Indian American hacker pleads guilty again

An Indian American computer whiz, who graduated top of class while he was behind bars, has been caught for the third time for identity theft.Shiva Sharma, a resident of New York City, has pleaded guilty for ID theft in his third prosecution in two years, Queens district attorney Richard A. Brown announced.He allegedly obtained the personal identity information and credit card numbers of various individuals and used them to make thousands of dollars in purchases from auto parts, computer, jewellery and other companies.Sharma graduated top of Horizon Academy's Class of 2005 while he was behind bars awaiting trial in the previous cases. He graduated with a number of awards, including one for Outstanding Achievement in Computer Technology. He had escaped prison term in the earlier cases by entering a plea deal for 350 hours of community service not involving computers and office work.District Attorney Brown said: "The defendant has admitted his guilt yet again to engaging in the crime of identity theft despite a judge's earlier warning that he would face severe penalties, including imprisonment, if he were to do so.""The defendant may have not learned the first two times, but struck out the third time and will learn the hard way, behind bars, that identify theft is considered a very serious crime in Queens County that is vigorously prosecuted and severely punished. Hopefully he has now finally learned his lesson," he said.

http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=25399

Sex toys coming soon to drugstore near you

Better believe it. Shoppers Drug Mart, the country's largest drugstore chain, Wal-Mart Canada and a slew of other stores have entered into agreements to stock their shelves, coast to coast, with a new line of sex toys, discreetly called "sexual well-being products."

The move is especially surprising for Wal-Mart, which doesn't sell video games rated "adult-only" and recently removed a magazine from one of its stores after a customer complained that it was too sexual.
Story here

Mozilla nightmare continues as site hit by hackers
Not-for-profit software group Mozilla has been hit by hackers downloading infected source code onto its website.
According to antivirus company Kaspersky, Korean distributions for Mozilla and Thunderbird for linux were infected with viruses until removed in the last week.

'This virus searches for executable ELF files in the current and /bin directories and infects them,' said the Russian company on its weblog. 'When infecting files, it writes itself to the middle of the file, at the end of a section of code, which pushes the other sections lower down.'

The virus also contains a backdoor so that the infected machine can be infected further.

The news arrives in a bad week for Mozilla. A Symantec report revealed Mozilla had more confirmed vulnerabilities than any other browser.

The organization hit back, claiming that it patches faster than its rival so can therefore still claim to be the safest.

In July SC reported a server hosting a community site that markets the Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser was hacked, apparently to send spam.
SC Magazine

Hackers hit Google
Virus writers have developed a worm that spoofs the behaviour of Internet search engine Google, varying the results displayed to suit the requirements of hackers, reports the Channel Register.

P2Load-A modifies the host's file on the infected PCs by replacing the original with a file downloaded from a remote Web site under the control of hackers.

When users run a search, the results are normally shown correctly, but the sponsored links are different.
The changes in behaviour happen because users are getting their results from a hacker-controlled Web site based in Germany.
Hackers hit Google

Hackers are now con artists Attacks for kicks are thing of the past
Security outfit Symantec says the days of hackers being kids breaking into networks for fun are now over. Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report said that modern hackers are now in the game for the cash and are usually organising cyber con-tricks. During the first half of 2005, the number of attacks focusing on Windows increased by more than 48 percent. Viruses which tried to expose confidential information made up three-quarters of the top 50 viruses, worms and Trojans, up from 54 percent in the last six months of 2004. Most of these are Trojans that are designed to create zombie spam networks. The ‘new breed’ of hackers are renting space on these sorts of worms to make a quick buck. As financial rewards increase, attackers will likely develop more sophisticated and stealthier malicious code that will try to disable antivirus, firewalls, and other security concerns, the report said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091900026.html

Freeipods is still going strong
Check out http://www.tommee.net/Vegas_9-15-05/target0.html
it's really easy.

Dell DJ Ditty now available
The Dell DJ Ditty is already available on the Dell website. Small player but with a screen too. You can pick one up for $99.

Boy who hacked Paris' phone jailed
The teen who hacked into Paris Hilton's cell phone and published its contents on the internet early this year has been sentenced to 11 months in a juvenile correctional facility.

According to the Washington Post, the 17-year-old boy from Massachusetts is being protected by prosecutors who refuse to reveal his identity because he is a juvenile under federal law.

The prosecutors confirmed that the boy pleaded guilty to nine counts of juvenile delinquency — including hacking, theft of personal information and making bomb threats to high school.

While convicted and for two years after his release, the boy is prohibited from using computers, mobile phones and other technologies enabling internet connection.

source: http://entertainment.iafrica.com/news/487476.htm