] Justice Department officials have evidence that MCI may,
] in effect, have "laundered" calls through small
] telephone companies, and even redirected domestic calls
] through Canada, to avoid paying access fees or shift them
] to rival long-distance carriers, according to people
] involved in the investigation.
]
] The lawyers told the investigators that the
] tests also showed that the billing codes that are
] transmitted with telephone calls in data packets had been
] doctored.

MCI Faces Federal Fraud Inquiry on Fees for Long-Distance Calls

] The Georgia Institute of Technology has announced that it
] has named Ralph Merkle, an inventor of the encryption
] technology that allows secure transactions over the
] Internet, as director of the Georgia Tech Information
] Security Center (GTISC). Merkle is known for his seminal
] contributions to information security and nanotechnology.

TechLinks - Merkle to run GT infosec center

Just caught this one in my inbox.. Psyiode has started up a site to keep track of the Blackboard case.

Its important to note that Psyiode has no connection to Acidus, Virgil, or any of the Interz0ne con staff. Blackboard may decide to come after him too.

I like the domain. :)

www.fuckblackboard.com

] Blackboard said the settlement shows its systems are
] secure but the whole case is better understood as a
] successful attempt to protect the firm's reputation
] against the possibly exaggerated claims of a pair of
] student hacker/crackers

The register got caught up in the spin as well.

Since when is using the law an appropriate way to silence critics? Thats the very definition of censorship.

Can we accept that this is really the final word on the story, given that its coming from blackboard, and that Acidus and Virgil are injoined from responding?

Is Blackboard's technology secure?

We may never know. What we do know is that Blackboard has effectively silenced their critics, with extreme prejudice. My lawyer is bigger then your lawyer should not trump the first amendment. In this case it has. These student settled because they did not have the means to defend themselves.

Acidus and Virgil owe $20,000 in (clears throat) "legal fees." They are college students. They can't really afford this and they need help. If you would like to contribute, you can paypal the following email address: gte344p@prism.gatech.edu

The Register - Blackboard press release

] Two computer hackers admitted in a settlement Monday that
] they never completed a device that could cheat university
] campus debit card systems out of food, laundry machine
] use or sports tickets.

Spin Spin Spin...

More on this in a minute...

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: BlackBoard press release

] Among other important matters, the President and the
] Prime Minister discussed measures by which the most
] prompt and effective utilization might be made of the
] productive facilities of North America for the purposes
] both of local and hemisphere defense and of the
] assistance which in addition to their own programs both
] Canada and the United States are rendering to Great
] Britain and the other democracies.

Random footnote in history. This is the actual legal document upon which the notion that cryptography can be freely exported to Canada without a license is based. This decision was made in 1941 in order to make the war machine more efficient, it works both ways, and generally applies to any kind of munition. It was never amended after the war. (Much like income tax withholding. :) )

American History Documents: The Hyde Park Declaration of 1941

This scheme allows Alice to ask Bob if Bob is a warez site, but if it turns out that Bob is the RIAA he cannot prove that Alice asked for warez, and if it turns out that Alice is the RIAA she cannot prove that Bob is a warez site.

Secret Handshakes from Pairing-Based Key Agreements

] Foundstone's troubles began last October when the company
] brought a trade-secrets case against J.D. Glaser, its
] former director of engineering, accusing him of stealing
] proprietary code. Glaser had left Foundstone in May to
] reactivate his old company, NT Objectives. After ten
] staffers followed him, Foundstone got a temporary
] restraining order barring Glaser from marketing his
] software. But a judge declined to grant an injunction,
] saying that Foundstone had not identified the trade
] secret and was unlikely to prevail on the merits.
]
] Things quickly went from bad to worse. Soon after the
] case was filed, Jason Glassberg, Foundstone's
] software-consulting guru and its key contact with
] Microsoft, the company's largest client, sent an e-mail
] to Kurtz. "This is bullshit," he wrote. "We will regret
] the day we became a litigious company. You realize you
] have zero support from the rest of the company on this
] action, don't you?"
]
] Kurtz promptly fired Glassberg, who was immediately
] offered work by Microsoft. The software giant then
] yanked its Foundstone business, which had accounted for
] about a quarter of the company's revenue. More staff
] defections followed.

Rule #1: Don't fuck with your employees.

Fortune.com - Technology - The Two Faces of Foundstone

The size of the IP6 address space makes scanning for victim computers in a properly managed network as difficult as a brute force attack on an encryption system. Of course, it also makes scanning your own network for backdoors and trojans just as difficult. Furthermore, crackers are using IPv6 to encapsulate traffic, hiding it from intrusion detection systems.

This is a fun paper if you are into network security.

Security Implications of IPv6 - Mike Warfield

] Within three years, companies could be using quantum
] cryptography to protect sensitive messages.

This article sucks, but basically the gist is that this is close.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Quantum leap for secret codes