CRIME FW: NIPC DAILY REPORT 5 MARCH 2002

From: George Heuston (GeorgeH@private)
Date: Tue Mar 05 2002 - 09:05:17 PST

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    -----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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