contributed by Space Rogue
Section 505 of the original Communications Decency Act has been ruled unconstitutional by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Playboy Enterprises Inc. brought the suit against the CDA two and half years ago. Section 505 had called for adult-only cable channels to scramble their signals in such a way so as to prevent even fleeting images of sex acts from 'bleeding through' . The judges noted that the Justice Department had presented "no clinical evidence linking child viewing of pornography to psychological harms."

CNN

contributed by anonymous
The Clinton administration has increased the limit on exportable encryption from 40bit DES to 56bit DES. The new policy also has special provisions to export even stronger encryption technology within certain industries. Last week, two industry groups - the Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Engineering Steering Group - estimated that after an initial purchase of equipment, hackers could break a 64-bit encrypted message in less than a day for roughly $2,500 per message.

Nando Times

found on slashdot
Christmas Island is giving away free domains with the top level of .cx. No telling how long it will be before they start charging so you better get yours while you can. The good ones are disappearing fast. For the geographically challenged Christmas Island is located a coupla thousand miles North West of Perth Australia.

Christmas Island

contributed by Space Rogue
Can something be cool and evil at the same time? (It's a slow news day, bear with me) Two electrical Engineers have developed a product they call AutoWatch. It plugs into the on board computer of any car manufactured after 1995 and logs the vehicle speed, engine speed, throttle position and load of the vehicle. It is being sold for $295 retail and is being market as a way for parents to keep tabs on their kids and employers to keep track of their employees. Regardless of its possibly evil implementations it is a cool hack.

Nando Times
Ease Simulation Inc.

Sertanet cracked?
We recieved a very strange email late today that was written in very broken english and difficult to read. It would appear from the claims of this letter that Setarnet, an ISP in Aruba, has been cracked and that a password list of aprox 1600 users is floating around the internet. This information was supposedly reported to the local newspapers who decided "to hush it up". It is rumoured that the crack was done by members of a local rock band named 'Chronic' I'm not really sure what to make of this. (like I said it is a slow news day)

Setarnet
Archive of supposed cracked Setarnet page

milw0rm is back?
keystr0ke has sent us mail on Wednesday December 30th at 2:12pm saying that he has decided to restart the famed milw0rm group. milw0rm gained notoriety last summer after taking credit for the Pentagon cracks. They have two members now and may be responsible for cracking the following sites over the last few days.
www.musicgods.com
www.wubco.net
www.confine.com
www.hubco.net

The HackTechCrew
A group calling itself "The HackTech Crew" has defaced a web page and put up comments chiding milw0rm telling them to "go back to sleep".
http://www.mkt.amacc.edu.ph/

AntiOnline cracked?
AntiOnline has been down for 8 days.
Eight days after AntiOnline went down due to a hard drive crash, and five days after they claimed they would be back up, AntiOnline is still off line. We have received several emails claiming that HcV, milw0rm and I0StreAm have cracked the site and are keeping it down. Unfortunately no one has yet provided proof.

HNN Archive for December 28, 1998 - HNN response to AntiOnlines comments.