The Times: Tech column - National Hi-Tech Crime Unit/Newsblaster/Geek egg-frying
By David Rowan
IN AN anonymous office block on the Isle of Dogs, East London, Britain's chief cybercop is facing a problem: where to store the vast evidence of online crime that his team is constantly accumulating. The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit is barely five months old but already its investigations have produced three terabytes of data implicating paedophiles, hackers and the occasional opportunist fraudster. "If we printed it out on A4 paper, it would stretch 30 miles," says Len Hynds, the policeman heading the unit.
There has clearly been no slump in the cybercrime sector. The unit, set up to work with police forces and intelligence services here and abroad, occasionally emerges to make headlines when it helps to trap paedophile gangs or software pirates. But its unreported work says far more about the Internet's day-to-day dangers.
The growth areas include virus-writing, hacking and auction frauds. As Len Hynds sees it, we as a population are not doing all we should to protect ourselves. Even now, he says, the classic bank fraud swindler finds willing victims who reply to unsolicited e-mails promising riches and end up being fleeced. He is also seeing a rise in auction fraud, where people are duped into buying bargains on websites that fail to deliver.
Parents, he says, should not underestimate the risks facing their children. "Some paedophiles are experts at convincing children that they are the same age, and we know children are still arranging to meet people whom they find in chatrooms. That is a dangerous situation."
Gangs are currently trying to avoid detection by posting material only briefly before removing it. But what really worries Hynds is the reluctance of companies to admit to falling victim to crimes. "In the UK, two thirds of businesses do not report security breaches for commercial reasons," he says. "I am concerned that companies are falling victim to online commercial extortion and we are not being told." This particular crime is growing, he says, as hackers find businesses prepared to pay in exchange for not breaching their IT systems.
If you are not yet worried about your company's security, you should be, says Hynds: "Too many companies still see IT security as an issue for the IT department. But IT managers are neither trained nor equipped to protect the company's most valuable secrets."
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NOW this is worrying. Computer scientists at Columbia University have discovered what some people have long suspected: that a suitably programmed computer writes at least as well as the average journalist. A team led by Kathleen McKeown has developed artificial-intelligence software that surfs news websites and summarises the main stories in crisp, lucid sentences - all without claiming lunch expenses.
The program, called Newsblaster, uses a natural-language processing algorithm to spot patterns in stories posted on the Reuters, BBC, Washington Post and 14 other websites, and the daily results (at www.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/newsblaster) are horrifyingly credible. This week, for instance, Newsblaster summarises 41 news items from Israel in 130 words, before reporting that "the buzz at the Grammy Awards was all about the so-called roots music movement". The voice lacks a certain sparkle, and the filtering is only as good as the source material, but the project shows what is possible with AI technology.
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Now here's a site that is really cooking. The code writers' most pored-over Web page this week concerns an XP1500+ processor, an MSI K7T266 motherboard ... and a raw egg. In a series of detailed instructions and photos (found at www.handyscripts.co.uk/trubador_egg.htm) someone called Trubador has become an instant Web celebrity for showing how to fry an egg inside one's computer. Sometimes the word "geek" just doesn't go far enough.
(The Times, March 6 2002)
IN AN anonymous office block on the Isle of Dogs, East London, Britain's chief cybercop is facing a problem: where to store the vast evidence of online crime that his team is constantly accumulating. The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit is barely five months old but already its investigations have produced three terabytes of data implicating paedophiles, hackers and the occasional opportunist fraudster. "If we printed it out on A4 paper, it would stretch 30 miles," says Len Hynds, the policeman heading the unit.
There has clearly been no slump in the cybercrime sector. The unit, set up to work with police forces and intelligence services here and abroad, occasionally emerges to make headlines when it helps to trap paedophile gangs or software pirates. But its unreported work says far more about the Internet's day-to-day dangers.
The growth areas include virus-writing, hacking and auction frauds. As Len Hynds sees it, we as a population are not doing all we should to protect ourselves. Even now, he says, the classic bank fraud swindler finds willing victims who reply to unsolicited e-mails promising riches and end up being fleeced. He is also seeing a rise in auction fraud, where people are duped into buying bargains on websites that fail to deliver.
Parents, he says, should not underestimate the risks facing their children. "Some paedophiles are experts at convincing children that they are the same age, and we know children are still arranging to meet people whom they find in chatrooms. That is a dangerous situation."
Gangs are currently trying to avoid detection by posting material only briefly before removing it. But what really worries Hynds is the reluctance of companies to admit to falling victim to crimes. "In the UK, two thirds of businesses do not report security breaches for commercial reasons," he says. "I am concerned that companies are falling victim to online commercial extortion and we are not being told." This particular crime is growing, he says, as hackers find businesses prepared to pay in exchange for not breaching their IT systems.
If you are not yet worried about your company's security, you should be, says Hynds: "Too many companies still see IT security as an issue for the IT department. But IT managers are neither trained nor equipped to protect the company's most valuable secrets."
++++
NOW this is worrying. Computer scientists at Columbia University have discovered what some people have long suspected: that a suitably programmed computer writes at least as well as the average journalist. A team led by Kathleen McKeown has developed artificial-intelligence software that surfs news websites and summarises the main stories in crisp, lucid sentences - all without claiming lunch expenses.
The program, called Newsblaster, uses a natural-language processing algorithm to spot patterns in stories posted on the Reuters, BBC, Washington Post and 14 other websites, and the daily results (at www.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/newsblaster) are horrifyingly credible. This week, for instance, Newsblaster summarises 41 news items from Israel in 130 words, before reporting that "the buzz at the Grammy Awards was all about the so-called roots music movement". The voice lacks a certain sparkle, and the filtering is only as good as the source material, but the project shows what is possible with AI technology.
++++
Now here's a site that is really cooking. The code writers' most pored-over Web page this week concerns an XP1500+ processor, an MSI K7T266 motherboard ... and a raw egg. In a series of detailed instructions and photos (found at www.handyscripts.co.uk/trubador_egg.htm) someone called Trubador has become an instant Web celebrity for showing how to fry an egg inside one's computer. Sometimes the word "geek" just doesn't go far enough.
(The Times, March 6 2002)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, March 06, 2002
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