] Microsoft Corp., which on Monday announced it was
] licensing the Unix source code and patent from the SCO
] Group, is remaining tight-lipped about its reasons for
] the move.

This keeps getting weirder and weirder...

Microsoft Mum on Unix Licensing Move

] In February, the Feds seized the domain from David
] "krazy8" Rocci, a 22-year-old in Blacksburg, VA, who used
] the site to sell 450 Enigmah mod chips. After facing
] $500,000 in fines and five years in prison for allegedly
] violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Rocci was
] sentenced in April to spend five months in the slammer
] and pay $28,500 in fines. That's an unprecedented ruling
] in the brief history of the DMCA. And it shows how this
] quirky gray market hardware is leaving so many companies
] and federal agents running scared.

Not really news at this point but anyway ...

Game Over for Mod Chips?

] NEW YORK -- The man known as the "Buffalo Spammer," who
] allegedly has sent 825 million unwanted e-mails, has been
] arrested and arraigned, New York State Attorney General
] Eliot Spitzer said Wednesday.

I'm somewhat wary of spam legislation but there's no question that it has become a colossal problem. At least 50% of the mail volume to my work mailbox is spam.

I think the fraud-oriented legislation is probably preferable to having the government define what spam is; spoofing mail headers, abusing other peoples' mail servers, etc, would be what the spammers might be prosecuted for. "Legitimate" spammers would have to have their own servers, not spoof and provide a real opt-out system. They'd probably also have a hard time getting connectivity.

Wired News: Fraud Bust for 'Buffalo Spammer'

] Settling lawsuits intended to strike fear in the hearts of
] college students who regularly download music over the
] Internet without paying for it, four students have agreed
] to pay the recording industry's trade association $12,000
] to $17,000 each over the course of the next three years.

Pffft.

Suit Settled for Students Downloading Music Online

] In the toughest move to date against unsolicited
] commercial e-mail, Virginia enacted a law yesterday
] imposing harsh felony penalties for sending such messages
] to computer users through deceptive means.

Lots of problems here; not clear what the right answer is.

Spam Sent by Fraud Is Made a Felony Under Virginia Law

] Firewalls, packet filters, intrusion detection systems,
] and the like often have difficulty distinguishing between
] packets that have malicious intent and those that are
] merely unusual. We define a security flag in the IPv4
] header as a means of distinguishing the two cases.

Who knows the evil that lurks in the buffers of men? The Stack knows!

This document discusses IAB concerns that ongoing research is needed to further the evolution of the Internet infrastructure, and that consistent, sufficient non-commercial funding is needed to enable such research.

This is a really cool ID ... and puts a finger on a trend that I've been vaguely aware of that the IETF seems to be spending more and more time designing SNMP MIBs and less time on fundamentals.

My boss (director of a lab at CMU) made a remark a few months ago
that sums up the problem: "Why should we work this if industry
can do it?" Academics are simply not interested in building
practical systems! They want to push the limits of the design space. They want to build something that is information-theoretically secure and completely useless in practice.

But industry doesn't seem to be able to do it either: they are
too often brain-damaged by a bean-counting, 6-month-returns mindset.

I would work on this stuff full-time if someone would pay me to do it but noone will since I don't have a PhD and if I did, I probably wouldn't want to anymore!

IAB Concerns Regarding Internet Research and Evolution

Losses at Microsoft Corp.'s Home and Entertainment segment, which includes the Xbox game console, nearly doubled in the last three months of 2002, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing Friday.

Xbox losses widen

Needless to say, the ability for any keyholder to obtain system-wide access represents a serious potential threat to the security of master-keyed installations. Individuals and institutions that depend on such locks to protect their safety and property should be aware of these risks and consider alternatives to eliminate or reduce their exposure to this threat.

Matt Blaze is at it again ... this paper has a Markus Kuhn / Ross Anderson flavor to it. (There is a news article in today's NYT about this paper.)

Master-Keyed Lock Vulnerability

This isn't really news; Windows source has been available to e.g.
academics for awhile, now.

Interesting to consider state governments adding their own spyware
to Windows, though.

Seattle Post Intelligencer Microsoft reveals secret source code to Russia