Monday, May 28, 2001		Latest in IT world

Pentagon under computer attack

Unidentified hackers have been trying to break into the Defence Department computer networks in a constant push to disrupt US military forces, the Pentagon’s chief information officer said. "DoD is probed on a daily basis by those who are trying, or planning to disrupt our nation’s military capabilities," acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Linton Wells told a House Armed Services subcommittee. Last year, attackers pierced unclassified Defence Department networks 215 times, up slightly from 1999, but classified systems remained inviolate, said Army Maj. Gen. David Bryan, commander of the military’s recently renamed joint task force for computer network operations. Bryan said the culprits, often using encoded hacker tools widely available on the Internet, could be anyone from children to criminals to guerrillas or hostile governments.

Charges have been filed against 90 individuals and companies as a part of nationwide crackdown on the Internet fraud schemes that victimised an estimated 56,000 persons, the Justice Department and FBI said. The criminal charges grew out of operation "Cyber Loss," run by the Internet Fraud Complaint Centre, an arm of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that became operational just over a year ago to combat Web-based fraud. The cases being brought include online auction scams, systematic non-delivery of merchandise purchased on the Internet, credit-card fraud and multilevel marketing ploys that caused losses of at least $117 million, federal law enforcers said.

Japanese low-priced PC maker Sotec Co said last week it plans to boost its market share this year by focusing on high-performance PCs with multimedia functionality that are not necessarily cheap. "The gadget-loving Japanese consumer’s mindset when buying a PC is akin to changing cars, and they are not so price-sensitive," Sotec President Sochi Obe said in an interview with Reuters Television. Obe added, however, that he himself would never pay more than 1,50,000 yen ($1,220) for a PC and insisted that computers with audio-visual capability should be affordable. — Reuters