-----Original Message----- From: NIPC Watch [mailto:nipc.watch@private] Sent: Monday, August 13, 2001 9:14 AM To: daily@private Subject: NIPC Daily Report, 13 August Significant Changes and Assessment - No significant changes Private Sector - AT&T Labs released a report describing a new attack against the security of 802.11 protocol for wireless local-area networks (WLAN) that can acquire a network key in a short period of time. Based on the RC4 cipher, the wired-equivalent privacy (WEP) encryption scheme has weaknesses in the key-scheduling algorithm that allows an attacker to retrieve a network's key gaining full user access. Another ramification of the new exploit is that it's passive, never giving the user any indication that he is being monitored. Though only recently standardized, 802.11 has been incorporated into the Microsoft Windows OS and WLAN components by several companies. (Source: Security Wire Digest, 13 August) International - The National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center of China said in a survey that Beijing is the Chinese city most infected by computer viruses. The survey indicated that 73 percent of computers in China had been infected with viruses; the infection rate in Beijing is 80 per cent. Use of the Internet, especially e-mail, has already overtaken diskettes and CD-ROMs as the top virus spreading medium, according to the report. Producers of virus-killing software are the winners. With every report of a virus attack, sales boom, the newspaper said. (Source: Beijing China Daily, 10 August) Prosecutors in Yugoslavia have started preliminary criminal proceedings against unidentified hackers who choked Serbia's main Internet link with the outside world on 10 August. The hackers protested steep hikes in Internet access fees and gave state-owned and other Internet providers seven days to reverse sharp increases in charges for telecommunication services introduced at the beginning of the month or face more attacks. Attacks damaged or destroyed Internet-access equipment belonging to state companies Telecom Serbia and PTT Serbia NET and several of private providers, reports said. The hackers called on the provider companies to restore telephone and Internet access charges and terms of service to what they were in January 2000 within 168 hours from Friday. Failing this, they threatened to break down their communications by physically cutting telephone lines, choking the Post Office's incoming link and tampering with the servers that host the presentations of company clients. (Source: UPI, 11 August) Some 15,000 passengers were affected by a Japan Airlines Company (JAL) computer glitch caused by the Code Red worm on 9 August. JAL's host computer broke down temporarily at about 7:25 am local time, resulting in delays to about 55 international flights out of Japan's Narita, Kansai and Nagoya airports. The computer loss affected ticketing and check-in services for the carrier and its affiliates' international flights. Ticketing for domestic flights was also affected and JAL was forced to handle tickets manually during the breakdown according to Kyodo News. International flights were delayed by between one and two hours. The computer system was functional again at about 12:00 pm and Internet bookings were not affected. (Source: Security News Portal, 13 August) Security News Portal reports Kebracho, a hacking crew from Argentina, compromised a Solaris web server hosted by ROOT-DNS.COM at SITESTREAM.NET and was able to deface 1000+ web sites in a 'massive' mass defacement. This defacement is close to setting a record for most defacements in a single compromise at a single hosting company. ROOT-DNS.COM was smart enough not put their own web site on this poorly secured, web hosting server. Kebracho has also defaced another server at SITESTREAM.NET operated by PUBLICHOST.COM. This compromise only resulted in four sites being defaced : hackertronics.com, internet-help.org, internet-help.net and undergroundculture.com. SITESTREAM.NET reported that they have reverted to backups to restore the sites and believe they have everything in order. (Source: Security News Portal, 12 August) Government - NTR Military - NTR U.S. SECTOR INFORMATION: Telecommunications - On 9 August, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that the number of high-speed Internet connections in the United States jumped 158 percent last year, with 7.1 million lines reaching homes and businesses. The biggest jump came in asymmetric digital subscriber line (DSL) service, in which the download speed is faster than the uplink, which soared 435 percent to 2 million lines, the agency said. Meanwhile, 3.6 million lines offering high-speed Internet service were over coaxial cable systems last year, a 153 percent increase over 1999, according to the FCC's twice-yearly report. Approximately 5.2 million lines were to residential and small businesses. About 4.3 million of the total high-speed lines provided two-way 200-plus kilobits per second service, up 118 percent for the year, the report said. Additionally, the provision of high-speed access via satellite and fixed-wireless technology, while nascent, more than doubled to 112,000 lines last year from 50,000 the prior year. There were subscribers in 75 percent of the nation's zip codes last year, up from 56 percent at the end of 1999, according to the FCC. (Source: Reuters, 9 August) Banking and Finance - With the number of hacking incidents against U.S. corporations doubling, security experts are stepping up their warnings that U.S. banks are ill-prepared to combat cyber- terrorism. How-to blueprints on hacking are being shared all over the Internet, they say, so the threat could come from a kid down the street or an organized gang in Russia. Though bankers are fearful of those doomsday scenarios, some say that the warnings are overblown and that viruses, not hackers, are the biggest security threat. Other security experts say that banks should never take a complacent view of their security systems, or they will get caught by surprise. (Source: InfoSec News, 10 August) Electrical Power - California power managers say 65 million customers in 11 Western states and parts of Canada and Mexico were at risk of blackouts last week when several power suppliers failed to deliver electricity to the region as promised. Gregg Fishman, a spokesman for the California Independent System Operator, said during last Thursday's incident, the balance was so close that the unexpected loss of a single power plant could have triggered the region's worst outage in five years. Unlike natural gas, which can be stored, electricity must be used as it is produced, creating a delicate balance of supply and demand. The ISO schedules deliveries of electricity from generators and power marketers to utilities. Outages happen when those megawatts arrive late or in lesser quantities than expected. (Source: Associated Press, 11 August) Transportation - More than half the nation's air traffic controllers are expected to retire within the decade, threatening to create more vacancies at radar screens than have been seen since President Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking controllers 20 years ago. It took about 12 years for the Federal Aviation Administration to rebuild the air traffic control system. Today, there are about 15,000 controllers nationwide. But thousands are preparing to hang up their radio headsets, raising concerns about where the future corps of air traffic cops will come from and whether there will be enough to serve the nation's seemingly insatiable demand for air travel. (Source, Chicago Tribune, 13 August) Water Supply - NTR Gas and Oil Storage Distribution -NTR Government Services - NTR Emergency Services - NTR NOTE: Please understand that this is for informational purposes only and does not constitute any verification of the information contained in the report nor does this constitute endorsement by the NIPC or the FBI.
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