Ex Swedish PM ticketed

Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 17:49 | Posted in crime, Environment, Legal, Politics, Sweden | Leave a comment

As I wrote for almost a year ago, then Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson was suspected for failing to compose a working environment plan for the building site of his house. Such a failure is prosecutable as crime according to Swedish law.

Svenska Dagbladet writes that the prosecutor’s office has issued a fine to the ex Prime Minister. He now has 10 days to decide whether he is going to accept the fine. He will face prosecution if he wants to contest the ticket.

Mr. Persson’s party lost the election last autumn, after which he also resigned as the leader of now oppositional social democrats. The crime suspicion was not an issue during the campaign.

Cyber attacks against Estonia

Sunday, May 20, 2007 at 23:16 | Posted in crime, Estonia, eu, internet, russia, terrorism | 2 Comments
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Jose Nazario writes about the ongoing Ddos attacks against Estonia (via Peeter Marvet):

We’ve seen 128 unique DDoS attacks on Estonian websites in the past two weeks through ATLAS. Of these, 115 were ICMP floods, 4 were TCP SYN floods, and 9 were generic traffic floods. Attacks were not distributed uniformly, with some sites seeing more attacks than others

Jose’s access to inside records of ATLAS allows him to deliver detailed technical info on the measure of the force behind these attacks against the Estonian government, media, banks and other businesses.

On May 9th, the F-Secure blog posted a number of interesting screen shots, among them this one of a Russian hacker site, offering Denial-of-Service tools crafted for attacking Estonia:

Somebody really seems to be out there to get a country. Luckily, though, the EU commission president Jose Manuel Barroso made it clear right in the face of dictator Putin of Russia that an attack against one member country of EU is an attack against all of EU.

As F-Secure concludes their post:

We probably haven’t seen the end of these attacks yet.

Alas, Führer Putin and his SS are likely to continue their illegal actions.

Suspected cracker detained in Estonia

Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 0:26 | Posted in crime, Estonia, internet, russia | Leave a comment
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Due to the ongoing resistant cyber attacks against Estonia orchestrated by the Russian government, I am unable to access the Estonian daily Postimees through the web. No new headlines of the paper have appeared in my RSS reader in three days. Ironically, I was able to read in Postimees today via a proxy site that the Estonian police have taken into custody a person suspected to have actively participated in the attacks and also encouraged others to join the activity, thereby mediating detailed instructions to attack Estonian servers and web sites.

The suspect is called Dmitri, a 19 year old Estonian citizen living in Tallinn. According to a press statement of the prosecutor’s office, Dmitri has been useful in orchestrating the attacks, since as a local resident he is well oriented in the Estonian web. The prosecutors say that Dmitri encouraged others to crack web sites of the Estonian government and political parties.

What bothers me most with this Dmitri character is that he allegedly did this against the country he is a citizen of. Does his citizenship not have any importance above possessing an Estonian passport which provides him access to all EU countries and many other countries? Disagreeing with one’s own government is a civil right of great importance but I am old fashioned enough to think that a citizen is supposed to have some loyalty against their own government. At least enough loyalty not to participate in a cyber war against it.

Dmitri is naturally by definition innocent as long as he has not been found guilty by a court of law. If the evidence against him is strong enough for a guilty verdict, he will serve his sentence in an Estonian jail rather than a Russian one. That is of course nice for him, maybe even worth having an Estonian passport.

Is that the main reason for choice of citizenship these sad days?

Throwing away the key

Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at 7:20 | Posted in crime, USA | Leave a comment
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I agree that child pornography is disgusting. Abstractly speeking I may even agree that a person involved with child pornography should be put to prison and the key be thrown away. That is exactly what the state of Arizona did to Morton Berger but they took it literally.

Morton Berger was caught in possession of 20 pictures with child pornography. Had he lived elsewhere, he could have gotten a somewhat more reasonable sentence but Arizona has the toughest laws against child pornography in the US. Berger was sentenced to serve 200 years without the possibility of probation, early release or pardon. That is 10 years for each of the pictures he had.

The US Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal giving no reason to the ruling. Mr Berger’s lawyers argued that the sentence was much longer than that for rape or second degree murder which makes it cruel and unusual, thus unconstitutional. They certainly did have a point there.

I wonder what the corrections officials are going to do, assuming that Morton Berger does not survive the sentence. Are they going to put his coffin in the prison cell with instructions to coming generations that it is to be buried when the 200 years have been served?

via RA-Blog

Focus on what’s possible

Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 3:36 | Posted in crime, internet | Leave a comment

I wrote yesterday about the Swedish government’s legislative plan to criminalize denial of service attacks. You do not need to be a computer expert to conclude that the law would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to enforce. Joakim von Braun is Sweden’s leading computer security expert and he says exactly the same.

The expert says that there is nothing wrong with the idea as such. The problem is that the people, whose computers actually perform a dos attack, are innocent. They do not even know about it because their computer has been hijacked by a worm or a trojan.

The real purps are often outside Sweden and could not be prosecuted even if the investigators could produce evidence against them. Getting the evidence is extremely difficult. But the Swedish government wants to get their law and that is probably what they are going to get, enforceable or not.

What is the matter with these governments and politicians? A couple of hours ago I made a post about the German government’s stupid plan to regulate e-mail. Why do the politicians spend so much time and energy on matters they can do nothing about? Why don’t they focus on matters they could do something about? That way they could in the best case make a positive difference and perhaps even gain back some of their lost respect among the citizens.

Edit: Jan Kallberg makes a good point against the Swedish proposal. He writes that it would be legislation with the only purpose of stating an opinion. That is not what legislation is intended for.

Dos prosecutable

Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 0:14 | Posted in crime, internet, Sweden | 2 Comments

The Swedish government is considering to introduce a bill which would make a denial of service attack a prosecutable crime. The penalty would be either a fine or imprisonment of up to two years. The law would apply from 1st June 2007.

Last year the web sites of the Swedish police and the prime minister’s office were down due to denial of service attacks believed to be connected with police raids against file sharing communities. The investigators failed to produce evidence of crime on those occasions.

Edit: Read also Focus on what’s possible 

Web criminals in Berlin still in business

Monday, February 19, 2007 at 2:54 | Posted in crime, Germany, internet, WordPress | 2 Comments
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A week ago I wrote about a bold theft of my blog content. A couple of days later it looked like the thieves had taken down their page http://dogstrike.net/view.php?id=102481 but it was up again as I checked a moment ago. It very much looks to me like all of the site dogstrike.net consists of stolen posts from diffferent blogs in WordPress.com.

Looking at the WHOIS records of that site reveals that it very much looks like the domain has been registered with fake information. As far as I know, there is no Lenin Street in Istanbul and the phone number of the alleged registrant, who is supposed to be based in a non existing address in Istanbul, is Russian. The same goes for administrative, technical and billing contacts.

Interestingly, the same WHOIS lookup shows that the domain has been registered by KLIK MEDIA GMBH, a Berlin based business that Spamhuntress delivers interesting information about. They have been known to register regular spam sites but it now looks like they have also entered the business of stealing blog contents from bloggers like you and me.

Registering a web domain under so obviously fake coordinates as is the case with dogstrike.net is difficult unless the registrar plays along in the game. An honest registrar would have the interest of having the correct details. How else can they be sure that they are going to get their bills paid? The obvious answer is that they can not unless they are behind the site with fake initials themselves.

I know that there is no 100 % working way to get this sort of thieves out of business but I also know that their life can be made a bit more difficult. Therefore, my suggestion to the WordPress.com team is to have a look at the traffic from certain domains and IP’s and put up some blocks to make it that much more difficult to steal the contents of blogs hosted by WordPress.com.

And my suggestion to Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin is to investigate the background and business practice of this KLIK Media GmbH, Alt-Karow 3, 13125 Berlin, tel +49 30 9441 3291. I bet a thorough investigation would uncover interesting details for the prosecutors to work upon.

No crime to fart against face

Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 18:59 | Posted in crime, Finland, Legal | 1 Comment

According to Helsingin Sanomat farting against somebody’s face is not a prosecutable crime in Finland. A public prosecutor decided not to press charges against a confirmation class summer camp senior who woke up a late sleeping camper by letting down his pants and farting against the camper’s face.

The camper’s parents filed a criminal complaint for sexual assault. The investigating officers passed the matter to prosecutor under suspicion of libel or insult. The suspect said he had no intention to insult the camper. He described his action as a rude joke.

According to the prosecutor, the fart is not to be considered as an insult because it did not happen in public. The camper was not offended in public and considered the deed as a joke, according to the prosecutor.

Good morning, Finland!

Tuesday, October 10, 2006 at 21:43 | Posted in crime, Finland, internet, Media | Leave a comment

The Finnish Broadcasting Company’s web site YLE 24 wrote last night that the criminal investigators in Finland have issued a warning against spam mails that seem to offer a lucrative job as a financial manager. In reality the job would involve operating a money laundry and would be likely to bring a prison sentence to the “financial manager”.

It is of course nice that the Finnish police and media wake up. Better late than not at all, as it were. It would no doubt be even better if they kept themselves regulary informed about what is going on in the web.

I wrote about it exactly two months before YLE 24 published their story.

Danish courts must hear the press

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 at 10:45 | Posted in crime, Denmark, Journalism, Legal, Media, Press freedom | Leave a comment

According to Jyllands-Posten, Danish courts must provide members of the press an opportunity to express their views on the public interest on court cases before they rule on closed proceedings or mouth gag on the proceedings or trial parties. Denmark’s Supreme Court made the ruling in connection with a high profile murder case of Ghazala Khan. Nine of her relatives and family friends were convicted to long prison sentences for organizing an honor killing.

The president of the High Court of Eastern Denmark says that the court now has to figure out the practical terms under which the press is going to be heard in cases involving restrictions of publicity.

Money laundrers wanted

Wednesday, August 9, 2006 at 1:33 | Posted in crime, internet, russia, spam | 5 Comments

Marcel wrote last week about circulating spam mails that look like lucrative job offers as a financial manager. The “financial manager” is supposed to receive and re-distribute payments from diversed business transactions. In reality the work is nothing other than participating in a criminal money laundering scheme. Whereby I could bet that if and when the officials show interest against these activities, the “financial manager” would be the one to go to jail.

Marcel published one of those letters, sent by somebody calling themselves Comdex AG whose web site http://www.comdex-ag.com seems to be off line by now. The domain appears to be registered by somebody calling themselves D J Groove in Ekaterinburg, Russia. Remarkably similar mails have been circulated under the equally non existing business name Alleria AG, against which the Swiss police have issued a warning.

Peeter Marvet in Tallinn received a letter offering him a similar “managerial position”. This one was written in English using the business name Norway Consulting Group. Their web site is still on line, displaying the job offer for a money laundering manager.

There is a recently added warning against Norway Consulting Group in the fake bank database of Artists Against 419. Interestingly, the IP provided by the database seems to point to Kiel, Germany.

Added: It was drawn to my attention that this may be highly accidentally. The IP in Germany may very well be an infected computer of an innocent home user. Far from everybody hooked up to the web understand the importance of protecting their computers.

Peeter Marvet suggests that the media might take an interest on what the cyber criminal investigators in Estonia think about this sort of operations. That would no doubt sell as a news story in any serious publication. But to get to the bottom of this criminal activity, law enforcing organisations in several countries would have to make a well coordinated effort.

Since this would obviously not be possible without an active participation of Russian authorities, I do not think any major success is likely. The difference between legal and illegal in Russia is too diffuse and too many people operate on both sides of the legal boundary. So the best you and I can do is to protect our computers and not even dream of getting rich through money laundring.

Forgotten in toilet

Tuesday, August 8, 2006 at 9:00 | Posted in crime, social, Sweden | Leave a comment

Dagens Nyheter writes that the personnel in Solbacken nursing home in Landskrona, Sweden assisted a 95 year old lady to the toilet in the evening. Unfortunately, their shift was about to end and they forgot to tell the night shift about her which is why nobody missed her all night. The morning shift found her severely shocked, having spent 12 hours in the loo.

Unfortunately, the old lady got worse after the incident and died five days later. An inquiry has been started to determine whether the careless personnel caused the death of the woman.

If I ever become too old to cope on my own, I am going to refuse to go to Solbacken nursing home! Since I have no plans to emigrate to Sweden, it would not be a likely option anyway.

Post olympic career

Tuesday, August 8, 2006 at 7:52 | Posted in crime | Leave a comment
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Sometimes you wonder what those olympic champions become after they finish their sports career. Some of them continue in sports as trainers, administrators, journalists or even IOC members. Others are succesful in business. Quite a few managed to aquire an education during their sporting activities. They may become physicians, lawyers or scientists. Many olympic heroes have a splendid future in politics.

Apparently, an olympic champion may also become a common criminal. A human trafficer and kidnapper:

An Austrian court has sentenced a former Olympic gold medallist to jail for a plot to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy Romanian businessman.

Wolfgang Schwarz, a figure skater who won gold in the 1968 Winter Olympics, was sentenced to eight years jail.

BBC

So much for the glory and honor.

Early bird too early

Saturday, July 15, 2006 at 3:35 | Posted in crime, Sweden | Leave a comment

The Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter writes that a masked man carrying a shot gun was seen by a witness approaching the local cash office of Swedish Cashier Service in Smedjebacken. There was a surprise for him on the door step, though. The door was closed. The office would not open for another two and a half hours.

The unseccesful robber was seen leaving the place quickly. The police have no trace of him but he is nevertheless wanted for attempted robbery.

No honor among thieves

Tuesday, July 4, 2006 at 3:48 | Posted in crime, Germany, Legal | Leave a comment

The blogging lawyer Thomas Klotz in Heinsberg, Germany writes about a client who asked him if a legal action could be taken against her ex who had collected altogether 10.000 € from their friends to get them cheap television sets but failed to deliver. Thomas asked the client why she and her friends did not report him to the police. His action would no doubt constitute a fraud.

The client replied that they were a bit reluctant to turn to the police. Why? Because the tellies were stolen in the first place.

No honor among thieves these days.

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