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ACM TechNews - Monday, March 3, 2003



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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 464
Date: March 3, 2003

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Top Stories for Monday, March 3, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"IETF Creates Antispam Research Group"
"Pondering Value of Copyright vs. Innovation"
"Pentagon Spy Database Funding Revealed"
"Securing a Digital Lock"
"German Copyright Levy on PCs Worries Many"
"NIPC Leadership, Protocol Questioned"
"Senator Seeks Full Copyright Disclosures"
"Way to Control Electron Spin with Electrical Field"
"Is Vigilante Hacking Legal?"
"Cerf's Upbeat on Net's Future"
"Overclocking Poses Risks to PDAs"
"To Trap a Superworm"
"DOD Deploys High-Tech Arsenal"
"Civil Liberties and Combating Terrorism: Legal Principles and
 the TIA Program"
"The Net Comes Home"
"Think Tiny, Think Big"
"Flash Drives Arrive"
"Computer Security's Early Warning Systems"

******************* News Stories ***********************

"IETF Creates Antispam Research Group"
Finding new ways to stem the growing tide of unsolicited junk
email, or spam, will be the task of a new panel organized by the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).  The Anti-Spam Research
Group (ASRG) will operate under the aegis of the IETF's Internet ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item1

"Pondering Value of Copyright vs. Innovation"
The debate between copyright owners' right to protect their
products and researchers' need to disassemble such products in
order to improve them and invent new products was the theme at
several California conferences that took place this past weekend. ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item2

"Pentagon Spy Database Funding Revealed"
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Thursday
forced John Poindexter of the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) to disclose a hefty document detailing some 26
grants awarded to academic and private-sector research projects ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item3

"Securing a Digital Lock"
Researchers at the University of California Davis Computer
Security Lab (SecLab) are working on a number of solutions to
protect computer systems from external Internet-borne attacks and
internal security breaches.  However, senior researcher Jeff Rowe ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item4

"German Copyright Levy on PCs Worries Many"
German copyright holders' society VG Wort is fighting for a levy
on new PCs that manufacturers say would unfairly raise the cost
of new units without adding value.  Fujitsu Siemens Computers,
Germany's largest PC maker, is lobbying the German Patent Office, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item5

"NIPC Leadership, Protocol Questioned"
The National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) moved
from the FBI to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's
Directorate for Information Analysis and Infrastructure
Protection (IAIP) on March 1, but not everyone whose job  ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item6

"Senator Seeks Full Copyright Disclosures"
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) feels that vendors of products equipped
with anti-copying safeguards should alert customers to such
restrictions by clearly labeling such items as
copyright-controlled.  Wyden believes that informed consumers ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item7

"Way to Control Electron Spin with Electrical Field"
David Awschalom of the University of California at Santa Barbara
and Jeremy Levy of the University of Pittsburgh have made a
significant breakthrough in the field of spintronics by being
able to manipulate electron spin using electrical fields, rather ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item8

"Is Vigilante Hacking Legal?"
Attorney Curtis Karnow said Feb. 27 at the Black Hat Security
Briefings summit in Seattle that federal nuisance laws might be
extended to legally allow counterattacks to halt Internet
hacking.  "It has a lot of promise...if we can get the court to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item9

"Cerf's Upbeat on Net's Future"
Internet pioneer Vint Cerf offered a generally positive outlook
on future Internet developments at a recent function organized by
the U.S. Embassy in Wellington, Australia.  He acknowledged that
Internet content is a combination of junk and useful material, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item10

"Overclocking Poses Risks to PDAs"
Wibble-wobble.com and Revolutionary Software Front are offering
handheld users a cheap way to ratchet up the performance of their
personal digital assistants (PDAs) by boosting processor clock
speed beyond the vendor's specified rate.  However, analysts and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item11

"To Trap a Superworm"
The threat of superworms jumped from theory to reality with the
release of Slammer in late January; more virulent than earlier
worms such as Nimda and CodeRed, Slammer exploited weaknesses in
Microsoft SQL database products to launch buffer overflow attacks ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item12

"DOD Deploys High-Tech Arsenal"
Battlefield tactics are being transformed by information
technology developed over the last decade in order to give
American forces an edge and minimize casualties.  The cost and
reliability of IT have respectively fallen and risen since ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item13

"Civil Liberties and Combating Terrorism: Legal Principles and
 the TIA Program"
Research on developing the Total Information Awareness (TIA)
project and new technology for the anti-terrorism program should
continue, even though some members of Congress have expressed
concerns about its potential impact on individual privacy in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item14

"The Net Comes Home"
The Internet 0 project at MIT's new Center for Bits and Atoms
aims to create an open-source standard for a building automation
network connected by electrical cables.  The network would offer
the simplicity, reliability, and elasticity of a global Internet ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item15

"Think Tiny, Think Big"
Under the aegis of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI),
federal scientists and industrial and academic researchers are
forging ahead to develop new technologies that have the potential
to revolutionize advanced materials and manufacturing, computing, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item16

"Flash Drives Arrive"
By taking advantage of the ubiquity of the universal serial bus
(USB) connector, sales of USB flash drives surged from $39
million to $125 million in 2002, according to Web-Feet Research.
"This was one of these markets that's been pulled through by the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item17

"Computer Security's Early Warning Systems"
To combat the threat of more sophisticated hackers exploiting
unknown or unpatched network weaknesses, a cadre of vendors and
research groups are implementing early warning systems to give
network administrators a heads up hours or even days before an ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0303m.html#item18


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