Computer Security

Jalapenos dancing across your computer screen might look amusing, but their charm wanes once you realize they spice up your PC with unwanted pop-up ads. This malevolent software, known as adware, is rising rapidly as an Internet menace, rivaling spam in annoyance but potentially far more damaging. Its cousin, spyware, sits unseen on a computer but has the ability to track Internet use - including some programs that monitor keystrokes, a serious security threat. Yesterday, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles-based Intermix Media Inc., accusing the marketing firm of secretly installing spyware and adware on millions of home computers.

Hackers in the United States and abroad have gained access to hundreds of sensitive but unclassified government and military computer networks on the global Internet network, computer security experts said yesterday.While most of the intruders appear to be out for the computer equivalent of a joy ride, federal investigators say that some of them have been able to take control of several military computer systems, allowing them to steal, alter or erase computer records, even to shut the computer systems down.

Leaders of thoroughbred racing scrambled yesterday to reassure fans shaken by allegations of tampering on last Saturday's Breeders' Cup wagering. The allegations -- that a computer engineer working for a tote company may have electronically altered a bet after the race had been won -- could devastate a sport increasingly dependent on fans betting from afar through computers. The $3.1 million payoff to a Baltimore man has been frozen as investigators probe the circumstances of his wager.

Bill Anderson calls it his "aha" moment - that sudden flash of insight when he drew a career-altering connection between decades-old research and his job as a computer security expert. At that time, nearly two years ago, Anderson had a comfortable job as vice president at an established computer security firm in Maryland. But while sitting on his couch one day reading Consciousness Explained, a book by American philosopher Daniel Dennett, Anderson learned about one scientist's research into variations in the way the human eye reads and processes text and images.

Hundreds of corporate, government and university computers were bitten by the "love bug," a fast-spreading Internet virus disguised as an electronic love letter that paralyzed systems around the globe yesterday and left millions of computer users without e-mail. The victims included members of the U.S. Senate and Britain's Parliament, the Pentagon, the Social Security Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency, Ford Motor Co., AT&T and an unknown number of smaller companies. By noon, computer security experts at CERT, the government-funded agency that tracks these outbreaks, had logged more than 180 cases of the virus, affecting more than 270,000 computers across the United States.

Software giant Microsoft Corp. has joined the ranks of computer companies using a software security system that has sparked concern among some government crime fighters.The system is being deployed by a growing number of computer makers and software publishers -- including Digital, Lotus and Novell -- to protect and authenticate electronic mail messages and documents stored in computers. It can be used to create a "digital signature" on a message or document and to protect electronic mail from eavesdropping.

THE GOOD TIMES virus is a hoax.For more than a year, people have been sending alarms to one another via electronic mail that an insidious computer virus called Good Times is spreading over the Internet.According to the warnings, anyone who opens an electronic mail message with the words "Good Times" in its subject line risks all sorts of horrors, ranging from the erasure of hard disc drives to exploding video monitors.The E-mail warnings sound sufficiently dweeby to impress even experienced computer users.

/etc./password.Those 15 keystrokes, flashing across a computer screen in an Ellicott City barn last month, put Jamie Clark and two co-workers on a cyberspace hunt for international computer criminals in the fast-evolving world of Internet crime."

It's time to put hackers in their place. Over a period of seven months, they have erased, altered and stolen unclassified computer records from the Pentagon. In April, they pilfered an on-line copy of the National Security Agency's employee manual. If the North Koreans stole a government employee manual, we wouldn't worry. But because these break-ins were electronic, news organizations made a big deal and missed the larger point.Computer security is threatened, not by two-bit hackers, but by a lack of security on the Internet and other networks.

At Churchill Downs, players now have to place their bets several minutes before the race goes off. New York is following suit, but only for off-track bettors. And racing commissions in Illinois and Canada have banned the multi-race wagers involved in the recent bet-rigging scandals. Across North America, racing officials are taking steps to secure their systems and boost consumer confidence in the wake of the sport's biggest scam, one in which three fraternity brothers allegedly used computers to net more than $3 million.