[risks] Risks Digest 23.18

From: RISKS List Owner (risko@private)
Date: Thu Feb 12 2004 - 15:10:03 PST

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    RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Thursday 12 February 2004  Volume 23 : Issue 18
    
       FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
       ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator
    
    ***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
    This issue is archived at http://www.risks.org as
      http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/23.18.html
    The current issue can be found at
      http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt
    
      Contents:
    Software bug contributed to blackout (Kevin L. Poulsen)
    *WashPost* registration expired, newsroom hampered (Bill Hopkins)
    GM will recall some Chevrolet Corvettes (Monty Solomon)
    Police face sack in ongoing privacy incidents (NewsScan)
    Three degrees of outsourcing leads to data disclosure (Ed Ravin)
    Privatization vs privacy (Friedrich Knauss)
    TiVo watchers uneasy after post-Super Bowl reports (Monty Solomon)
    Cable modem hackers conquer the co-ax (Kevin Poulsen via Monty Solomon)
    Electronic copyrights (Jim Griffith)
    Opposition to SPF (Ian Jackson)
    Actually, SPF makes things worse (Markus Fleck-Graffe)
    Re: Drunk unlocks police car with own key (Crispin Cowan)
    Microsoft warns of widespread Windows flaw (Robert Lemos via Monty Solomon)
    'Mydoom' Creators Start Up 'Doomjuice' (Matti Huuhtanen via Monty Solomon)
    Re: MyDoom and SCO (Scott Miller)
    Don't rely on Social Security Numbers -- AGAIN! (Robert Ellis Smith)
    Re: UK data protection laws ... Unintended Consequences (R M Crorie)
    An interesting spam-filter risk (Geoff Kuenning)
    NSF: Science of Design (Sol J. Greenspan via Gene Spafford)
    Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)
    
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 19:38:06 -0800
    From: "Kevin L. Poulsen" <klp@private>
    Subject: Software bug contributed to blackout
    
    A previously-unknown software flaw in a widely-deployed General Electric
    energy management system contributed to the devastating scope of the 14 Aug
    2003 northeastern U.S. blackout.
    
    The bug in GE Energy's XA/21 system was discovered in an intensive code
    audit conducted by GE and a contractor in the weeks following the blackout,
    according to FirstEnergy Corp., the Ohio utility where investigators say the
    blackout began. "It had never evidenced itself until that day," said
    spokesman Ralph DiNicola. "This fault was so deeply embedded, it took them
    weeks of pouring through millions of lines of code and data to find it."
    
    On Tuesday, the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), the
    industry group responsible for preventing blackouts in the U.S. and Canada,
    approved a raft of directives to utility companies aimed at preventing a
    recurrence of the outage. One of them gives FirstEnergy a June 30th deadline
    to install any known patches for its XA/21 system, though the company says
    it's already installed the fix. A NERC spokesperson said all electric
    companies using GE's XA/21 system would likely be instructed to install the
    patch in a final report due next month.
      http://www.securityfocus.com/news/8016
    
      [Also reported to RISKS by Chuck Weinstock.  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 15:31:49 -0500
    From: "Bill Hopkins" <whopkins@private>
    Subject: *WashPost* registration expired, newsroom hampered
    
    *The New York Times*, 6 Feb 2004, reported (and not *too* smugly) that
    newsgathering at its rival *The Washington Post* was disrupted when
    registration lapsed for washpost.com, which the newsroom uses for e-mail.
    The renewal notice from Network Solutions was delivered unnoticed to a
    "dropbox" (whether e-mail or the old-fashioned kind was not clear).
    However, the registration was renewed soon after the disruption started,
    before any squatters could jump on it.  (Don't dwell on that image.)
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 17:11:00 -0500
    From: Monty Solomon <monty@private>
    Subject: GM will recall some Chevrolet Corvettes
    
    General Motors will recall certain Chevrolet Corvettes to correct a
    condition in which the vehicle can operate when the electronic steering
    column lock fails to unlock.  The vehicles included in this recall are
    1997-2000 Corvettes with automatic transmissions in the United States,
    Canada, and Mexico; 1997-2004 Corvettes with automatic transmissions in
    Europe and export countries; 1997-2004 Corvettes with manual transmissions
    in North American, European, and export countries.  GM is still working to
    determine the recall population and the breakdowns by countries; however,
    the estimate is a total of about 127,000.  For manual transmissions, the
    dealers will reprogram the Powertrain Control Module software, at no cost.
    GM has not confirmed any occurrences of this condition in the field.  There
    are no confirmed crashes, injuries, or fatalities related to the condition.
    [Source: 10 Feb 2004, PR Newswire; PGN-ed]
      http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40508961
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 10:01:29 -0700
    From: "NewsScan" <newsscan@private>
    Subject: Police face sack in ongoing privacy incidents
    
    Australian Police in Victoria are facing an embarrassing new privacy scandal
    after an internal audit found fresh evidence of improper access to
    confidential computer files. The audit has found up to 35 police have used
    the police Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) computer to check
    information on a security guard charged with manslaughter over the death of
    former Test cricketer David Hookes. All police who have accessed the files,
    other than homicide squad police investigating the death, are expected to be
    asked by ethical standards department police to justify their actions.
    Police who cannot give legitimate reasons face the sack. This incident comes
    in the wake of an investigation in 2003 into allegations that the files of
    32 current and former Victorian Members of Parliament have been accessed
    without legitimate reason.  [*TheAge*, 11 Feb 2004; NewsScan Daily, 12 Feb
    2004]
      http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/11/1076388435627.html
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 21:15:51 -0500
    From: Ed Ravin <eravin@private>
    Subject: Three degrees of outsourcing leads to data disclosure
    
    According to Bob Sullivan, MSNBC, 8 Feb 2004
      http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4186130/
    
    A programmer hired by a community college to manage a database for a child
    care center posted the entire database onto an Internet site in order to
    obtain help doing the database work.  The database contained sensitive
    information like names, addresses, children's schedules, etc.  At one point
    the fellow was warned that he shouldn't be posting confidential information,
    but apparently he had a bit of trouble with the concept:
    
      On Jan. 26, another programmer -- who requested anonymity -- sent a
      message to Dennis, warning him of the possible privacy problems. He
      replied: "Thank you for the note. That was my mistake and I will be more
      careful in the future," according to the programmer. The next day, Dennis
      posted the same database in a different question.
    
    The person who ended up doing the work (recruited via rentacoder.com) is
    three outsourcing steps away from the county agency that maintained the data
    in question.  It's fairly common for social service agencies to outsource
    most of their work to non-profits, but it appears that neither the first
    outsourcing level (the community college) nor the second (the alleged
    "programmer", Dennis, who posted the databases) had the ability to actually
    do the work.  At least no one seems to have sent this job to India...
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 16:21:49 -0800
    From: friedrich knauss <fknauss@private>
    Subject: Privatization vs privacy (Re: Three degrees of outsourcing ...)
    
    [The previous item] exemplifies some of the risks of allowing private
    corporations to manage sensitive data without adequate government oversight.
    The current administration's efforts at increasing data collection against
    its own citizens, along with its promotion of privatization, bodes for
    similar future events on a national scale.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 22:21:05 -0500
    From: Monty Solomon <monty@private>
    Subject: TiVo watchers uneasy after post-Super Bowl reports
    
    Ben Charny, CNET News.com, 5 Feb 2004
    
    Janet Jackson's Super Bowl flash dance was shocking in more ways than one:
    Some TiVo users say the event brought home the realization that their
    beloved digital video recorders are watching them, too.  [On 9 Feb 2004,]
    TiVo said the exposure of Jackson's breast during her halftime performance
    was the most-watched moment to date on its device, which, when combined with
    the TiVo subscription service, lets viewers pause and "rewind" live
    television broadcasts, among other features.  TiVo said users had watched
    the skin-baring incident nearly three times more than any other moment
    during the Super Bowl broadcast, sparking headlines that dramatically
    publicized the power of the company's longstanding data-gathering practices.
      http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5154219.html
    
      [Evidently, it pays to keep abreast of TiVo's capabilities.  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:21:07 -0500
    From: Monty Solomon <monty@private>
    Subject: Cable modem hackers conquer the co-ax (Kevin Poulsen)
    
    Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus, 5 Feb 2004
    
    A small and diverse band of hobbyists steeped in the obscure languages of
    embedded systems has released its own custom firmware for a popular brand of
    cable modem, along with a technique for loading it -- a development that's
    already made life easier for uncappers and service squatters, and threatens
    to topple long-held assumptions about the privacy of cable modem
    communications.  The program, called Sigma, was released in its final
    version last month, and has reportedly been downloaded 350 to 400 times a
    day ever since. It's designed to be flashed into the non-volatile memory of
    certain models of Motorola's Surfboard line, where it runs in parallel with
    the device's normal functionality. It gives users almost complete control of
    their cable modem -- a privilege previously reserved for the service
    provider.
    
    The project is the work of a gang of coders called TCNiSO. With about ten
    active members worldwide, the group is supported by contributions from the
    uncapping community -- speed-hungry Internet users who rely on TCNiSO's
    research and free hackware to surmount the bandwidth caps imposed by service
    providers, usually in violation of their service agreement, if not the
    law. To them, Sigma is a delight, because it makes it simple to change the
    modem's configuration file -- the key to uncapping, and, on some systems, to
    getting free anonymous service using "unregistered" modems. "I've known
    TCNiSO for two years now and I've done a lot of things with their
    techniques," wrote a Canadian uncapper in an e-mail interview. "Sigma is the
    greatest one I've seen."  ...  [http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7977]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 18:46:54 -0500
    From: griffith@private (Jim Griffith)
    Subject: Electronic copyrights
    
    In 1997, I wrote a piece for rec.humor.funny based on an idea by Steve
    Lancaster, in which the Mars Pathfinder landing was reported from the
    Martian point of view, a la Roswell.
    
        http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Sb43.21d1%40clarinet.com
        http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/97/Jul/marspress.html
    
    It was well-received, and I'm rather proud of that piece.  In early January,
    some anonymous nitwit took my original piece, changed about four words to
    make it fit Spirit instead of Pathfinder, tacked on a couple of brand new
    paragraphs, and sent it circulating again, anonymously.  This modified
    version has now shown up in various monthly astronomy publications, always
    without attribution.
    
    As moderator of RHF, I understand the difficulties of identifying the
    original source of a piece, and the ease with which people remove
    attributions.  I'm disturbed by the casual way so many publications blindly
    printed the piece without doing a serious attempt to identify the source or
    the original version.  Granted, that source isn't immediately obvious, but a
    reasonable Google search or a date-sorted Google Groups search would have
    definitively identified both the author and the original wording.  In
    effect, Google Groups is now my primary hope for preserving my original
    copyright (although I did have the foresight to encode in the piece an
    in-joke that only I know -- and the plagiarized versions preserve that
    in-joke).  Had I originally distributed the piece via e-mail, I'd now have
    no hope of ever claiming credit or preserving the original version.
    
    I'm mainly disturbed by the ease with which the original piece was
    corrupted, and that that corruption was blindly accepted and propagated.  It
    is now the case that corrupted version is more prevalent than the original.
    This is disappointing, given that an advantage of electronic communications
    is supposed to be the way it preserves information.  I wonder if we'll find
    that in a hundred years, the most popular Internet version of "Romeo and
    Juliet" is one with a new, happier ending?
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 14:25:33 +0000
    From: Ian Jackson <ijackson@private>
    Subject: Opposition to SPF (Re: Rose, RISKS-23.16)
    
    Andrew Rose <andrew.rose@private> writes:
    > The technical work on SPF is now complete and adoption has started.
    
    I strongly disagree that technical work on SPF is complete:
    
    * The current specification is absolutely terrible, when one looks at the
      details.  (As an experienced developer of networking software including a
      DNS resolver and an SMTP mail rejection agent, and participant in
      standards processes, I should know.)
    
    * SPF proponents haven't taken the proper route through the IETF for their
      `standard' -- where the details of the spec might have been fixed.
      Instead, they're going for a publicity campaign to `bounce' people into
      adoption.
    
    * Many people I respect (myself not included) think that the principle of
      operation of SPF is broken for technical reasons.  I'm sure those people
      can explain that themselves.
    
    For a personal perspective from a member of the IESG, see
      http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/
      interesting-people/200401/msg00037.html
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 03:28:47 +0100
    From: Markus Fleck-Graffe <fleck@private>
    Subject: Actually, SPF makes things worse (Re: Rose, RISKS-23.16)
    
    Re: Defeating phishing  scams, Andrew Rose, RISKS 23.16
    > The technical work on SPF is now complete and adoption has started.
    > Several thousand domains have published SPF records including some very
    > large domains such as aol.com.
    
    The SPF scheme requires all e-mail forwarders to rewrite the sender's e-mail
    envelope and return-path addresses. For example, each posting to a mailing
    must be rewritten to a local domain of the list host before redistribution.
    
    To enable (administrative) e-mail bounce notifications, each forwarding host
    is also more or less required to generate specially encoded one-time
    "sender" addresses for each forwarded e-mail, and keep a corresponding
    database of "reverse mappings" for an unspecified period of time.
    [http://spf.pobox.com/srs.html]
    
    The SPF website calls this an "unfortunate" problem -- extremely unfortunate
    because every pre-existing mail transport agent in the world is incompatible
    with the SPF scheme and will lead to silent discarding of lots of legitimate
    (forwarded) e-mail (which would be considered forged by SPF-gnostic receiver
    sites).
    
    Worst of all, SPF will not stop spammers and viruses/worms from spreading -
    spammers will just start to set up their own SPF infrastructures (with
    throw-away domain names), and worms will just use legitimate e-mail
    addresses of compromised host PCs. (In fact, spammers nowadays are
    increasingly using compromised third-party PCs for their mass mailings as
    well, preferably badly secured ones with high-bandwidth connectivity to the
    Internet such as through cable modems OR xDSL lines.) In addition, the
    backwards-mapping database of SPF-aware mail forwarders must itself be
    secured against abuse of the e-mail bouncing mechanism by spammers and worms
    - by introducing even more stateful data keeping to their forwarding
    databases. The SPF site even proposes adding time-limited cookies to secure
    against this "open (back-)relay" problem -- what an awful hack! [1]
    
    The RISKS? Several e-mail providers are adopting a half-baked non-solution
    with obvious deficiencies and a potential for silently sinking lots of
    legitimate e-mail into a black hole.  And a proprietary three-letter ISP is
    trying to force their (centralized!) single-server world-view of
    communication protocols onto the Internet.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 02:06:13 -0800
    From: Crispin Cowan <crispin@private>
    Subject: Re: Drunk unlocks police car with own key (Brunberg, RISKS-23.17)
    
    > What are the odds of having not only a matching door/ignition key, but
    > also the keyless entry remote?
    
    Apparently pretty good odds :)
    
    I heard 2nd- or 3rd-hand of an inventive software security person (name
    omitted because I want them to still talk to me :) who wanted to investigate
    precisely this problem when keyless entry first came out.  Apparently the
    initial key space for keyless entry was only 16 bits, and so my friend built
    a device to brute-force the keyspace with a fairly powerful radio
    broadcaster attached.  Friend then took the device to a large parking lot,
    turned it on, and watched with amusement as dozens of cars around the
    parking lot started honking and unlocking.
    
    I *think* the keyspace has improved since then, but I would bet it has
    not improved enough.
    
    Crispin Cowan  http://immunix.com/~crispin/   CTO, Immunix  http://immunix.com
    Immunix 7.3  http://www.immunix.com/shop/
    
      [Things have improved enormously since the early garage-door openers, many
      of which opened and closed each time the orbiting Russian Sputnik went
      overhead.  I have not noted that marvelous case here since RISKS-8.38,
      which appropriately was issued on the Ides of March 1989, so it is worth
      recalling for newer readers.  Don't forget, all the RISKS archives are
      searchable at Lindsay Marshall's Web site (www.risks.org).  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 17:43:55 -0500
    From: Monty Solomon <monty@private>
    Subject: Microsoft warns of widespread Windows flaw
    
    Microsoft has a message for Windows users: Patch your computers quickly.
    Robert Lemos, CNET News.com, 10 Feb
    
    On Tuesday, the software giant released a fix for a networking flaw that
    affects every computer running Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP or
    Windows Server 2003. If left unpatched, the security hole could allow a worm
    to spread quickly throughout the Internet, causing an incident similar to
    the MSBlast attack last summer.  ...
      [http://news.com.com/2100-7355-5156647.html]
    
    What You Should Know About the Windows Security Updates for February 2004
    http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/20040210_windows.asp
    
    Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-007
    ASN.1 Vulnerability Could Allow Code Execution (828028)
    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-007.asp
    
    Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-006
    Vulnerability in the Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) Could
    Allow Code Execution (830352)
    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-006.asp
    
    Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-004
    Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (832894)
    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-004.asp
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 15:22:31 -0500
    From: Monty Solomon <rebates@private>
    Subject: 'Mydoom' Creators Start Up 'Doomjuice'
    
    Finnish computer security experts warned Tuesday of a new worm, known as
    "Doomjuice," that is expected to attack computers infected by "Mydoom,"
    despite the fact it's programmed to stop spreading later this week.  The
    virus, first detected by F-Secure on Monday night, has so far infected at
    least 30,000 computers worldwide since it was activated Sunday, said the
    company's director of antivirus research, Mikko Hypponen.
    
    Like Mydoom.A and Mydoom.B, the new worm is designed to strike Microsoft
    Corp.'s Windows operating systems and is programmed to launch a worldwide
    attack on the web site of SCO, one of the largest UNIX vendors in the world.
    [Source: Matti Huuhtanen, Associated Press, 10 Feb 2004, AP Online]
      http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40507941
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 18:58:46 -0500
    From: Scott Miller <SMiller@private>
    Subject: Re: MyDoom and SCO (Wildstrom, RISKS-23.17)
    
    > Writing on Feb. 2, it's very hard to assess what the real impact of the
    > MyDoom-generate denial of service was on SCO.
    
    I find it curious that with about a week's notice of the actions of the
    MyDoom.A payload, SCO found it impossible to prepare an effective strategy
    in advance of the attack.  I also find it somewhat curious (but anecdotal)
    that all of the MyDoom infected e-mail messages received on my personal POP
    account ~appeared~ to be sourced from the allwest.com domain, with admin
    contacts listed as physically located in Utah.  As a result of the nature of
    the MyDoom.A payload and of the consequent reward offered by SCO, Darl
    McBride and his misbegotten (IMO) anti-Linux campaign have received a great
    deal of publicity and a reprieve from what appeared to be an imminent slip
    from the public consciousness.  A cynical person (not I, heaven forfend)
    might be tempted to speculate whether SCO could have been involved in the
    release of the worm, or at best, played willing victim.
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 09:42:50 -0500
    From: "Robert Ellis Smith" <ellis84@private>
    Subject: Don't rely on Social Security Numbers -- AGAIN!
    
    Terry Ward in RISKS-23.17 reports that to cancel another person's insurance,
    credit, etc., "I simply presented a plausible sounding story, knew his
    social security number ***"
    
    And yet lots of professionals and private citizens still think that the key
    to preventing identity theft is MORE reliance on Social Security numbers.
    The reality is that SSNs are no longer private bits of information, if they
    ever were, and no longer serve to authenticate an individual's identity. So
    each of us has to cease going along with this deceit.
    Robert Ellis Smith, Privacy Journal
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 21:58:35 -0000
    From: R M Crorie <risks@private>
    Subject: Re: UK data protection laws ... Unintended Consequences (R-23.14,15)
    
    Mark Brader states (RISKS-23.15):
    
    > It's for failing to get the criminal tried and convicted back then.  And
    > even this is only true if the earlier alleged offenses were genuine.
    
    Errrmm... and even if "genuine" (=true?), how would they achieve that,
    precisely? If there was insufficient evidence to pass the first
    (evidential) test by which Branch Crown Prosecutors decide whether or not
    to prosecute, presumably the recommendation here is to manufacture
    more...?  :-)
    
    > For police, it *is* reasonable to consider that someone previously
    > suspected should be suspected again: this is all right precisely because a
    > police suspect is not, ipso facto, a criminal.
    
    But that is at the heart of the argument: to know about the previous
    suspicion, the data about the (unsubstantiated) allegation would need to be
    retained for that purpose, which is precisely what is not *explicitly*
    provided for in the Act.  My understanding is that the Information
    Commissioner was already pressing two other forces to delete data for that
    very reason, i.e. some non-conviction information was being retained by them
    for "longer than necessary", but there is nothing to explain what
    "necessary" actually means -- in fact, the only explicit guidance is that it
    was, and is, for forces themselves to make that decision!
    
    In any event, any evidence supporting the allegation(s) not proceeded with
    is completely inadmissible in proceedings for any new allegation.  That's
    the way society has made the rules, that's the way they are followed.
    
    Damned if you do, and damned if you don't...
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Mon,  9 Feb 2004 12:09:12 -0800 (PST)
    From: Geoff Kuenning <geoff@private>
    Subject: An interesting spam-filter risk
    
    I'm a member of a mailing list in which one of the members has chosen to
    sign up for one of those "identity verification" services for preventing
    spam.  Every time anybody sends to the list, we get an autoresponse from
    "roberto@private", who asks us to go out of our way to prove that
    we're humans.
    
    The RISKs of this approach are well known, and most list maintainers (PGN
    included) refuse to allow subscribers to use these services.
    
    The problem in the current case is that nobody can figure out which of our
    950+ subscribers is the culprit!  That has led one member to propose that a
    group of volunteers divide up the subscriber list and send test e-mails to
    people until we discover one that produces the annoying bounce.
    
    Geoff Kuenning   geoff@private   http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 11:18:48 -0500
    From: Gene Spafford <spaf@private>
    Subject: NSF: Science of Design
    
    This message is to inform you that a new NSF funding opportunity called
    SCIENCE OF DESIGN [Solicitation NSF 04-552] has been posted by the CISE
    Directorate. The CISE web page (http://www.cise.nsf.gov) has a link to the
    program page under "CISE FY04 Emphases" and there is additional information
    under "Hot Topics" on the CISE web page.  [See the Program URL:
      http://www.cise.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_display.cfm?pub_id=13078]
    
    The goal of this solicitation is to stimulate research and education
    projects that build the Science of Design. This solicitation focuses on the
    scientific study of the design of software-intensive systems that perform
    computing, communications and information processing. Complex
    interdependencies strain our ability to create, maintain, comprehend and
    control these systems. The Science of Design seeks to rectify this situation
    by building a foundation for the systematic creation of software-intensive
    systems. This foundation will consist of a body of theoretical and empirical
    knowledge on design, computational methods and tools for design, and new
    design curriculum for the next generation of designers.
    
    Sol J. Greenspan, Ph.D., Chair, Science of Design Coordinating Group
    Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering  [PGN-ed]
    
      [If you have learned anything from reading RISKS, it might be quite
      relevant here!  PGN]
    
    ------------------------------
    
    Date: 28 Jan 2004 (LAST-MODIFIED)
    From: RISKS-request@private
    Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)
    
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       http://www.CSL.sri.com/risksinfo.html
     The full info file may appear now and then in future issues.  *** All
     contributors are assumed to have read the full info file for guidelines. ***
    => SUBMISSIONS: to risks@private with meaningful SUBJECT: line.
     *** NEW: Including the string "notsp" at the beginning or end of the subject
     *** line will be very helpful in separating real contributions from spam.
     *** This attention-string may change, so watch this space now and then.
    => ARCHIVES: ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks [subdirectory i for earlier volume i]
     http://www.risks.org redirects you to the Lindsay Marshall's Newcastle archive
     http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/VL.IS.html      [i.e., VoLume, ISsue]
       Lindsay has also added to the Newcastle catless site a palmtop version
       of the most recent RISKS issue and a WAP version that works for many but 
       not all telephones: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/w/r
     http://the.wiretapped.net/security/info/textfiles/risks-digest/ .
    ==> PGN's comprehensive historical Illustrative Risks summary of one liners:
        http://www.csl.sri.com/illustrative.html for browsing,
        http://www.csl.sri.com/illustrative.pdf or .ps for printing
    
    ------------------------------
    
    End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 23.18
    ************************
    



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