Computer Security Cases

2012's Most Notable Computer Crimes Several high-profile criminal cases involving technology reached their conclusions in 2012. They include the conviction of several executives of an e-waste recycling company that sent waste to China rather than processing it in the U.S. as they had claimed. Also, a federal court convicted a man of breaking into AT&T's servers to steal information about its users. Users of the Internet and electronic gear are vulnerable to criminals near and far, but we don't always hear about what happens at court and whether the alleged criminals are convicted or acquitted. Here is an update on some those crimes for consideration. E-Waste Conviction for Exporting IT Gear After an 11-day jury trial in Denver, members of the management of Executive Recycling were convicted of illegally disposing of e-waste overseas; mail and wire fraud; smuggling and obstruction of justice. Executive Recycling falsely advertised to potential customers that it would dispose of old computers, PDAs, TVs and other electronic waste in compliance with all local, state and federal laws and regulations. CBS "60 Minutes" reporters followed shipments from Denver to Hong Kong and broadcast their report, in 2009. The electronic gear sent to Hong Kong ultimately made its way to southern town of Guiyu, China. The show called Guiya "a sort of Chernobyl of electronic waste." "Greenpeace has been filming around Guiyu and caught the recycling work. Women were heating circuit boards over a coal fire, pulling out chips and pouring off the lead solder. Men were using what is literally a medieval acid recipe to extract gold. Pollution has ruined the town. Drinking water is trucked in. Scientists have studied the area and discovered that Guiyu has the highest levels of cancer-causing dioxins in the world. They found pregnancies are six times more likely to end in miscarriage, and that seven out of 10 kids have too much lead in their blood," the report said. The U.S. Department of Justice provided evidence that Executive Recycling exported more than 300 cargo containers from the U.S. between 2005 and 2008, and approximately 160 of these contained electronic gear. Sentencing is scheduled for April. Arrest of Ceglia Who Sued for Part Ownership of Facebook The FBI arrested Paul Ceglia for alleged criminal violations including fabricating evidence for a lawsuit to obtain a substantial interest in Facebook. Ceglia claimed he signed a contract in 2004for Web design for Facebook, entitling him to 84 percent of Facebook. The criminal complaint filed for mail and wire fraud includes allegations against Ceglia that he • filed a federal lawsuit falsely claiming that he was entitled to at least a 50 percent interest in Facebook; • has deliberately engaged in a systematic effort to defraud Facebook and Zuckerberg and to corrupt the federal judicial process; and • manufactured and destroyed evidence, for instance replacing a page of the original contract with a fraudulent one that made it look like Zuckerberg had offered Ceglia interest in the company. Attorneys for Zuckerberg and Facebook "commend the United States Attorney for charging Ceglia with federal crimes in connection with his fraudulent lawsuit against Facebook. Ceglia used the federal court system to perpetuate his fraud and will now be held accountable for his criminal scheme," Computerworld reported. In 2010, when Ceglia sued Zuckerberg, the Wall Street Journalreported about Ceglia: "In 2009, New York's Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo accused Mr. Ceglia of defrauding customers of his wood-pellet fuel company, according to a news release from the Attorney General's office. The state claimed that he took more than [US]$200,000 from consumers and then failed to deliver any products or refunds. The wood-pellet case is ongoing." iPad Data Breach Lead to Conviction In November, a federal jury in New Jersey convicted Andrew Auernheimer of identity theft and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers. In 2010, Auernheimer illegally gained access to AT&T's servers and stole "more than 120,000 email addresses of iPad users including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and film mogul Harvey Weinstein." Auernheimer used his hacker name of "Weev" and at trial testified that he publicized the breach because "the consumer has a right to be informed when they're put at risk by a company." In the meantime AT&T claims it solved the technology problem that allowed Auerheimer to violate their servers in order to eliminate future similar crimes. Google Executives Acquitted In 2010, an Italian trial court convicted three Google executives in absentia for failing to promptly take down a video which depicted teenagers who were bulling an autistic boy. Ironically, Google took the offending video within 24 hours of notice, but the trial court nonetheless convicted the Google executives. In December 2012, an appellate court overturned the convictions, a move that was welcomed by Google and other ISPs who do not want to face criminal liability for content posted by users. Under the 1996 Communications Decency Act, ISPs do not have liability for content posted by users on their websites, but will have liability if the ISPs do not take down offending content once they are aware of its offensive nature. Other countries, including Italy, have similar laws, one of which was upheld by the Italian court. Discussion: Provide your views and thoughts on each of the above cases. How can security be tightened to prevent each of this incidents from happening in the future, provide your solution(s). Posts to be completed by Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning Opportunities

SAP Gets Real-Time With HANA-Powered Business Suite SAP's integration of its business suite with its in-memory HANA database puts it into the thick of the Big Data competition with Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. The new engine allows both transactional and analytical processing to take place in real time. This could be a game-changer for SAP if enough of its enterprise customers want to board the bullet train. SAP last week released SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA (High-Performance Analytic Appliance), which marries its popular integrated applications with its high performance business analytics platform. SAP Business Suite is the largest application SAP has in terms of customers, Ken Tsai, VP, SAP Hana product marketing at SAP, told the E-Commerce Times. "That makes this release a major milestone for SAP." The introduction of SAP Business Suite by HANA is attracting significant interest from ISVs and third parties, Tsai added. Analytics for the Masses The rollout of this product on HANA is an important step for SAP, Charles King, principal of Pund-IT, told the E-Commerce Times. In a nutshell, HANA is SAP's attempt not only to bring analytics to the masses but also to give the company a seat at the table as demand for such capabilities explodes. "That is the larger strategy and value proposition that SAP is going after with this release," said King. Until recently, much of the interest in analytics technologies and solutions has been driven by systems vendors, he noted. Typically, their response was to deliver a database plus specially designed and optimized hardware. "What SAP has done is come up with an analytics engine that can be deployed on any x86 platform," King observed. "HANA could become a de facto analytics platform for industry standards-based systems." SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA "puts SAP in the thick of it and its partners in the thick of it too," he said. Making Business Real-Time SAP has deployed other business applications on HANA, and it also plans to deploy SAP Business All-in-One on HANA for its medium sized customers. However, SAP Business Suite will likely become the company's poster child for HANA, given its integration and range of capabilities. "It is the same suite that our customers know and love, but faster and in real time," Tsai said. "Otherwise, the user interface has not changed. All we did was optimize the operation so users could take advantage of what HANA has to offer." With a combined transactional and analytical workload, as well as combined predictive and prescriptive analytics, HANA's strength is in real-time calculation and analysis, Tsai said. That means as new data enters the system, it immediately becomes available to line of business users. "Customers can collect real-time insights and run simulation scenarios on the spot when trends or data change quickly," Tsai pointed out. For example, say a factory received a last-minute request to increase an order size. With a system running on HANA, said Tsai, it would be possible to see almost immediately whether it could accommodate the order. Similar capabilities can be applied to any business function, he said, from marketing analysis to financial closes, receivables management, material resource planning, and consumer and social sentiment analysis. Discussion: How does a system such as this increase productivity of a business? Provide your thoughts on this type of application to your small business idea. How does this compare with similar products from other ERP suppliers? Posts are due by January 21st!