contributed by harvest and weld pond
Although Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) has yet to confirm rumors that all protection technologies in their contest were cracked, a team of researchers from Rice University, Princeton and Xerox now claim to have successfully removed the copy protection watermarks with minimal sound degradation. The researchers commented that the methods being implemented by SDMI to protect music were not viable in relation to modern technology in the first place. The kicker of this story has to be that this testing would not even be allowed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act unless SDMI specifically agreed to it.

ZDNet
AP via CNET
Salon
InternetNews.com
The Register
Newsbytes

contributed by weld pond
In the following article, MSNBC's Bob Sullivan discusses several nuances that separate the digital underground found in the United States from its European counterpart. Discipline, job opportunities, accessibility to the Internet and to cutting edge technology are some of the factors that differentiate the two factions, along with the role governmental forces play in this arena.

MSNBC

contributed by weld pond
Led by Stephen Whitelaw, software programmers in Scotland claim to have created a map of the World Wide Web in an attempt to identify its "dark" side. In eighteen monthes the group created a list of 40 different categories they consider offensive and developed a software platform that aims to combat employee access to these sites. What's your take on this? Tell us what you think.

The Financial Times via Cryptome

contributed by andrew jaquith
What do you do for an encore if you're Ray Ozzie (aka the inventor and head developer of Lotus Notes)? Start a new Internet company, of course. While we don't normally report on product demos, Ozzie's Groove Networks aims to bring Net-based collaboration to the masses, with support for anonymized identities, secure real-time chat, and full 128-bit encryption for all session data. Groovy, baby.

New York Times
Groove Networks

contributed by laney
A flaw in four Norwegian banks exposed the account information of a reported one million customers for close to two months. Although it appears the flaw allowed an infiltrator to review account activity, it did not allow for the manipulation of money in any of the endangered accounts. This is just another in a long string of online banks to suffer a security crisis whose origin was brought to their attention by an outside source.

UK.Internet.com

contributed by apocalypse dow
Fredrik Almgren, Gunnar Andersson, Torbjörn Granlund, Lars Ivansson and Staffan Ulfberg make up the team of individuals who cracked the now infamous 10 code sequence from Simon Singh's The Code Book. On their website, "How we Cracked the Code Book Ciphers" the Swedish code crackers take readers step by step through thorough descriptions of each stage of work, framing the text with substantial background and epilogue.

"How we Cracked the Code Book Ciphers" Homepage