-----Original Message----- From: NIPC Watch [mailto:nipc.watch@private] Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 8:00 AM To: Cyber Threats; Information Technology Subject: [Cyber_threats] Daily News 01/21/03 January 17, Government Computer News Ridge pledges data merger between agencies. In his nomination hearing today before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Homeland Security secretary-designate Tom Ridge pledged to blend the government's immigration and law enforcement databases. Ridge said Congress had given his department the task of merging information gathered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service with that of the FBI and CIA. "We recognize that we have plenty of information, but we have been unable-not necessarily unwilling-to connect that information," he said. "One of our highest priorities will be to connect those databases." Ridge said Homeland Security officials have identified "a way ahead" in the data fusion task using commercial applications. Ridge said he expects biometric authentication to be a significant part of the department's workload. "Ultimately there needs to be an international standard" for biometrics, he said. "I can envision a day in the not too distant future that we'll require biometric identification of people crossing the border, and our friends and allies will require that, too." Ridge said Defense Department secretary Donald Rumsfeld has commissioned a team of specialists to work on homeland systems interoperability, as have FBI director Robert S. Mueller III and CIA director George Tenet. "That collaboration is with an eye to creating an architecture to make information available across agency lines," he said. "We are not trying to design a brand-new system." Source: http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/20891-1.html January 17, Federal Computer Week Davis: IT to see 15 percent boost. Rep. Tom Davis, (R-Va.), the newly named chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said Jan. 16 that the Bush administration wants to increase the federal information technology budget by about 15 percent in fiscal 2004. The president's budget will be officially released Feb. 3, but Davis said it is likely that the budget will focus on using IT to increase security and information gathering to thwart terrorist threats. The IT budget request will likely to be about 15 percent more than the baseline fiscal 2002 budget that included $45 billion for IT, he said. Source: http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0113/web-davis-01-17-03.asp January 16, CNET News Military worried about Web leaks. Department of Defense (DOD) Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned in a directive sent to military units this week that too much unclassified but worrisome material was popping up on the Web, and said al Qaeda and other foes were sure to take advantage of it. The directive, drafted as the U.S. is readying troops for a possible attack on Iraq, reminded military Webmasters they must adhere to the department's 1998 policy which says: "A DOD Web site may not post For Official Use Only information, or information not specifically cleared and approved for public release unless it employs adequate security and access controls." Rumsfeld's order further restricts what information will be publicly available on military sites, effectively tightening controls that have been in place for at least five years and that became far more strict after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "An al Qaeda training manual recovered in Afghanistan states: 'Using public sources openly and without resorting to illegal means, it is possible to gather at least 80 percent of information about the enemy,'" Rumsfeld wrote. "At more than 700 gigabytes, the DOD Web-based data makes a vast, readily available source of information on DOD plans, programs and activities. One must conclude our enemies access DOD Web sites on a regular basis." There have been no confirmed reports about classified information making its way to military sites, but Rumsfeld said he was concerned about other categories he dubbed "sensitive" or "for official use only." Rumsfeld said that 1,500 instances of such public distribution have been spotted in the last year. Source: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981057.html January 16, Wireless Data News Nationwide priority wireless access needed in emergencies. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will apply some urgency to the wireless industry's regard for providing priority wireless access during emergencies to government and law enforcement officials. The Federal Communications Commission asked U.S. carriers more than a year before September 11, 2001, to voluntarily participate in ensuring that local, state and federal government and emergency services officials could have priority access at times when wireline service could be disrupted and demand for wireless service would soar. The $73 million needed by the White House's National Communications Systems (NCS) office in order to fund nationwide priority wireless access was not included in the $355 billion Department of Defense appropriations Congress approved in October. The NCS is being transferred to the recently created DHS, and expects to be funded next year when Congress enacts appropriations for that agency. "This problem has dropped between the cracks and we do not have the funding to take priority cell phone service around the country," Richard Clarke, chairman of the White House's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, said recently at the Cellular Telecommunications &Internet Association's Homeland Security Conference in Washington, D.C. Source: http://www.telecomweb.com/wirelessdata/feature.htm January 16, Boston Globe Discarded hard drives found full of personal data. In a new article in the engineering journal IEEE Security and Privacy, MIT graduate students Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat describe how they wondered whether people erased their hard drives before reselling their PCs. The students purchased 158 hard drives at swap meets and used computer shops throughout the United States, and on the Internet auction site eBay. They wound up with 129 drives that actually worked. Then they used commonplace software tools to look for data on the drives. They found sensitive personal information, including 3,700 credit card numbers. Sometimes, the previous owners had taken the trouble to delete important files, not realizing that a PC's delete function doesn't really remove the data, but conceals it from the computer's operating system. In other cases, the users went further and "reformatted" the hard drive. This process appears to wipe out all data on the disk, but again, the information is still there and can be read using common recovery tools. They acquired a drive that had been used in an automatic teller machine. There they found account numbers and balances for the bank's customers. Out of 129 usable drives purchased by Garfinkel and Shelat, only 12 had been properly purged of all data. This is done with a program that dumps meaningless clumps of randomly chosen digits onto the drive. Such programs are available for free on the Internet, but running them can take several hours for each drive. Source: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/016/business/Discarded_hard_dri ves_found_full_of_personal_data+.shtml January 16, Federal Computer News Net-centric success depends on culture. The future of network-centric warfare will rely just as much on policies and cultural adaptability as it will on the technology on which it runs, according to a panel of experts assembled at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's (AFCEA) International West 2003 conference in San Diego January 15. While new technology will continue to be adopted quickly, the success of network-centric operations will largely depend on how the U.S. forces and their allies use that technology. Rear Adm. Charles Munns, director of the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, said that network-centricity is happening throughout the Navy. "The intranet we are building is the answer we need to deal with the future. NMCI is going to take 1,000 [local-area networks] and morph them into one interoperable, secure intranet." Others on the panel said just as much attention needs to be paid to getting technology and standards to allied and coalition forces as is being paid to enhance U.S. forces. Commodore Jon Welch of Great Britain's Royal Navy said remembering the allies has been an overlooked part of adapting to a network-centric model, and it is one that could cause serious problems in future wars. "Tell the allies what you're buying and what you're doing with it," he said. Source: http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0113/web-net-01-16-03.asp Virus: #1 Virus in USA: PE_FUNLOVE.4099 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), 80 (http), 1433 (ms-sql-s), 4662 (???), 445 (microsoft-ds), 139 (netbios-ssn), 53 (domain), 21 (ftp), 8714 (???), 3389 (ms-term-serv) 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
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