Cyberterrorism

Cyber terrorism means that terrorist's use the Internet and other telecommunication tools in order to supporting organizational activities and for gaining expertise to achieve operational goals.Is cyber terrorism a synonym word for cyber crime?

Although some criticism state that the phrase cyber terrorism is not a proper term as in cyber space they only can produce annoyances not terror, others believe the effect of computer attack is more important than tools that is used by terrorists like bombs. They also declare economic disruption, fear and civilian deaths can be considered as terrorism attack too.

But do not forget even terrorists use computer and Internet for the strategy of spreading their massages quickly and to repeat them until they have saturated cyber space.

Reference :

http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=432

No More Bothering Comments

The lecturer of cyberlaw - Dr. Sonny Zulhuda- guided the class how to protect our self from defamation issues especially in our blogs.He pointed at two options that we have when one particular comment try to defame one person in our blogs.The first one is replying to that comment in order to reject it and showing the disagreement to that comment and making our self away from defamation others. The second item which he explained it as a easier way, is simply delete the comment. I think even though this kind of recommendation seems very simple but on the other hand can prevent many fundamental issues in the future. To proving how subtle ways they are, I have to show you this case which happened earlier in Dubai.

A UAE online magazine has to shut down for one month and ordered to pay Dh10,000 in damages for defamation.The case is about an article published by the magazine under the title "Abu Dhabi TV: Emirate TV only in name", But the case was not related to an article by the editor or the journalist, and was only about comments posted by readers. The judge said comments should were replied or the website manager should deleted them.The web manager said the huge number of comments on the article demonstrated the interest of visitors in the subject, and also demonstrated that it was hard for them to carefully read all the comments.

So after reading this case do you agree with me we should be more careful listeners especially to the lecturer?!

Reference of news:

http://gulfnews.com/

A Defamation Case

Today, in cyberlaw class we learnt about defamation( damaging one person's reputation by publishing false communication). For being sure to understand all aspects of defamation, I searched about latest case related to this issue. Here is the interesting case that I found.

One of the ex-employee of Rite Aid Company sued the company and online employee screening (ChoicePoint) because of defamation.

The story started when he fired because the company discovered the loss of more than $7,000 worth of cash and merchandise and was suspected to him.Then the company sent all information to the ChoicePoint.

The employee who claimed himself innocent ,could not find any other jobs because of now-spotty background.But the firm said every thing about him was truth so it can not be liable.

Now, I can remember the four elements of the defamation which the lecturer explained them in the class. He also emphasized all of these elements are necessary in order to establish a case in defamation for the plaintiff:
1. it must be false;
2. the statements must be defamatory in the sense that it lowers the plaintiff’s reputation;
3. it must refer to the plaintiff; and
4. it must be published.

Reference of news:

http://www.hrtechnews.com/

Frauds do not discriminate me and you , my dear classmates

Online attacks include phishing, pharming and Trojans is one of the most organized crime in recent decades. High education institutes, universities and colleges also are targeted by cyber criminals.But what is wealthy in colleges website?

Attackers mostly focus on accessing the log in credentials which be used by students to enter in their personal university page. This credentials compass of students user names and passwords. After accessing to students' information two possibility may occur.

Each student's personal profile consist of many important data such as students loans and banking account, credit card (mostly used for paying tuition fees) and also personal information such as date of birth and mail address.So the first possibility is stealing these data.

The second possibility is frauds use these information to spreed more spams because an email which send by university usually do not identify as a spam also it may be enclosed by students.

So I suggest to all students specially my dear classmates to be careful more than before. Frauds do not discriminate me and you.

Online Governance

Who knows me and you in cyberspace?and how? Have you ever thought about it? Is there anything like a Yellow Book in the internet that records all numbers and addresses?If you want to find any one from the Internet your task is typing his address or name into your computer. Of course, the address is unique (has to be) therefore, the computer guides you to the exact person that you target.But the question is , is there any one or any organization that is responsible for this case? If any conflict happens who can solve it and base on which regulation?Following are some information that I found in order to answering to these questions.

In 1998, the U.S Department of Commerce managed to creation a nonprofit regulatory body with responsibility of administration of the Internet name and address. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers established in response. According to the ICCAN website ,ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet.ICCAN also claimed in its website that it helped design and implement a low-cost system for resolving disputes over domain name ownership.

For more information please look at the ICCAN website :http://www.icann.org/

The Cyber Harassment Have Cost Us Children's Lives

I am very happy today as I heard the IOWA Division of Criminal Investigation's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force run a new website Thursday to help parents fight sexual predators.As a mother I am really worried about online harassment and children cheating and I am seriously agree with the Michael Ferjak statements: "I'm amazed frankly about how much they don't know about this.The sexting, the cyber harassment, cyber bullying those have cost us children's lives." He also declared removing the access of internet is not a good reply to this kind of crime. Even children deny to tell parents the truth because they afraid of losing their computer and internet.He stated parents always aware children to speak to strangers on the street but how about cyberspace?Have you ever spoken with your kids about online thieves? Therefore in my opinion parents must be fully aware of the potential risk of internet for children and also avoiding kids from the sexing and the cyber harassment depends completely on the subtle behavior of parents.The website has many useful tips for parent which I summarized main points here but I strongly recommend to all parents to read the website by them self.

Avoid unfamiliar "Chat Rooms",

Don't talk to people you don't know,

Never use your real name, age, or indication of your gender in your screen name or email address,

Never post personal information in a user profile.

The website address is http://iaicac.org

Reference of news:

http://www.kcci.com/

FBI Investigates iPad Cyber Security Breach

According to the Reuters today's news, the email addresses of more than 114,000 ipad users were disclosed therefore FBI started to investigate about this cyber threat.Gawker website was the first reporter.The breach of personal information happened when hackers group who named itself Goatse Security obtained a list of email addresses of ipad owners from AT&T ipad subscriber data. The list included email addresses of celebrities, chief executives and politicians.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and film mogul Harvey Weinstein are other victims of intrusion.

AT&T , has exclusive U.S right to carry both iphone and ipad ,accepted the breach but said the problem had solved.

FBI spokesman also said FBI has acknowledged the security breach and started its investigation.

ipad is a successful device in whole the world and ipad launched in April, has sold about 2million around the world. Critics believe this current issue do not have any affect to the popularity of ipad.

Reference of news:

www.reuters.com

Censorship in Cyberspace

Censorship refers to limit or control of publishing or accessing the internet's information. Base on this definition censorship is possible in some technical methods such as IP blocking (access to a certain IP address is denied) ,URL filtering ,DNS filtering and so on. It is obvious each country has specific regulation for freedom of speech in both online and offline condition and uses own method to band the internet.For instance Smart Filter which is a software program owned by Secure Computing is used by Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Sudan in Asia. US and UK are other Secure Computing users.

It is not surprising that users respond to filtering and always attempt to find a successful way to break the censorship.Some common methods are proxy websites, Java Anon Proxy, Tor and Sneaker nets.

Countries around the world categorize in to 5 sections in term of Open net Initiative: Pervasive, Substantial, Nominal, Indirect, Watchlist.

Example of Pervasive are Cuba and China and Substantial's example is Australia.

On the other hand, Reporters without Borders published a list in 2010 and named 13 countries as internet enemies. China , Cuba, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are seen in this list.

References of information:

www.jerf.org/writings/communicationEthics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship