New Worm Attacks Windows Computers; Red Hat Intros Software Warranties; Resistance to Patriot Act Gaining Ground; Credit Card Firm at Center of Child Porn Ring

New Worm Attacks Windows Computers

A new Internet worm that spread through Asia, Australia and Europe on Monday is expected to take hold in the United States on Tuesday as people go back to work after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. According to The Washington Post, the “Bagle” or “Beagle” worm arrives as an attachment to an e-mail with the subject line “Hi” and “test : )” in the body text. The worm is activated when a user clicks on the attached file. Once the attachment is opened, the worm tries to send copies of itself to all of the e-mail addresses that it finds on the victim’s computer, and installs a program that lets attackers connect to infected machines, install malicious software or steal files. The Post reports that evidence suggests more than a million computers have been infected so far, in more than 100 countries. Security experts suspect the worm may be the precursor to more evolved versions that will appear when the first version self-destructs as it is designed to do after Jan 28. Red Hat Intros Software WarrantiesThe Register today, Red Hat said yesterday it will offer software warranties for enterprise users of Red Hat Linux. It offers customers a measure of vendor-indemnification against legal action on copyright infringement grounds. This is mainly with SCO in mind, since SCO accuses some vendors of illegally donating Unix code (and SCO owns some of the intellectual property rights to the Unix operating system) to the open source Linux system. SCO is also claiming royalties from businesses that use Linux.

According to a story in

Resistance to Patriot Act Gaining GroundThe Boston Globe today, opponents of the USA Patriot Act say a nascent bipartisan groundswell in communities across the nation signals a growing dissatisfaction with the expansion of federal powers. The grassroots response includes strange bedfellows: librarians and libertarians, gun lobbyists and anti-war protestors, religious groups and fiscal conservatives. The burgeoning nationwide movement has prompted three state governments, and 236 communities in 37 states, to pass resolutions against the Patriot Act. If the backlash continues to grow, opponents of the Patriot Act believe, their momentum will force Congress and the White House to address some of the law’s unpopular elements.

According to a story in

Credit Card Firm at Center of Child Porn RingCNN.com story late last week. The cases stem from an Internet processor of website subscriptions in Minsk, Belarus, which collected fees for memberships to child pornography websites that brought in millions of dollars. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the ring was dismantled through efforts of agents from the Internal Revenue Service, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the FBI, as well as law enforcement in Belarus, France and Spain. The Belarus company, Regpay Co. Ltd., and Fort Lauderdale-based Connections USA were indicted in a money-laundering scheme involving paid memberships to about 50 pornography websites. The CEO of Connections pleaded guilty last Wednesday in federal court in Newark to a conspiracy to launder money for Regpay and its principals. About two dozen people in New Jersey and 20 others around the nation have been charged with downloading child pornography, according to CNN.

Federal officials announced they had cracked an international child pornography ring with arrests in New Jersey, France, Spain and Belarus, according to a