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This week identity theft issues are explored, a caution is sent out to Barclays Bank clients, hackers target PSP and some more on hoaxes, worms, and phishing.

Identity theft is becoming a serious issue - we all know that. A new law in Indiana is protecting its residents against this form of data loss, making it the 35th state to adopt a "breach notification" statue.

The law, HEA 1101, requires any company doing business in the state to immediately notify a resident whose personal information has been acquired through unauthorised means.

The American National Standards Institute, the Better Business Bureau and companies including Dell and Microsoft have created a resource providing organisations with standards and guidelines for preventing and responding to identity theft and fraud.

Led by the Identity Theft Prevention and Identity Management Standards Panel, this initiative will firstly identify existing standards related to ID theft and then identify areas where updated or new standards are needed.

The latest bank clients to be targeted by phishers - and in a large way - are those of Barclays Bank, reports PandaLabs.

So far, Panda has detected at least 61 variants of the spoof e-mail, with 64% of analysed phishing e-mails aimed at Barclays` clients.

Microworld Technologies has warned about the return of the Olympic torch virus hoax, predominantly doing the rounds in the online community Web site Orkut.

Two Moroccan hackers have been jailed for creating and distributing the Zotob worm that squirmed through Windows 2000 networks in August 2005.

Ilva Pieterse, ITWeb journalist

For those who don`t remember its initial circulation in February of this year, this hoax warns against an e-mail with an attachment called "Invitation" and claims the virus "opens an Olympic Torch which `burns` the whole hard disc C of your computer".

Even if the e-mail quotes CNN, Microsoft and security firms, this is a deliberate hoax, and should be sent straight to the deleted items folder.

PandaLabs has identified a buffer overflow vulnerability that could be used to run malicious code on any PSP with firmware capable of viewing TIFF files.

Proof-of-concept code already exists that can be run using this vulnerability - particularly dangerous as it could be exploited through malicious code programmed for this purpose or even directly by hackers.

On a good note, two Moroccan hackers have been jailed for creating and distributing the Zotob worm that squirmed through Windows 2000 networks in August 2005.

Farid Essebar, the 19-year-old hacker who wrote the worm code and used it to hijack computers globally for use in for-profit botnets, was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the attack.

Achraf Bahloul, a 22-year-old friend of Essebar, will serve one year in jail.

Sources used: Inside Indiana Business, Techweb, PandaLabs, Microworld Technologies, Ziff Davis