Three  Russian guys have been condemned to eight years in prison and fined $ 3700 for carrying out a series of DOS attacks against UK gambling and betting websites, the Russian press agency Novosti reported yesterday.

Ivan Maksakov of Balakovo, Alexander Petrov of Astrakhan, and Denis Stepanov of St Petersburg , managed in extorting about 4 million dollars  from world Internet companies in a very short time before they were captured.

 According to Russian public prosecutor, they acted collecting information about British web casinos and bookmakers’ offices using spy software designed by one member of the crew, and then  they demanded ransoms to the owners of  such websites under the threat of  Denial of service attacks.

U.S. Air Force researchers are developing a new project based on the idea that in the future it will be possible to set up computer programs which will be used in military operations and long-term intelligence activities, such as "being to monitor a military barracks, accumulate financial information on a potentially hostile nation, or provide status on the political climate of a South American country”, an Air Force paper announces.

In a short-term perspective, a similar cyber aid will be decisive to detect hidden people or dangerous items, such as explosive, without endangering human lives.

According to the project that stands behind this revolutionary technology, “Cyber crafts” will work on a variety of mediums with no distinctions, so that they could hop from computer networks, to electrical grids, to wireless nets and so on. Moreover, the programs would be able to keep up with the networks changes, performing constant self-morphing in order to be effective but impossible to detect by the adversaries.

Think about a student , who plays  football for his University’s football team, who works for a charitable organization, but who is arrested and has to spend two weeks in jail,  because he is considered a material witness in an investigation against another student.

It may look like fiction, but actually this is exactly what happened to Abdullah al-Kidd, a student who played football for the University of Idaho, worked for the Islamic Assembly of North America, and eventually was arrested and imprisoned because a fellow student –Sami Omar Al-Hussain- was involved in a computer terrorism case, in 2003….

Today on Zone-H the "in-progress" list of defacements  that have been set up after Pope Ratzinger's declarations  at Regensburg University.

Between September 12th and september 27th, Zone-H database recorded a hike in the number of defacements for religious or political reasons and we highlighted that about 4939 websites have been attacked with the aim of focus on the Islamic protest.

A high number of defacements are addressed straight to the Pope, many of them are very bare, and show just short messages, whereas others are far more  complex, as that of the Turkish hacker Metlak  that shows astonishing images of a hurted child and reports an isult to the Pope.

The implications of the Lectio Magistralis  held by Pope Ratzinger at Regensburg University on September 12th, are still debated both in Christian and Islamic world: in his lecture to  1,500 university professors and students, he cited an obscure medieval emperor engaged in a dialogue with a Persian Muslim, as saying with regard to the Islamic faith, "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Sheik Malin of Somalia called for the Pope's murder, churches were set on fire in the Holy Land , whereas in Iran, Islamic newspapers suggested there was an Israeli-US plot behind the Pope's words.

What can be found in the web? News, books, music, movies, sex...Everything. You don't need to search deeper.

During a Conference organized by B'nai Brith Canada , the Washington-based director of IBM's internet strategy systems and technology group development , Mr. Michael Nelson,    stated that "The Net is going to be as versatile and ubiquitous as paper". And he's true. 

He didn't refer just to the size of the Web: he was actually talking about  the growing amount of materials that are published day by day , especially hate materials and racist websites. "There is no way any government can control the amount of hate material that is going to be out there," Nelson told.

The concept of Democracy conveys freedom of speech, a value that is included in the International Chart of Human Rights among fundamental rights and the web is a  product of this freedom: