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TOP STORIES FOR MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2004 Chinese Academic Calls for Site Reopening Microsoft Allows Limited Access to Office Code Attacks on Windows Machines on the Rise Phishing Rife on Internet CHINESE ACADEMIC CALLS FOR SITE REOPENING A law professor at Peking University, He Weifang, has written an open letter calling on the government to reverse a decision to shut down the Yita Hutu bulletin board, commonly referred to as YTHT, its Web address. Last week, government officials ordered that the site be permanently shut down and quickly afterwards prohibited discussion about the closure in other online groups. YTHT was created in 1999 by a graduate student and reportedly grew to comprise more than 700 discussion groups with more than 300,000 registered users. Many of the topics covered on the YTHT site were banned from state-run media coverage, including human rights issues and questions about Taiwan. In his letter, He said the site was "an important source of information and a channel for discussion for tens of thousands of netizens around the world, including the teachers and students of our university." Xiao Qiang, the head of the China Digital News project at the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, supported the importance of the YTHT site, calling it "the most politically provocative online community in Chinese cyberspace." Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 September 2004 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2004/09/2004092004n.htm MICROSOFT ALLOWS LIMITED ACCESS TO OFFICE CODE In another step to try to cope with growing competition from vendors of open-source software, Microsoft has announced a program to give some governments and international organizations access to the source code of its Office software, including Outlook, Word, and Excel. The announcement marks an expansion of an existing program that offers governments access to the Windows operating system, a program in which about 30 countries already participate. Ted Schadler of Forrester Research said Microsoft's so-called "shared source" program has so far been successful with a number of governments around the world, providing them with reassurance that the company is not hiding anything in its source code. With the growing competition from products such as Sun Microsystems's StarOffice, which is based on the open-source OpenOffice program, Microsoft needed to add its business software to the shared source program, said Schadler. Microsoft's Jason Matusow said that the company's decision to offer access to its Office applications was based more on "long-term discussions around transparency" than on open-source concerns. Wired News, 20 September 2004 http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,65018,00.html ATTACKS ON WINDOWS MACHINES ON THE RISE Computer security firm Symantec said that the number of viruses and worms that target Microsoft's Windows operating system jumped 400 percent in the first six months of the year compared to the same period last year. In all, nearly 5,000 new Windows viruses and worms were identified between January and June. Symantec's report echoed a warning from MessageLabs in August that spammers and computer hackers were working together to take advantage of weaknesses in the Windows operating system. According to Alfred Huger, a senior director at Symantec's Security Response team, hackers are increasingly selling illicit access to computers to spammers, who are having greater difficulty getting their messages past e-mail filters. Reuters, 20 September 2004 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=6281135 PHISHING RIFE ON INTERNET Phishing scams are proliferating on the Internet, and some are sophisticated enough to fool even seasoned Web users. Phishing scams use bogus e-mails and Web sites designed to look like those of legitimate companies to trick users into revealing personal information, such as credit card numbers, that can then be used in any number of other crimes. According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, Citibank has become the most popular ruse, with nearly 500 separate scams designed to fool Citibank customers into divulging sensitive information. Scams directed at Ebay users totaled 285, according to the group. Lawrence Hefler, vice president of e-business and strategic alliances at Hilton Grand Vacations and the chairman of the Direct Marketing Association's Internet committee, was fooled by one of the fake Citibank messages. As Hefler noted, most of the more deft phishing scams, including the one he fell for, make a point of talking about security issues and the potential for identity theft. New York Times, 20 September 2004 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/technology/20phish.html ***************************************************** EDUPAGE INFORMATION To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your settings, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/ Or, you can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName To UNSUBSCRIBE, in the body of the message type: SIGNOFF Edupage If you have subscription problems, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For past issues of Edupage or information about translations of Edupage into other languages, visit http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/ ***************************************************** OTHER EDUCAUSE PUBLICATIONS EDUCAUSE publishes periodicals, including "EQ" and "EDUCAUSE Review," books, and other materials dealing with the impacts and implications of information technology in higher education. 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