Mother Superior: MySpace or school, your choice

The principal at St Hugo of the Hills Catholic School in Bloomfield Hills has banned her students from having MySpace pages.

According to reports, Sister Margaret Van Velzen has sent out an edict instructing students to take down their pages or face suspension from school. Families are expected to support the school's policy, which it says is aimed at keeping the students safe.MySpace has been linked to a number of assaults, some of them sexual, some less so. It does have a minimum age limit - no one younger than 14 is supposed to join- but verifying the ages of everyone on a social network as large as MySpace is next to impossible and, some would argue, not even desirable.

Nevertheless, Sister Margaret has asked various staff members to keep an eye on the MySpace network for anyone transgressing the new rule.

While the move will surely seem draconian and intrusive to the average Register reader, it does have the backing of local police. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard says it removes peer pressure, which he described as "the biggest factor" in encouraging kids to have pages.
However, not everyone is convinced. Jerry Herron, Wayne State University professor of American Studies argues the move will just give everyone a sense of false security. "A predator who wants to violate children will find a way, electronically or otherwise," he added.
This is to say nothing of setting up a MySpace page under a nickname. But we wouldn't want to suggest anyone actually do that, of course.

The Register's resident grumpy old man, who we consult on occasions such as these, was heard to mumble into his pint: "Too right. Burning CDs? Burning in hell more like. In my day..." at which point we stopped listening
c by register.com

Hackers promise month of MySpace bugs

They won’t divulge their real names, they call their project a “whiny, attention-seeking ploy,” and they appear to take their fashion cues from Beastie Boys music videos.But two hackers going by the names of Mondo Armando and Müstaschio promise to begin disclosing security vulnerabilities in MySpace, News Corp.’s popular social networking site, every day next month.

“The purpose of the exercise is not so much to expose MySpace as a hive of spam and villainy (since everyone knows that already), but to highlight the monoculture-style danger of extremely popular websites,” wrote Mondo Armando in an e-mail interview.
“We could have just as easily gone after Google or Yahoo or MSN or IDG or whatever. MySpace is just more fun, and is becoming notoriously [obnoxious] about responding to security issues,” he said.
These “Month of Bugs” projects have become a way for hackers to bring attention to both themselves and to security problems in certain types of products. Well-known hacker HD Moore kicked off the craze last year when he published one browser bug per day for the month of July. His effort was followed by a “Month of kernel bugs,” a “Month of Apple Bugs,” and a “Month of PHP Bugs.”
The MySpace hackers launched their project late Thursday expressing simultaneous enthusiasm and disdain for the task ahead. “If it ends up being just as lame as the Month of Apple Bugs, then we haven’t really missed the mark. If it’s funnier, then great,” they wrote on their project’s blog. “If it kills this Month of Whatever fad, then hurray for everyone, it’s over.”

They intend to primarily publish cross site scripting bugs, which can allow an attacker to execute malicious script within a victim’s browser, but they may also publish bugs that affect browsers or technologies like Flash or QuickTime.

Though the project, which launches on April 1, has all the appearance of a practical joke, one well-known hacker said he’d been contacted by the Month of MySpace team with legitimate security questions. “Those guys and I have been keeping in touch,” said Robert Hansen, chief executive of Sectheory.com. “It’s funny but it’s not a joke.”