Law and Order

Two people appeared in the Auckland Youth Court yesterday accused of hacking into the voice messages of a number of people, including Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard.

The pair, aged 16 and 19, each face five charges of accessing a computer system without authorisation.

The 16-year-old has automatic name suppression and the 19-year-old cannot be named as it might identify the juvenile. They were remanded on bail.

Other people allegedly targeted included Telecom's public affairs manager, John Goulter, and members of the police.

A federal appeals court threw out the arson conviction of a man who calls himself "Dr. Chaos," saying Tuesday a federal judge should have let him withdraw his guilty plea before he was sentenced to 21 years in prison.

In one of the few instances of an individual taking a spam fight to the courts, a New York lawyer has filed a lawsuit alleging that his e-mail address was hijacked and used to send messages promoting a company's stock.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges that China Digital Media, a Nevada corporation with operations in China, and its unknown promoters, named in the suit as "John Does 1-10," used lawyer Scott Ziegler's e-mail address as part of a spam campaign. The suit seeks millions of dollars in combined damages.

An Israeli couple, both of whom are computer consultants and wanted in their country on suspicion of hacking offences, have appeared in a British court for an extradition hearing.

Michael Haephrati, 41, and his wife Ruth Brier-Haephrati, 28, appeared briefly at Bow Street Magistrates' Court on Thursday. District Judge Christopher Pratt ordered that they remain in custody until a further hearing on June 3.

They are charged in Israel with causing "unauthorised modification of the contents of a computer" between December 12, 2004, and February 28 this year.

A vice president of an Ocean County electronics company faces a computer theft charge for allegedly hacking into the computer system of a rival firm to steal some of its business.

Brian Swanke, 29, vice president of CWR Electronics, was charged Wednesday with theft against Win-Tron Electronics of Spring Lake Heights.

Congress has set its sights on spyware.

The House of Representatives on Monday fired off a double barrel of legislation to fight spyware.

It passed the I-Spy act by a vote of 395 to 1 and the Spy act by 393 to 4. The bills take different approaches against spyware. Spyware is unwanted software with which hackers, scammers and firms track computer users' activities.

A federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit filed by Tecmo against NinjaHacker.net, a fan site where users who had reverse-engineered the company's XBox titles shared custom skins that changed the appearance of characters. In the most (in)famous example, the scantily-clad women of its Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball game were rendered completely nude. NinjaHacker's webmaster, Mike Greiling, and Will Glynn, who provided Greiling with hosting services, were the main defendants and have reportedly settled with Tecmo.

The trial involving the alleged hacking of a charity website set up to raise funds for victims of December's Asian tsunami disaster has been delayed yet again while witness reports are compiled by computer forensics experts.

Away from the computer, investigators said Jasmine Singh looked and acted like most any other 17-year-old.

In cyberspace, however, investigators said Singh was known both by his online aliases "Jatt" and "Pherk" and for his reputation as a hacker capable and willing to inflict havoc on computer systems of his or others choosing.

A Yemeni court on Saturday convicted four Yemenis of stealing $332,000 from Canadian oil company Nexen Inc. through Internet fraud, judicial source said.

The four men were ordered to repay 1.26 million Malaysian ringgit ($332,000) which they had transferred to Malaysian bank accounts after one of them, a former Nexen employee, hacked into the company's computer system in North America.

Two others were acquitted.