contributed by evenprime
Y2K has come and gone and left most people pretty much unscathed. The massive effort to clean up messy code over the last few years looks like it has paid off. What can be learned from this? How can this be applied to writing secure software for the coming millennium? This new article in the Buffer Overflow section examines these questions.

Buffer Overflow

contributed by Weld Pond
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge William Elfving has denied the DVD Copy Control Association's request for a restraining order against numerous web sites and individuals. The DVD CCA had hoped that the restraining order would prevent people from distributing DeCSS a program written to allow the playing of DVD movies on regular computers and not DVD players. While the restraining order was denied the war is not over yet. Trial has been scheduled for January 14, 2000. The EFF provided preliminary legal assistance in this case.

Associated Press - via Yahoo
Industry Standard - via Yahoo
Electronic Defense Foundation
HNN's copy of the legal complaint
DeCSS Defense Site
DVD Copy Control Association

contributed by The Ringo and turtlex
Computer Associates has announced the discovery of the first new virus/trojans of the new year. While some of the four pieces of code that have been discovered do contain destructive payloads none of the four are considered extremely dangerous. (Four? That's it? Where are the predicted 30,000 Y2K viruses?)

ZD Net
Reuters - via Yahoo

contributed by evenprime
Steve Kettmann reports from Germany for Wired on the 16th annual Chaos Communication Congress. (There isn't much new in these reports if you have ever been to any con before.)

Wired - CCC Women Were Odd Men Out
Wired - Oh, How the CCC Has Evolved

contributed by Weld Pond
Slashdot.org has posted the answers to its communal interview with hacker think tank L0pht Heavy Industries. (If you missed it this is definitely a must read. The quality of the questions and responses far exceeds the usual slashdot banter. Some excellent opinions of where the net is and where it is going.)

Slashdot.org

contributed by Evil Wench
The old favorite Amiga has been sold once again. This time Gateway, the most recent owner of the Amiga name and technology, has sold it all to a company known as Amino Development Corp. Faithful Amiga users around the world had hoped that Gateway would revive the brand when they acquired it back in 1997. Evidently they will have to wait a little longer. However, since Amino is run by Bill McEwen, the former Amiga, Inc. marketing chief, they hopefully won't have to wait very long.

Reuters - via ABC News
The UK Register

contributed by Yazmon
Wahoo International Enterprise Co has announced that it has succeeded in luring Chen Ing-hau away from rivals after the 24-year old completed his military service. Chen has admitted to writing and releasing the deadly CIH virus during his military tour. He was quickly arrested following his confession but was released due to lack of complaints brought against him.

Reuters - via Yahoo

contributed by Evil Wench
The US Customs Service has begun using new high-tech scanners that can see through the clothing of passengers and can search for contraband with an image that shows the naked body. As an alternative to a physical pat-down, frisk or strip search, suspected international smugglers are being offered the body scanner. To insure privacy customs officials have said no image of the naked body is recorded or preserved. (Yet. Wait until 'body matching' can be done as easily as fingerprinting then they will start collecting data to compare new scans against.)

Boston Globe

contributed by Weld Pond
For some reason web site defacements continue to make news. While there where dozens of defacements over the last few days those of Lloyd's of London, The UK railways services company Railtrack, and the German Police actually caused a big enough stir to grant some news coverage. None of the defacements caused any permanent damage and all where fixed very quickly.

BBC - Railtrack defacement
Associated Press - via San Jose Mercury News - Railtrack defacement
Reuters - via Wired - Lloyd's of London defacement
Reuters - via Excite - German Police Union defacement

Attrition.org Defacement Mirror