their Oracle applications because they are
not getting enough help from the database giant.
Gartner published an advisory on its Web site just days after Oracle's
latest quarterly patch cycle, which included a total of 103 fixes with
37 related to flaws in the company's database products. Some of the
flaws carry Oracle's most serious rating, which means they're easy to
exploit and an attack can have a wide impact.
According to the advisory, which was posted by Gartner analyst Rich
Mogull on Monday, "the range and seriousness of the vulnerabilities
patched in this update cause us great concern.? Oracle has not yet
experienced a mass security exploit, but this does not mean that one
will never occur."


10)

OpenSSL gets NIST certifications
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/38074-1.html
By Joab Jackson GCN Staff01/23/06
Agencies setting up sensitive virtual private networks now have an
open-source alternative.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has certified
OpenSSL, an open-source library of encryption algorithms, as meeting
Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 Level 1 standards,
according to the Open Source Software Institute of Hattiesburg, Miss.
"This validation will save us hundreds of thousands of dollars," said
Debora Bonner, operations director for the Defense Department's
Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support program, in a statement.
"Multiple commercial and government entities, including [the Defense
Department's] Medical Health System, have been counting on this
validation to avoid massive software licensing expenditures."
Federal agencies must use FIPS-compliant products to secure networks
carrying unclassified sensitive data. The FIPS certification of
OpenSSL opens the possibility of using an SSL-based VPN to carry
sensitive data, according to Peter Sargent, who heads the Severna
Park, Md.-based PreVal Specialist Inc., one of the companies that
supported the validation process.

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Educational CyberPlayGround
OPEN SOURCE EXPLAINED
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/Linux.html
What about changing over to Linux in Schools?
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11)

Hacker pleads guilty to building, renting attack network
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/13693354.htm
Jan. 23, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A 20-year-old hacker admitted Monday to
surreptitiously seizing control of hundreds of thousands of
Internet-connected computers, using the zombie network to serve pop-up
ads and renting it to people who mounted attacks on Web sites and sent
out spam.
Jeanson James Ancheta, of Downey, Calif., pleaded guilty in Los
Angeles federal court to four felony charges for crimes, including
infecting machines at two U.S. military sites, that earned him more
than $61,000, said federal prosecutor James Aquilina.
Under a plea agreement, which still must be approved by a judge,
Ancheta faces up to 6 years in prison and must pay the federal
government restitution. He also will forfeit his profits and a 1993
BMW. Sentencing is schedule for May 1.



12)

The Worst-Case Hack Scenario
http://business.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=41047
By Jack M. Germain January 23, 2006
A flurry of data breaches at major corporations late last year seemed
to confirm a growing consensus among computer-security experts that
2005 was the worst year yet for such transgressions.  Incidents at
Marriott International, Ford Motor Company, and ABN Amro Mortgage
Group served as eerie reminders to CIOs that they could be the next
victims of thieves looking to poach Social Security and credit-card
numbers, or of business-process breakdowns that cause sensitive
information to fall into the wrong hands.
Most CIOs will tell you that getting hacked is inevitable. But there
is getting hacked, and then there is getting sacked.
As the volume of information increases and criminals grow more brazen,
the chances of companies suffering a worst-case scenario seem less
remote every day. Part of any CIO's duty is to convince the boss that
the company is ready for the very worst security crisis imaginable.


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Future Trends in Computing
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/trends.html
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