Amazon.com Inc. subsidiary Bibliofind.com said that hackers stole the company’s customer records, including credit card information, according to a recent report in the on-line edition of The Wall Street Journal.
Hackers have access to customer data from October 2000 through February 2001, said the report, citing an e-mail sent by Bibliofind to its customers. Some 98,000 customers of Bibliofind are affected. Bibliofind, an on-line marketplace for hard-to-find old books, said it has notified the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and credit card companies of the incident, according to the e-mail message cited in the report. So far, there has been no indication that credit cards have been misused, but to prevent customer data from being compromised in the future, the company has removed all customer credit card numbers, physical addresses and phone numbers from its servers, according to the report.
Military satellite software stolen
Defense contractor Exigent International Inc. recently disclosed that an unknown number of hackers broke into a U.S. Navy computer system and made off with source code that controls dozens of military and commercial satellite systems around the world.
The Melbourne, Fla.-based company said in a statement that the incident, which occurred Dec. 24, may have compromised a small portion of an older version of its OS/COMET software that was stored on a computer at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. OS/COMET is commercial software that allows ground station operators to monitor satellite systems and communicate commands to those systems. However, experts agree that it is unclear how much damage the compromise has done to the security of dozens of military navigation and commercial communications satellites that use the software. Although the FBI has declined to comment on the investigation, the incident has been traced to systems in Sweden and a university in Kaiserslautern, Germany.
Study: companies slow to adopt B2B
A new study by market research firm Jupiter Media Metrix Inc. has found that managers in charge of purchasing for their companies plan to make only 20 per cent of their purchases on-line by 2002.
These findings come despite the widely touted benefits of business-to-business e-commerce, which is predicted to boom due to its reduced costs and increased efficiency. Though the buyers surveyed said they expect to buy on-line eventually, 60 per cent said that their preferred suppliers do not currently offer their goods on-line, thus keeping the B2B adoption rate low.
Court may buy AOL claim to “Buddy List”
A U.S. federal appellate court has affirmed a district court ruling that the terms “You Have Mail” and “IM” (instant message) cannot be considered the exclusive property of AOL Time Warner Inc., but sent the question of whether the term “Buddy List” is a valid AOL Time Warner trademark back to a district court for further consideration.
The ruling was issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., in a lawsuit filed by America On-line Inc. against AT&T Corp., whose WorldNet Internet service uses similar terms. AOL, which merged in January with Time Warner, claimed the terms were widely associated with AOL and pointed to its registration of the term “Buddy List” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Two Canadian e-tailers charged with piracy
Microsoft Canada recently announced that charges have been laid against two Canadian e-tailers in unrelated cases of alleged software piracy over the Internet.
The principals of New Brunswick-based BrenLor Marketing and Alberta-based Muckabout.com have been charged under the offences provisions of the Canadian Copyright Act with allegedly selling counterfeit Microsoft software on the Internet. Both of these cases initially came to the attention of Microsoft Canada through complaints from several different parties, including reports to the Microsoft anti-piracy hotline. The leads were turned over to local detachments of the RCMP for further investigation. This ultimately resulted in the seizure of allegedly counterfeit Microsoft products pursuant to search warrants obtained by the RCMP. Both cases are still before the courts.
“Last year alone, the Canadian economy lost more than $660 million because of pirated software,” said Michael Eisen, director of law and corporate affairs for Microsoft Canada. “Test purchases of Microsoft software from Internet auction sites have confirmed industry estimates that more than 90 per cent of the software sold on-line is not legal.”
Group said rulers on defensive against Internet
Regimes seeking to control their citizens’ free access to information are attacking Internet users, according to a new report from the human rights group Reporters sans Fronti