TastyWords writes "According to this link, it's possible to apply the 'junk fax law' to successfully sue a spammer in small claims court. For those who are stuck in states which either have worthless (or near-worthless) anti-spam legislation, this creative approach of the law presents a creative method of turning the table on those who choose to spam first and ask questions later. All of the details are available for enterprising anti-spammers!" --- Update: 02/25 00:30 GMT by T: OK, so it's Michigander, not Michiganian. Too long as a Texon, Marylandite and Tennesseenaut.

Computerworld - Premier 100: CIOs debate security, privacy, Linux and outsourcing issues.

CIOs from some of the nation's largest companies today outlined their fears and hopes about their jobs and the direction of technology in the year ahead. But few at the Computerworld Premier 100 conference here raised warning flags as directly as Doug Lewis, executive vice president and CIO at Six Continents Hotels Inc., and David Guzman, vice president and CIO at Owens & Minor Inc., a medical systems distributor.

"I think the single biggest threat to my environment, and probably to my job as well, is the dual threat of data security and data privacy -- and knowing what the laws are in the 100 countries that we operate in," Lewis said during one of the freewheeling panel discussions at the conference. "That is a significant threat."

Guzman backed up Lewis' comments, urging that more be done on the security front. "I don't think all of us collectively have paid enough attention to the threats that now face our work with regard to security," said Guzman.

PBS - Now with Bill Moyers.

The upcoming program is about Civil Rights and such. I'd give more details but the www site doesn't say anything about the upcoming show just the current one. Unfortunately I didn't take notes when the topic was mentioned at the end of the current show. I just assumed that the info would be on the site ... sigh

CNET NEWS.COM - LoveGate worm's got a hold on PCs.

A mass-mailing computer virus compromised a moderate number of PCs worldwide on Monday, installing a Trojan horse program that allows a remote intruder easy access to a victim's system, said antivirus experts.

Known as LoveGate, the LovGate.C program has many similarities to previous viruses: It is a binary program; it has its own e-mail engine, obviating the need to use another program such as Microsoft Outlook to send messages; and it attempts to use 16 simple passwords to break into and spread to other computers on the victim's network.

"In terms of the technology that it uses, all the individual capabilities have been seen before," said Steve Trilling, senior director of research for security software company Symantec. The worm is a variant of the LovGate.A virus, also known as w32.lovegate@m, which was first seen on the Internet last week.

sourceforge.net - The Bait and Switch Honeypot.

The Bait and Switch Honeypot System combines the Snort Intrusion Detection System (IDS) with honeypot technology to create a system that reacts to hostile intrusion attempts by marking and then redirecting all "bad" traffic to a honeypot that partially mirrors your production system. Once switched, the would-be hacker is unknowingly attacking your honeypot instead of the real data, while your clients and/or users are still safely accessing the real system. Life goes on, your data is safe, and you get to learn about the bad guy as an added benefit.

Slashdot | Book Review - Storage Security.

shiroi_kami writes "What does Information Security mean to you? To many, it means firewalls and encryption. To some, it means intrusion detection systems. Chances are the words "file servers" weren't high on your list, but they probably should be. After all, information security is about information, and when it's not flying across the network it's got to be stored somewhere, right? In fact, the security of the storage mechanism is often overlooked, which makes it an attractive target for attackers. In their new book, Storage Security, the authors take a comprehensive look at this often-ignored subject.

Slashdot | Interview - Ask ISP Owner Barry Shein About the Spam Wars.

Spam sucks. But it's worse for ISPs than for the rest of us, because they get bounces and complaints and other behind-the-scenes spam-caused messes the rest of us don't see. AOL talks of spam as "public enemy number one." Barry Shein, who started (and still runs) the world's first full-service dialup ISP, likens spammers to organized criminals, and calls spam "an organized, vicious, sociopathic thing" in this article, which spurred an interesting Slashdot discussion. So what should we do about spam? Ask Barry. One question per post, please. We'll post his answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions sometime in the next week or so.

CNET NEWS.COM - A secret war. Spike in "spyware" accelerates arms race

EarthLink's technical support staff handles a variety of problems: broken networks, corrupted files, coffee spills--and, increasingly over the past few months, bitter complaints from subscribers about "spyware" and "adware."

Those persistent types of programs, frequently operating on computers without owners' knowledge, have spread quickly in the last year, evolving as rapidly as anti-spyware software has been able to find them. EarthLink executives estimate that 40 percent to 50 percent of the Internet service provider's subscribers have running on their machines some kind of advertising or more-malicious program, which often monitors their behavior and sends the data back to the software's parent company.

The level of complaints has risen high enough that EarthLink says it's finally looking for an official spyware-killer to distribute to its angry customers.

"That's usually not what they've originally called to report, but when they find out (the source of their problem), that's what causes the most emotional reaction," said Jim Anderson, EarthLink's vice president for product development. "They feel that their trust has been broken."