-----Original Message----- From: NIPC Watch [mailto:nipc.watch@private] Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 7:33 AM To: Information Technology; Cyber Threats Subject: [Cyber_threats] Daily News 01/07/03 January 07, Computerworld Think Tank says the threat of cyberterrorism is overrated. A research paper released last month by the Center for Strategic &International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based Think Tank, argues that computer networks and critical infrastructures are distinct entities and that the threat from cyberterrorism is far less serious than the government and the media contend. "While many computer networks remain very vulnerable to attack, few critical infrastructures are equally vulnerable," argues James A. Lewis, a CSIS analyst. "Computer network vulnerabilities are an increasingly serious business problem, but their threat to national security is overstated." However, Brenton Greene, deputy director of the National Communications System, an executive-branch agency responsible for maintaining and restoring communications during times of national crisis, said the physical and cyber aspects of critical infrastructure protection can't be separated. Major physical events will have digital ramifications and vice versa, said Greene. That's also the conclusion of the recently released annual report of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, led by former Virginia Governor James S. Gilmore. "Cyberspace has been isolated and specialized, thus limiting its perceived relevance to day-to-day outcomes and even its relevance to what are viewed as clear and present homeland security threats," the commission stated. Source: http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/cybercrime/s tory/0,10801,77239,00.html January 06, Federal Computer Week Army considers urban warfare technology. The Army's Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD) is reviewing responses to a recent request for information (RFI) for technology that can be used to gather intelligence and fight enemy forces in an urban environment. However, this type of battle, especially in a foreign city, poses numerous problems for the Army, not the least of which is quickly identifying "bad guys" as opposed to innocent civilians, said Fran Orzech, chief of I2WD's information operations technology development branch at Communications-Electronics Command (Cecom) in Fort Monmouth, N.J. That task is made even more difficult when enemy forces set up command and control (C2) centers using commercially available communications equipment in hospitals, schools and other locations where innocent city workers and inhabitants can also be found, Orzech said. The "sheer density of radio frequency signals" in an urban environment, emitted from those commercial systems as well as wireless and paging systems, is yet another complicating factor, he added. The RFI is part of a new four-year, science and technology objective program - Information Operations for the Objective Force -that is focused on maturing sensor technology, signal processing techniques and computer network operations for transition to the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) and other transformational programs. Source: http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0106/web-cecom-01-06-03.asp January 06, New York Times Experts see vulnerability as outsiders code software. As American companies increasingly move their software development tasks out of their own offices to computer programming companies here and abroad, new concerns are being raised about the security risks involved. The companies providing outsourcing services say that they take all necessary precautions to limit risk. But the question of whether the booming business in exporting high-tech jobs is heightening the risk of theft, sabotage or cyberterrorism from rogue programmers has been raised in discussions at the White House, before Congress and in boardrooms. "I can't cite any examples of this happening - but what that means is we haven't found any," said James Lewis, director of the technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. While operations in some countries, like the United States, Britain and India, are considered generally safe for such software outsourcing, nervousness is beginning to grow at companies and in the government about the possibility of abuse by hackers, organized crime agents and cyberterrorists in nations like Pakistan, the Philippines and Russia. It is easy to see why companies find the economics of outsourcing compelling; cost savings can be 25 to 40 percent. Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts, predicted in a recent report that the acceleration in outsourcing would result in 3.3 million American jobs' moving offshore by 2015. Forrester estimates that 70 percent of these jobs will move to India, 20 percent to the Philippines and 10 percent to China. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/06/technology/06OUTS.html January 06, Washington Post Setting up IT infrastructure will help the Department of Homeland Security. One of the challenges in creating a department from a hodgepodge of 22 federal agencies and 170,000 employees is the information technology headache. "It is not enough to shuffle redundant or overlapping programs under the new bureaucracy," Michael Scardaville, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in a recent report. The department "should develop and deploy an information technology infrastructure that links and fuses intelligence and law enforcement terrorism databases." Representative of the agency's challenge will be monitoring the thousands of freighters that enter U.S. ports daily. The department wants a "smart border" program in which cargo ships heading for U.S. ports would electronically file information detailing the contents of cargo containers, crew members' names and nationalities, and what stops the ships are scheduled to make before reaching the United States. Steven I. Cooper, special assistant to the president on information technology's place in homeland security, admitted, it may be a lengthy process. "I think parts of it could probably be done fairly quickly, meaning within months instead of years," he said. "To fully put together something like that across the world is obviously going to take a longer period of time." In the meantime, short term priorities for the new department will include border and transportation security technology, such as equipment that identifies radioactivity and software that identifies non-obvious trends in databases or protects computer infrastructure from hackers. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11573-2003Jan4.html Virus: #1 Virus in USA: WORM_KLEZ.H Source: http://wtc.trendmicro.com/wtc/wmap.html, Trend World Micro Virus Tracking Center [Infected Computers, North America, Past 24 hours, #1 in United States] Top 10 Target Ports: 137 (netbios-ns), 1433 (ms-sql-s), 80 (http), 139 (netbios-ssn), 27374 (asp), 135 (???), 53 (domain), 4662 (???), 445 (microsoft-ds), 21 (ftp) Source: http://isc.incidents.org/top10.html; Internet Storm Center _______________________________________________ Cyber_Threats mailing list Cyber_Threats@listserv http://listserv.infragard.org/mailman/listinfo/cyber_threats
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 07 2003 - 10:28:38 PST