If you’re worried about computer security, you should know…

Are you protected?

Do you use a computer?  Are you ever connected to the Internet?  Is your organization aware of the myriad computer threats?

Twenty years ago, if you answered yes to any of these questions, you would have been in the minority. Today, we’re all “connected” and assume our organizations are watching out for us.

At work, our organizations are responsible for ensuring we’re protected from a variety of threats, external and internal. There are a significant number of policies and standards that provide guidance to ensure there is no weakest link. Staying abreast of the latest policy changes and their impact on your organizational operations can seem daunting. Enter the Information Assurance (IA) Technology Analysis Center (IATAC).

Since its inception in 1998, IATAC has been a Department of Defense (DOD) central point of access for information on Information Assurance, Cyber Security, Defensive Information Operations, and Defensive Information Warfare. IATAC also provides assistance and expertise in emerging technologies in system vulnerabilities, research and development, models, and analysis to support the development and implementation of effective defense against Information Warfare attacks.

What does this mean to you? It means IATAC has been constantly building a knowledge base in hundreds of IA topic areas to assist organizations with their IA challenges; to help organizations counter threats before they become headlines; and if events do occur, provide a solid foundation to help organizations respond.

Two high profile examples of items that are top areas of concern today:

Two years ago, IATAC authored a comprehensive State-of-the-Art Report (SOAR) on the insider threat as it pertains to information technology systems. It discusses the different policy, technical, and procedural approaches being applied by government, industry, and academia to address the threat and describes ongoing research meant to further our ability to limit or prevent insider attack;

Within the last six months, IATAC authored another SOAR entitled: Security Risk Management for the Off-the-Shelf Information and Communications Technology Supply Chain.  This SOAR discusses threats to the supply chain and threats from a compromised supply chain as well as current and emerging countermeasure approaches and mitigations to vulnerabilities of those threats.

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Can IATAC help? Absolutely. IATAC provides assistance to organizations and individuals, hundreds of times each year.

Organizations can visit IATAC’s website at http://iac.dtic.mil/iatac and take full advantage of their centralized knowledge repository, resources and tools dedicated to IA and IA related subject areas.

The Information Assurance Technology Analysis Center (IATAC) is one of ten Information Analysis Centers (IACs) established by DoD and managed by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). IATAC is the DOD Center of Excellence responsible for acquiring, archiving, analyzing, synthesizing, and disseminating scientific and technical information related to information assurance and provides unbiased analysis to assist specific customers.

This article was sponsored by Police Technology.

Internet Seller of Pirated Software Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison for Criminal Copyright Infringement

May 28, 2010 - WASHINGTON—Robert Cimino, 60, of Syracuse, N.Y., was sentenced to 18 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga in the Eastern District of Virginia for his sales of more than $250,000 worth of pirated software, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride of the Eastern District of Virginia.

Cimino was also ordered to pay $272,655 in restitution to copyright owners and sentenced to three years of supervised release following his prison term.

On Feb. 25, 2010, Cimino pleaded guilty to a single count of criminal copyright infringement for manufacturing and distributing pirated copies of popular business, engineering and graphic design copies of software titles by Adobe, Autodesk, Intuit, Quark and others over a more than three-year period. According to court documents, Cimino operated under the business name “SoftwareSuite” and advertised the sale of discounted popular software programs on a variety of Internet-based advertising forums, including www.buysellcommunity.com, www.adpost.com and www.sell.com. Customers would contact Cimino by email and would typically pay for the products by PayPal. Cimino would then mail pirated copies of the programs he had burned to CD or DVD to the customers, including customers in the Eastern District of Virginia. >From February 2006 to September 2009, Cimino received at least $270,035 in gross proceeds from his sales of pirated software products.

The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Tyler G. Newby of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu of the Eastern District of Virginia. The case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

Internet Seller of Pirated Software Sentenced to 18 Monthsin Prison for Criminal Copyright Infringement

May 28, 2010 - Robert Cimino, 60, of Syracuse, N.Y., was sentenced to 18 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga in the Eastern District of Virginia for his sales of more than $250,000 worth of pirated software, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride of the Eastern District of Virginia.

Cimino was also ordered to pay $272,655 in restitution to copyright owners and sentenced to three years of supervised release following his prison term.

On Feb. 25, 2010, Cimino pleaded guilty to a single count of criminal copyright infringement for manufacturing and distributing pirated copies of popular business, engineering and graphic design copies of software titles by Adobe, Autodesk, Intuit, Quark and others over a more than three-year period. According to court documents, Cimino operated under the business name "SoftwareSuite" and advertised the sale of discounted popular software programs on a variety of Internet-based advertising forums, including www.buysellcommunity.com , www.adpost.com and www.sell.com . Customers would contact Cimino by email and would typically pay for the products by PayPal. Cimino would then mail pirated copies of the programs he had burned to CD or DVD to the customers, including customers in the Eastern District of Virginia. From February 2006 to September 2009, Cimino received at least $270,035 in gross proceeds from his sales of pirated software products.

The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Tyler G. Newby of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay V. Prabhu of the Eastern District of Virginia. The case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

Canadian Man Pleads Guilty to Selling Counterfeit Cancer Drugs Using the Internet

Hazim Gaber, 22, of Edmonton, Canada, pleaded guilty today in Phoenix before U.S. Magistrate Judge Edward C. Voss to selling counterfeit cancer drugs using the Internet, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke for the District of Arizona and FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix Field Office Nathan T. Gray.

Gaber was indicted by a federal grand jury in Phoenix on June 30, 2009, on five counts of wire fraud for selling counterfeit cancer drugs through the website DCAdvice.com. At the plea hearing today, Gaber admitted selling what he falsely claimed was the experimental cancer drug sodium dichloroacetate, also known as DCA, to at least 65 victims in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands between October and November 2007. According to the plea agreement, Gaber charged $23.68 for 10 grams of the purported DCA, $45.52 for 20 grams or $110.27 for 100 grams, plus shipping.

Gaber admitted that, in actuality, he sent victims a white powdery substance that was later determined through laboratory tests to contain starch, dextrin, dextrose or lactose, and contained no DCA. According to court documents, along with the counterfeit DCA, the packages also contained a fraudulent certificate of analysis from a fictitious laboratory and instructions on how to dilute and ingest the bogus DCA. DCA is an experimental cancer drug that has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in the United States. According to the plea agreement, Gaber knew that the website DCAdvice.com contained false claims that it was the only legal supplier of DCA and falsely claimed it was associated with the University of Alberta.

According to information contained in the plea agreement, DCA is an odorless, colorless, inexpensive, relatively non-toxic experimental cancer drug that is highly sought after by cancer patients. A doctor at the University of Alberta in Canada published a report in early 2007 summarizing the results of a study, which showed that DCA caused regression in several cancers, including lung cancer, breast cancer, and cancerous brain tumors. According to information contained in the plea agreement, DCA cannot be prescribed by a medical doctor in the United States or Canada, as it is neither currently approved for use in patients with cancer nor available in pharmacies.

At the plea hearing, Gaber also admitted to selling more than 800 pirated copies of business software between February 2007 and December 2008.

Gaber was arrested on July 25, 2009, in Frankfurt, Germany, and was extradited to the United States.

At sentencing, scheduled for Aug. 2, 2010, before U.S. District Court Judge James A. Teilborg, Gaber faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years on each of the five counts of wire fraud to which he pleaded guilty. Gaber also faces maximum fines of $250,000 per count. As part of the plea agreement, Gaber agreed to forfeit or cancel any website, domain name or Internet services account related to this fraud scheme.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Thomas S. Dougherty of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Sexton of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. Significant assistance has been provided by the Edmonton Police Service, the Alberta Justice Office of Special Prosecutions-Edmonton, the Competition Bureau of Canada, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Federal Trade Commission and the Alberta Partnership Against Cross Border Fraud. The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs provided assistance in this case. The case was investigated by the Phoenix FBI Cyber Squad.