-----Original Message-----
From: NIPC Watch [mailto:nipc.watch@private]
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 6:26 AM
To: Daily Distribution
Subject: NIPC DAILY REPORT 5 MARCH 2002
NIPC Daily Report 05 March 2002
The NIPC Watch and Warning Unit compiles this report to inform
recipients of issues impacting the integrity and capability of the
nation's critical infrastructures.
US braces for water shortage. According to the National Drought
Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, a drought has engulfed nearly a
third of the United States, threatening to confront some places this
summer with what experts say could be the worst water shortages in
years. New York and Baltimore are pumping water from temporary
supplies, while in New Hampshire and Georgia wells have run dry. Los
Angeles has seen just over a third of its usual 11 inches of rain.
Overall drought has spread to about 30 percent of the country.
(Associated Press, 4 Mar)
Energy Department targeted in lawsuit. The Energy Department is being
sued over a proposal to abandon radioactive waste buried in storage
tanks in Idaho, South Carolina, and Washington State. At issue is a
highly radioactive residual sludge that was left behind after the
storage tanks were drained. Environmentalists believe the sludge could
threaten water resources. The lawsuit, filed by environmentalists on 1
March in U.S. District Court in Boise, asks that the department not be
allowed to abandon the tanks. (Associated Press, 5 Mar)
Online virus generator causes concern. Anti-virus experts have issued a
warning over the discovery of an online virus generator. Instant Macro
Virus Maker v1.2 is a Web site capable of generating Microsoft Word
macro viruses. All the user has to do is enter a name for the virus,
some text to display as the payload, and a day of the month to activate.
The web form then generates a simple virus that can be copied and pasted
into a Word document of the same name as the virus and attached to an
email for distribution. (Vnunet.com, 4 Mar)
ASPs lack fundamental security practices. An independent research firm
concluded that 25% of the 50 ASPs examined lack fundamental security
procedures. For those sites, virus protection, user authentication,
network security and firewall provision were found to be sub?standard.
The rest had the basics covered, but many lacked a comprehensive
environment for ASP delivery. (IT-Analysis, 4 Mar)
Executing arbitrary commands without Active Scripting or ActiveX.
Microsoft Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Outlook Express are vulnerable
to exploit even if all current patches are in place and scripting has
been turned off within the program security settings. The exploit takes
advantage of the way Internet Explorer renders HTML. The current state
requires a registry edit for a workaround, and appears to be the only
way until a patch is made available from Microsoft. (GreyMagic Software,
27 Feb)
Conectiva Linux security announcement. A buffer-overflow exists in
the mod_ssl module used by apache to enable encrypted connections
("https://") to the web server and other crypto?related functions. The
mod_ssl module is not part of the apache distribution, but is bundled
and enabled by default in the Conectiva Linux Apache packages. A remote
attacker could exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary commands
on the server running apache with this module enabled. The Conectiva
Linux advisory and update instructions can be viewed at
http://distro.conectiva.com.br/atualizacoes/?idiomaen (Conectiva Linux
Security, 4 Mar)
Microsoft moves fast to stop hacking rumor. Microsoft says a strange
text file at its site is not the work of hackers, but an internal test
document used to determine if content is being propagated throughout the
Microsoft.com servers. On 3 March, a link to the test file was posted
to an encrypted Internet Relay Chat channel for discussing security
topics. The test document was not listed in Microsoft's search engine,
or reachable through any public search sites. It's unknown, as to how
it might have been discovered. However, the company has updated the
contents of the file for those who stumble upon it. (Newsbytes, 4 Mar)
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