Sam Costello

"My belief is that hacking, above all...is about the passion and obsession for knowledge and truth," Thieme said. Hacking is also about freedom and the attempts to maximize it, he said.

Hong Kong stands alone in the world as the only country where a majority of Internet users make their connections to the

Network administrators and security staff now have additional tools with which to fight unwanted e-mail following the recent announcement of new anti-spam features in CipherTrust Inc.'s IronMail e-mail security appliance.

Microsoft Corp. Thursday released a patch for a vulnerability it called "critical" that could allow an attacker to take complete control of Windows 2000 systems. The company also released a cumulative patch for SQL Sever 7.0 and 2000 that repaired a new security hole.

A security hole in Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Sun One and iPlanet Web servers can allow an attacker to launch a denial of service attack on the server and to run attack code of his or her choice, according to a security alert released Friday by eEye Digital Security Inc.

LAS VEGAS - Hacking is not about creating viruses, breaking into computer systems or even rainbow-dyed hair, but is instead about the search for truth, critical thinking and the pursuit of knowledge, according to Richard Thieme, an author, consultant and former Episcopal priest, who addressed attendees here Saturday.

Despite a warning Monday from the U.S. government of impending cyberattacks, little impact has been seen at the Web sites and companies expected to be targeted.

At this time last year, Joseph Burton, a lawyer with Duane Morris LLP and Affiliates, was in Las Vegas consulting with his newest client, a Russian programmer arrested for violating the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by allegedly trafficking in tools designed to circumvent digital copyright protections.