DOJ Opens Probe Into KB Home Options
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LOS ANGELES - The Department of Justic has launched a probe into the handling of stock options at KB Home, one of the nation's largest homebuilders, although it is not targeting the company directly, KB Home said Friday.
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A case scheduled for hearing in December focuses on technology for automatically loading software from a disc.
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A federal class-action lawsuit is focusing attention on an issue that's important to homeowners nationwide: Who -- or what -- tells you how much your property is worth?
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DOJ announces arrests, convictions for online fraud and other Net-related crimes.
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The Justice Department is investigating possible accounting fraud at Fannie Mae, the mortgage finance company, a source close to the matter said on Thursday.
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The U.S. Justice Department has  opened up several investigations into whether borrowers faced  discriminated by providers of mortgages and other credit  products, an official told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday.
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Prosecutors want to know whether the business development company obtained the phone records of a critic through impersonation.
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U.S. antitrust regulators are  investigating possible anti-competitive practices at the  American Stock Exchange and Chicago Board Options Exchange,  according to the annual report of the National Association of  Securities Dealers.
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The Justice Department is  investigating possible accounting fraud at Fannie Mae, the  mortgage finance company, a source close to the matter said on  Thursday.
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The Department of Justice and state attorneys general are raising questions about changes Microsoft wants to make in the schedule set out for its antitrust compliance.
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The U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible antitrust violations at the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the American Stock Exchange, according to the National Association of Securities Dealers annual report.
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U.K. prosecutors have received guidance on interpreting amendments to a&#160;computer crime law&#160;that introduce stronger penalties for computer hacking.A six-page document published on Monday by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) gives prosecutors pointers for handling offenses under soon-to-change provisions of the Computer Misuse Act (CMA) of 1990.The amendments were passed into law in November 2006 but have not yet come into force. The changes are designed to strengthen the government&#39;s ability to prosecute and punish hackers, and increase penalties for accessing systems without authorization.Computer security professionals have expressed concern&#160;about the drafting of the changes, however.The most-discussed change, contained in Section 3A of the CMA, makes it illegal for someone to create an application that is &quot;likely&quot; to be used for hacking. But the precise definition of &quot;likely&quot; has prompted fears the law could potentially target those undertaking activities such as penetration testing.According to the CPS document, prosecutors should look at what an application does and who its creator thought would use it. Conditions to consider would be whether the hacking tool was given to a &quot;closed and vetted list of IT security professionals or was posted openly,&quot; CPS said.Prosecutors should also find out whether the tool has a legitimate purpose, if it has a large installation base and whether it&#39;s commercially sold.Some applications will &quot;have a dual use, and prosecutors need to ascertain that the subject has a criminal intent,&quot; CPS said. Possession of a program is not enough to prosecute, it said.Computer security researchers &quot;might find some comfort in this guidance&quot; since criminal intent must be demonstrated, said Struan Robertson, senior associate with law firm Pinsent Masons.The guidance is generally acceptable, wrote Richard Clayton, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, on his blog. But using the criterion of whether a hacking program is available for sale ignores the fact that much software is free, Clayton said.On another issue, the document also clarifies what constitutes unauthorized access to a computer, a crime under Section 1 of the amended CMA. The defendant must know that the intended access wasn&#39;t permitted, and prosecutors must show that the person intended to improperly access information from the computer.&#160;
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The Internet went all abuzz last week when a report by Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer posited that Microsoft was keeping open its legal options against licensees of OpenOffice.
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KB Home, the No. 5 U.S. home builder,  said on Friday the Justice Department was looking into past  stock options practices at KB, but added the agency said KB  Home was not a target of the investigation.
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Company turns over thousands of documents to House panel.
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Microsoft is investigating a program that attempts to switch off the firm's anti-spyware software.
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Things just aren&#39;t going well for Timothy Scott Short. Just days after a pair of tech support calls he made to printer manufacturer Digimarc&#160;resulted in his arrest, he now finds himself on the receiving end of a data breach with his Social Security number and birthdate accidentally made public via the federal court&#39;s Electronic Case Files (ECF) system.It&#39;s an ironic development, because Short, 33, was arrested in connection with the Oct. 5 theft of a Missouri Department of Revenue printer and a PC containing data on as many as 500 state residents.Short&#39;s personal information was discovered by the IDG News Service, listed on a court document called a Criminal Case Cover Sheet, which was publicly available to users of the ECF system. Normally, this document should only be accessible to those involved in the case, but it appears to have been inadvertently made public, according to a clerk with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak with the press. &quot;It&#39;s something on our side,&quot; she said, adding that technical staff is now looking into the problem.The U.S. Judicial Conference, which sets policy for U.S. courts, has said that this kind of information should be removed from publicly available electronic court records, but actually removing all the sensitive information has proved difficult.&quot;If you went online to various court systems, you could find social security numbers of many individuals,&quot; said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. &quot;It&#39;s a really, really difficult question to answer, just because you&#39;re dealing with so many jurisdictions.&quot;Social Security numbers are the building blocks of identity theft crime because they can be used to secure credit cards. &quot;Any time you are placing Social Security numbers online, your are subjecting that person to identity theft,&quot; Stephens said.With the push to make public documents available online, other government databases have had similar problems. Earlier this year, the states of California and Colorado were forced to take their Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) databases offline after privacy advocates pointed out that the Social Security numbers and other data they contained could be misused by identity thieves.Short, however, may have bigger problems to worry about. He&#39;s facing $250,000 in fines and 10 years in prison on charges of possession of &quot;document-making implements&quot; in connection with the theft. He was arrested after U.S. Secret Service Special Agent John Bush recognized his voice in calls placed to a tech support line of the company that makes the stolen printer.&#160;