OSS: The alternative in digital forensics?

Open source software (OSS) tools can be credible and reliable in digital forensics, says Cobus Venter, senior researcher at The Cyber Security Science Centre, a division of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Morgan Stanley offers $15m to make up for missing emails

Investment bank Morgan Stanley has offered to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) $15m to settle an investigation by the regulator into an alleged failure by the firm to produce email evidence during a legal dispute.

Metatags and Trademark Infringement

Any business with an Internet presence wants to increase its website traffic. And one of the best ways to do this is to rely on something web surfers never see -- a bit of HTML coding called a "metatag" that describes the content of a website. Search engines use these small pieces of hidden coding to index web pages according to content so web surfers can be directed to web pages with the content they request. Where things can get problematic, though, is when businesses manipulate hidden metatags to draw more eyes to their websites. One way to do this, for instance, is to use the trademark of a competitor in your metatags to attract that competitor’s customers. But that clever tactic just ran into a roadblock, when a federal court in Ohio ruled that the use of a competitor's mark in metatags to pull consumers to a website constitutes trademark infringement, even if consumers eventually realized that the site was not that of the competitor. This decision could have major -- and negative -- ramifications for Google and other search engines that allow companies to use competitors' marks as keyword search terms, so that their own paid ads (and links) are displayed when someone searches for the competitor's name

How to avoid Open Source Licensing pitfalls

Open Source software can offer users greatcommercial advantages when care is taken to address the intellectual property issues andminimise contractual risks.

Open source has long held an imprtant place in fulfilling

Why SCO has no case

"IT directors shouldn't worry about SCO Group's latest sallies in its legal war on Linux vendors IBM Corp. and Novell Inc., says attorney Thomas Carey. It's just more posturing, or as Shakespeare said, a tale "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Liable For Your Employee's Porn Addiction??!

With specific reference to our own Films and Publications Act (Amended), employers in South Africa should be aware of similar actions in South Africa - see below, information received from the USA:
Employers' monitoring of their employees' online activity is nothing new. And neither is reprimanding an employee for visiting pornography websites at the office. But thanks to a recent court decision, employers may now have a legal obligation to halt such activity by employees, or they could be liable if that activity "result[s] in harm to innocent third parties." On December 27, in Doe v. XYC Corp., the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, ruled that "an employer who is on notice that one of its employees is using a workplace computer to access pornography, possibly child pornography, has a duty to investigate the employee's activities and to take prompt and effective action to stop the unauthorized activity." The court held that no privacy interest of the employee stood in the way of this duty. Although the ruling has serious implications for any company that offers Internet service in the workplace, it may be of special interest to Internet service providers -- who already have their own child pornography notification obligations under 42 U.S.C. § 13032, and who may come across illegal activity not only on the part of their employees but also on the part of their subscribers. And the court's reasoning could extend beyond pornography to any illegal or harmful conduct engaged in by employees from their work computers.

U.S. Government Pushes Banks to Tighten up Online

E-Commerce Times: The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, a federal agency that includes the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the National Credit Union Administration, and oversees banking regulations in the U.S., issued guidelines in late 2005 calling for online banks to implement two-factor identity authentication. Now the agency has announced that it will begin evaluating banks for compliance with the guidelines later this year. The guidelines were issued because the FFIEC felt that single-factor authentication is not secure enough for online banking applications.

Interesting numbers!!

15 percent
Proportion of IT budgets to be allocated toward compliance projects in 2006, up from less than 5 percent in 2004, according to Gartner projections.Source: CRN
1,031
Number of companies restating their earnings in 2005 as of October, as compared to 650 for all of 2004 and 270 for all of 2001.Source: International Herald Tribune
90 percent
Proportion of companies that go under within two years of losing data, according to research firm Baroudi Bloor International.Source: Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal

Overhaul of GPL set for public release

A major revamp of the General Public License is scheduled for public release next week, a move that's expected to kick off a long and vocal debate over the key foundation of open-source programming.

Software Thief Admits To Crimes

Nathan Peterson took on some of the world's largest computer software companies, and for a while, he won.

One-quarter of Internet users targeted in phishing scams monthly

About one in four Internet users are hit with e-mail scams every month that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting consumers, a study says.

IM worms up again in November

The number of worms that targeted instant-messaging services hit 62 in November, up 226 percent from October and hitting a new record, Akonix Systems said Tuesday. Of the worms, 58 were variants of previous pests, and four were new. In the same month, a total of 14 attacks hit peer-to-peer networks, such as Kazaa and eDonkey, according to Akonix, which sells security software and appliances.

ISPs may not carry int’l calls over VoIP

The Ministry of Communications has instructed Internet service providers (ISPs) to ensure that their systems do not carry international calls over VoIP, which bypass Israel’s authorized international calls carriers. The ministry sent the instruction following complaints.

EU expects a rush for .eu domain name

The European Union expects a surge of applications next week when its ``.eu'' regional domain name opens for registration.

Patients fear safety risk from electronic notes

Health campaigners fear that the switch from paper to electronic patient records will put patient confidentiality at risk, researchers said today.

EU committee backs telecoms data storage rule

A European Union committee agreed that details of all EU-wide phone calls and Internet use should be stored, but the steps did not go as far as some member states had wanted in the battle against terrorism and crime.

UN on electronic communications in contracting

25 November 2005 – Updating international trade law to take account of new technologies, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted a new convention on using electronic communications in international contracting, superseding law negotiated before the development of e-mail and the Internet.

A Qualified 'Non' to Snooping of P2P IP Addresses

On October 24, the French data protection authority, the Commission Nationale de I'Informatique et Libertes (CNIL), dealt a blow to music industry enforcement efforts against peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing by announcing that it would not permit the automated monitoring of users of P2P file sharing systems. The CNIL concluded such monitoring could lead to "a massive collection of personal data" and allow "exhaustive and continuous surveillance" of P2P sites "beyond that which was necessary for the fight against piracy". The CNIL's stance runs counter to its own ruling in April authorizing similar P2P site surveillance by the Syndicat des Editeurs de Logiciels de Loisirs (SELL), a trade association representing French video game producers, whose members include video game industry heavyweights such as Sega, Sony, and Atari. Defending its apparent volte-face, the CNIL noted that SELL had pledged to send messages to suspected P2P site users itself, rather than asking ISPs to act as third party intermediaries, and had agreed to take an anonymous approach in communicating with suspected violators. In French, we believe that's what is called "une distinction sans différence." In any event, if French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres is to be believed, forthcoming consideration in the French Parliament of the implementation of the EU Copyright Directive might allow the music industry anti-piracy initiative to move forward. Consideration of the EU Copyright Directive by the French Parliament is scheduled to begin in December.

British teen cleared in 'e-mail bomb' case

A British teenager has been cleared of launching a denial-of-service attack against his former employer, in a ruling that delivers another blow to the U.K's Computer Misuse Act.

Study: IM threats zooming up

The number of threats targeting instant messaging has soared, according to IMlogic, which tracked a 1,500 percent increase in the past year.