[iwar] [NewsBits] NewsBits - 02/04/02 (fwd)

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-02-05 06:36:30
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 06:36:30 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [NewsBits] NewsBits - 02/04/02 (fwd)
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February 4, 2002

Global summit hit by cyberattack
An invisible cyber assault has cut off access
for the second day running to the Web site of
the World Economic Forum, organizers of the
gathering of the world's political and
business elite confirmed on Friday. The flood
of Internet traffic to the Web site began on
Thursday afternoon, the first day of a five
day conference, and continued through Friday,
with only intermittent let-up, a conference
organizer said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-828589.html
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/02/04/virtual-sit-in.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/23928.html

US Company Denies Link To Alleged Pakistani Kidnappers
A Tennessee-based Internet firm said it was
"absolutely a coincidence" that it registered
last week a Web address formerly used by a
radical Muslim group suspected of kidnapping
a Wall Street Journal reporter. According to
domain records, Popular Enterprises registered
the address harkatulmujahideen.org on Jan. 28,
the same day that the newspaper announced
correspondent Daniel Pearl had been kidnapped
in Pakistan.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174194.html

Computer Sleuths Confident About Finding Deleted Enron Data
The job of recovering lost e-mail could involve
looking at about 100 hard drives plus e-mail
servers -- and could take up to four months
of investigative work. The head of the company
hired to retrieve the electronic records
destroyed by Arthur Andersen LLP concerning
Enron Corp. was guarded but confident last
week as he talked about the task already under
way in Houston, protected by armed guards.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16143.html

MIRC Chat Users Vulnerable To New Attack
A serious security flaw in the popular mIRC
online chat program could enable a remote
attacker to run malicious programs on the
computers of millions of users. The buffer
over-flow flaw, present in mIRC versions
5.91 and earlier, lies in the program's code
for establishing the user's nickname when
connecting to an Internet relay chat (IRC)
server, according to James Martin, a software
developer in Ireland who discovered how to
exploit the bug.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174185.html

Bush Budget Could Leave Security Databases Stranded
Gartner's Caldwell noted that Bush's proposed
budget for fiscal 2003 is simply Round One of
a battle that generally does not conclude before
the end of the year. News sources reported late
Sunday that the Bush administration intends to
cancel a  US$1 million program known as
"Cal-Photo," a networked security database that
holds millions of digitized photos and mug shots.
The database, which helped the Federal Bureau of
Investigation locate a suspected terrorist after
the September 11th attacks on the Pentagon and
World Trade Center, is considered to be a
critical anti-terrorism tool.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16153.html
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/02/04/fbi-tech-program.htm

FTC Launches Program To Ease ID Theft Reporting
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will launch
a program on Tuesday that should make it easier
for victims of identity theft to alert creditors
and merchants to fraudulent activity on their
accounts. The FTC hopes its ID Fraud Affidavit
will simplify the reporting process by allowing
victims to send the same form to dozens of
credit issuers and merchants that have agreed
to participate in the program.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174206.html
http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/237001p-2265508c.html

Rumsfeld: Cyberwar among possible threats
The vulnerability of U.S. information networks
and a belief that a future attack against the
U.S. may be launched in cyberspace is high in
the mind of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld as he plots to change the U.S. armed
forces so they can better defend against
unconventional threats.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/02/04/military.preparation.idg/index.html

1s and 0s Part Of New U.S. Arsenal
Out on an Army firing range, in a conversation
punctuated by machine-gun bursts, Staff Sgt.
Michael Land describes how he and his soldiers
are preparing to engage and destroy the enemy
using an even deadlier weapon: digital
information. The most obvious difference
between his unit - a new rapid-deployment
infantry brigade - and conventional ones isn't
that their armored vehicles are propelled by
wheels instead of tank tracks. Rather, Land
said, it "is all the information we're being
given" by computers that pull in data from
satellites, drone aircraft and intelligence
analysts far from the front lines.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174202.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11471-2002Feb1.html

National Guard extends secure net to states
Spurred by the events of Sept. 11, the Defense
Department last month initiated a plan to connect
Army National Guard bureaus across the country
with the Pentagon via the high-speed, highly
secure network that DOD uses for classified
communications. The effort will establish a
secure communications link between the Pentagon
and the National Guard's adjutant general (TAG)
offices in 54 states and territories via the
Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET),
which military personnel use for accessing
classified applications and databases and
for secure messaging.
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0204/news-net-02-04-02.asp

Studios close the door on DVD copying
An anonymous hacker known online as "Tron"
is Hollywood's latest villain. Tron is the
author of a piece of software called
SmartRipper, which allows DVDs to be copied
fairly easily to a computer hard drive, and
from there burned onto recordable DVDs. So
far, it's hardly a threat on the level that
Napster once was. But cross Tron and his
peers with rapidly falling prices of DVD
burners, and it's easy to see why Hollywood
executives are nervous.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-828476.html
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2103686,00.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-828449.html

Justice revs up cybercrimefighting efforts
The Justice Department by April will beef
up its focus on cybercrime deterrence by
staffing what will become its largest computer
crimefighting unit. Jack Hanly, supervisor
of the cybercrime team for the Eastern
District of Virginia in Alexandria, said
his group would assign seven assistant U.S.
attorneys, five from Alexandria and one each
from Richmond and Norfolk, to form a team.
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/17915-1.html

Unauthorized practice of law on the Net
A decision issued in late December 2001 by the
Ohio Board of Commissioners on the Unauthorized
Practice of the Law (the Board) helps to define
whether certain online conduct by non-lawyers
is tantamount to impermissible legal practice.
The decision, in the case Office of Disciplinary
Counsel v. Palmer, may be worth a read by lawyers
and non-lawyers alike.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/2002/02/01/sinrod.htm

Online symposium tackles security
Citing security as a major focus of its
research this year, Public Technology Inc.,
in collaboration with the Public Entity
Risk Institute, is offering a Web-based
symposium this week about cybersecurity
issues for local governments.  Each day,
a paper written by a PTI member will be
posted on the PERI Web site, followed by
an electronic dialogue that will be
moderated by Costis Toregas, president
of PTI. The symposium, "Safe and Secure:
CyberSecurity and Local Government," is free.
http://www.fcw.com/geb/articles/2002/0204/web-pti-02-04-02.asp

Asylum seekers get UK's first biometric ID cards
The Home Office has issued biometric cards
containing the bearer's fingerprint to asylum
seekers in Croydon. Asylum seekers in Croydon
have become the first people in Britain to be
issued with high-tech biometric cards by the
Home Office. The Application Registration Card
(ARC) will contain the bearer's fingerprint,
as well as their photograph, name, date of
birth and nationality. The card will also
contain a secure updatable chip for additional
information such as the holder's address.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2103696,00.html

Will you be using this Dell PC for world terror (y/n)?
Dell UK is dutifully doing its bit in the war
against terrorism, as evidenced by the Export
Compliance section of the company's online
order form. Says Question 4: "Will the
product(s) be used in connection with weapons
of mass destruction, i.e. nuclear applications,
missile technology, or chemical or biological
weapons purposes?"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/23930.html

HP Challenges Security Companies with Free Privacy Software
The free package features a 'cookie' manager
that enables a user to block malicious text
files planted on the user's hard drive by
advertisers. Hewlett-Packard has started
pre-loading free security and privacy
software onto Pavilion desktop computers
it sells in North America, including a feature
that automatically blocks Internet advertising.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16147.html

Symantec in demand - Viruses, Security Create Huge Need.
The high-tech recession hit Symantec just
as hard as its fellow software companies.
But then the bad news came, and things got
better. A vicious computer worm attacked
a White House Web site. Terrorists attacked
the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.
A new type of digital menace, known as a
``blended threat'' for its multiple methods
of attack, struck repeatedly throughout the
fall and winter.
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/business/docs/symantec04.htm

WLAN Security on the Rise
Ask a room full of IT managers to identify
the biggest impediment to wireless LAN
deployment and it's a safe bet more than
half of them will put security at the top
of their lists. That's a big problem, not
only for users who are itching to gain
wireless access to enterprise information
resources but also for vendors that are
trying to sell wireless infrastructure
and applications.
http://www.networkcomputing.com/1303/1303ws2.html

The encrypted jihad
We can't stop terrorists from using uncrackable
codes. So we shouldn't even try. Here's a tip
for Treasury Department agents tracking al-Qaida's
finances: You might want to pay a visit to the
volume discount department at Dell Computer.
Al-Qaida, it seems, has been an avid consumer
of computers over the last several years, and
is especially fond of laptops. It isn't hard
to understand why. With his hectic, on-the-go
lifestyle, no self-respecting terrorist can
function without a computer that fits
comfortably on an airplane tray table.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/02/04/terror_encryption/index.html

Windows more secure than Linux?
Windows suffered fewer security vulnerabilities
than Linux last year, according to figures
released by vulnerability tracker SecurityFocus.
Although the statistics so far only go up to
August 2001, aggregated distributions of the
Linux operating system suffered 96
vulnerabilities while Windows NT/2000
suffered only 42. Breaking the figures down
by distribution, Mandrake Linux 7.2 notched
up 33 vulnerabilities, Red Hat 7.0 suffered
28, Mandrake 7.1 had 27 and Debian 2.2 had 26.
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1128907

9/11 workers on right wavelength
A new report reveals that most local public
safety agencies initially responding to the
attack on the Pentagon Sept. 11 had little
difficulty communicating with one another.
The report, "Answering the Call:
Communications Lessons Learned from the
Pentagon Attack," was released Feb. 1 by the
Public Safety Wireless Network (PSWN) Program,
a joint initiative sponsored by the Justice
and Treasury departments. The program's goal
is to help the public safety community improve
wireless radio interoperability.
http://www.fcw.com/geb/articles/2002/0204/web-pswn-02-04-02.asp

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