contributed by Code Kid
David L. Smith, the man who has been charged with creating and disseminating the Melissa virus, admitted to investigators that he did it, according to court papers. Lawyers for the defense dispute that an admission of guilt was made. Smith has pleaded not guilty to charges of interrupting public communication, conspiracy, theft of computer service, and wrongful access to computer systems. David Smith remains free on $100,000 bail.

C|Net
Nando Times
CNN

contributed by Evil Wench
Oxblood Ruffin, from the Cult of the Dead Cow, gives an interview about the existence of the Hong Kong Blondes. The HKBs are a group of Chinese dissidents who are trying to destabilize the Chinese Government through the Internet. Last week a report was issued that there was no evidence to support their existence and concluded that therefore they must not exist.

IT Daily

contributed by Yazmon
Global Markets Research (GMR), a UK company, has offered $50,000(US) to anyone who can break their proprietary email system within three months. The company designed 1on1 e-mail "to guarantee complete confidentiality", the program uses 2048 bit encryption while email is in transit and can autodelete email after it has been read.

BBC
1 on 1 Mail

HNN has stated its feelings about these 'Hacker Challenges' before. These should not be considered adequate testing methods. Reasons, 1) Most people with the knowledge to break systems like this are busy making bigger money elsewhere, 2) The real bad guys don't want to give away their secrets, 3) this is not a controlled environment conducive to good research.

If companies want publicity and a good test of their security then they should hire someone like NMRC, Phar Lap, L0pht, eEye, or any other independent third party security experts to review their software.

contributed by Ender
The National Security Agency has been actively recruiting at least one member of the underground community. Ender Wiggin, editor of OSAll web site has received offers for free tuition to a four year college, salary, and room and board, in exchange for working for the NSA for five years after graduation. After noticing the NSA was visiting his web site he sent an inquiring email and then received the offer to join this program.

OSALL - NSA and Kids
OSALL - Ender and CNN

contributed by Evil Wench
On two separate occasions stolen laptops where recovered with the help of the distributed.net RC5 client. The idiotic thieves did not reformat the hard drives of the stolen systems like they should have and instead started using them on the internet with the original software installed. Distributed.net was then able to match the original email address from the clients with the machines new IP numbers to trace the thieves.

Wired

Not everyone thinks this is a good thing. Some feel that Distributed.net erred by giving out its web logs without a warrant.

MindSec

contributed by grugnog
An email list to discuss news about recent hactivists events and analysis about hacktivism and for discussion possibly leading to a better understanding of what 'hacktivism' means (as a word and in a tactical, ethical and practical sense).

Hacktivism list