contributed by Evil Wench
US Marshalls have reportedly seized five computers and have executed several search warrants in Sacramento and Downey, California, and Troy and West Bloomfield, Michigan. The people arrested have been accused of using the irc channel 'warez4cable' to trade copyrighted software. The accused individuals could face up to US$100,000 in fines for copyright infringement. BSA claimed that the IRC channel has been shut down (seems open right now, just +i) and that this case has had a dramatic impact on online piracy. (Dramatic impact? One channel out of thousands? Yeah, OK, sure.)

Wired

contributed by William Knowles
Recent posturing by the Chinese government about information warfare has the US worried. The People's Liberation Army has announced that it will gear up its information warfare capabilities to rival that of it land, sea and air forces. Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, the new director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has called the Chinese plans and there open discussion of them unsettling. (Let the arms race begin.)

Washington Times

contributed by Weld Pond
Fred Smith, an attorney at Panagakos and Wirth, Santa Fe, N.M seems to think that lawsuits regarding software security in e-commerce will be the next big thing after Y2K. (Wonder how the Uniform Commercial Code that exempts all software from any liability will figure into these lawsuits.)

CMP Techweb

contributed by no0ne
18 year old Peng Yuan Han, an Anglo-Chinese Junior College student, pleaded guilty to unauthorized use of a computer service, unauthorized access and modifications to a computer, and abetting unauthorized access. He admits to having electronically broken into the systems of the National Computer Board (NCB), Ministry of Education (MOE) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). (It would be interesting to see what would happen if someone actually plead innocent and fought such a charge.)

The Straits Times

contributed by no0ne
SingCERT has released statistics on the online threats that have been reported to it up to October of this year. They have reported over seventeen different viruses infecting Singaporean users with over 400 victims from Chernobyl alone. 49 cases of illegal scanning had been reported and 27 cases of unauthorized intrusions. (Interesting but why are the numbers so low?)

Straits Times
Straits Times - Yes, they had two stories

contributed by cult hero
TMI Communications Inc. will be the first to offer satellite telecommunications services in the U.S. market. They have been granted approval after they agreed to allow US law enforcement agencies to install wiretap capability into their systems. The agreement came after the US agencies agreed not to spy on Canadian citizens.

Canoe

contributed by Evil Wench
The production systems of Dell Computers's Limerick, Ireland plant where infected with the FunLove virus causing the plant to shut down for two days and a recall of 12,000 systems. No viruses where later found on customer systems.

Irish Times

contributed by turtlex
Melissa is still around wreaking havoc, this time it was Disney Corporation. A variant of Melissa known as Melissa.A infected an internal memo which it then proceeded to mail out to the several members of the press. Luckily the memo did not reveal any corporate secrets, this time.

ZD Net