Pentagon hacker earns extradition delay
Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon has been granted a short reprieve from possible extradition to the US while a European court decides whether to intervene, reports The Register.
Law lords rejected McKinnon's appeal against extradition last month, leaving the European Court of Human Rights as his final avenue of appeal.
McKinnon's solicitors, Kaim Todner, have lodged an appeal to the European court arguing that strong-arm tactics used by US authorities during plea bargaining negotiations and concerns that McKinnon may be subject to a military tribunal constitute a violation of his human rights.
UK banks charge for text messages
UK banks are now charging customers for services offered via SMS - a facility that used to be offered free until recently following the introduction of mobile banking last year, says Computing.co.uk.
Lloyds TSB introduced a limit alert service in November to alert customers of overdraft limit alerts. In addition to existing free weekly balance text updates, customers are charged a monthly fee of £2.50 to get a "limit alert" SMS service that warns them if they are close to, or over, their account limit. The charge is irrespective of the number of monthly texts received by customers.
More banks seem to be following suit, including Barclays, Abbey and Alliance & Leicester (A&L). A&L intends to begin charging a monthly fee for customers using text message services from October.
'Pump and dump' conmen targeted
Scammers using the Internet to hype stocks are being targeted with software that can spot fraudulent trading patterns, says The BBC.
Many hi-tech conmen use junk mail to hype stocks so they can sell shares they own in the companies at a profit.
It has been estimated that 15% of all spam or junk e-mail is made up of messages that "pump" stocks that are later "dumped".
Russian cyber attacks target Georgia
Following just six days after the initiation of the Georgia-Russian conflict, the Georgian Internet became the target of a coordinated cyber attack, which compromised several government Web sites with defacement and denial-of-service attacks, crippling the nation's ability to disseminate information, reports CRN.com.
Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili's site was defaced, integrating his image with those of Hitler.
The sabotage was followed by a denial-of-service attack that left the presidential site inaccessible.
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