CRIME FW: [Information_technology] Daily News 4/02/03

From: George Heuston (GeorgeH@private)
Date: Wed Apr 02 2003 - 09:33:48 PST

  • Next message: George Heuston: "CRIME FW: [Information_technology] Daily News 4/3/03"

    -----Original Message-----
    From: NIPC Watch [mailto:nipc.watch@private] 
    Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 7:09 AM
    To: Information Technology
    Subject: [Information_technology] Daily News 4/02/03
    
    April 01, Government Computer News
    At DHS, the systems add up. The Department of Homeland Security so far
    has
    identified 2,500 mission-critical systems as part of an IT inventory it
    expects to complete by June, CIO Steve Cooper said today. He spoke at
    the
    Secure E-Biz conference sponsored by the Interoperability Clearing House
    of
    Alexandria, Virginia. So far, the department's systems inventory is 40
    percent complete, Cooper said. He added that his staff has counted
    50,000
    items in its IT infrastructure, which comprises the assets of 22
    agencies.
    He said the department's IT team is struggling with two parallel
    initiatives: bringing an operational capability up to speed and working
    on a
    long-range architecture. "We accept that some [systems] will have to be
    re-architected or replaced" once the enterprise architecture is final,
    Cooper said. Source:
    http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/21550-1.html
    
    March 31, Federal Computer Week
    Cyberwarriors guard virtual front. As coalition forces continue to
    engage
    the enemy throughout Iraq, the number of battles being fought in
    cyberspace
    also has risen, according to one Army information assurance officer.
    Col.
    Mark Spillers, information assurance program manager in the Coalition
    Forces
    Land Component Command communications office at Camp Doha, Kuwait, said
    "if
    a device is thought to be compromised, it is immediately isolated, taken
    off
    the network and scanned for viruses." Spillers said he could not go into
    any
    details about how the Army is protecting its systems or if any have been
    compromised." On the physical battlefield, if troops are in danger of
    being
    defeated, procedures are in place to safeguard or even destroy
    endangered
    equipment and systems to keep sensitive data from falling into enemy
    hands.
    Source: http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/middle_east/web-warrior
    s-03-31-03.asp
    
    March 31, Washington Post
    DHS: Chinese hack attacks likely. Chinese hacker groups are planning
    attacks
    on U.S.- and U.K.-based Web sites to protest the war in Iraq, the
    Department
    of Homeland Security (DHS) warned in an alert Monday. The hackers are
    planning "distributed denial-of-service" attacks, which render Web sites
    and
    networks unusable by flooding them with massive amounts of traffic. They
    also are planning to deface selected Web sites, according to the alert,
    though the government said it did not know when the attacks would occur.
    The
    DHS said it got the information by monitoring an online meeting that the
    hackers held last weekend to coordinate the attacks. Source:
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60363-2003Mar31.html
    
    March 29, Washington Post
    Computer support staff at home is crucial to war effort. To a greater
    extent
    than any war before it, Operation Iraqi Freedom depends on an elite
    group of
    technicians, engineers and other specialists in the United States who
    are
    standing by 24 hours a day, seven days a week to assist the troops.
    Pentagon
    officials have called this conflict a "network centric" one, with
    computers
    and wireless technology linking intelligence from the 250,000 U.S.
    troops
    and the drones, tanks, planes and other vehicles in a way that has
    compressed decision-making from what in the past might have been days
    into
    minutes. A single mix-up, glitch or crash in the technology could cost
    lives. So far, the technology has held up well, and there have been few
    major problems, according to about a dozen of the contractors who
    provide
    technical support services to the military. Working in classified "safe
    rooms" or reachable via pagers and cell phones around the country, they
    have
    been working behind the scenes to make sure the multitude of software
    and
    hardware systems is working properly. Source:
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44712-2003Mar
    28.html?referrer=email
    
    March 28, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
    Hackers strike Georgia Tech computer, gain credit card data. Computer
    hackers invaded a computer at Georgia Tech and copied names, addresses
    and -- in some cases -- credit card information for 57,000 patrons of
    the
    Ferst Center for the Arts in Atlanta. Tech said the database held credit
    card records for about two-thirds of the 57,000 people. The hackers had
    access to the computer between February 4 and March 14, when the attack
    was
    discovered. There's no evidence any credit card numbers have been used
    by
    hackers. Tech sent letters to patrons this week warning of "a
    potentially
    serious security breach." Tech's computer security experts discovered
    the
    attack through internal monitoring, said Bob Harty, a Tech spokesman.
    Source: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/business/0303/28hacker.html
    
    March 28, Associated Press
    Utah ISP is victim of retaliation following hackers' attack on
    al-Jazeera.
    The Salt Lake City-based Internet service provider Networld Connections
    became the unwitting tool of hackers attacking Arab television network
    al-Jazeera, and then was itself struck by a retaliatory attack, possibly
    from anti-war hackers. The original hackers, impersonating an al-Jazeera
    employee, tricked the Web addressing company Network Solutions into
    making
    technical changes that effectively turned over temporary control of the
    network's Arabic and English Web sites. "We have no idea who the hacker
    is,
    but now there is a 'denial-of-service' attack going on against us
    because of
    what happened," Ken Bowman, Networld's president and chief executive,
    said
    late Thursday. Bowman said the attacks were from all over the world, but
    seemed concentrated most from nations such as Russia, China and France
    that
    have among the most vocal opponents of the U.S.-British coalition's
    attack.
    Source: http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=37813
    
    
    Internet Security Systems - AlertCon: 1 out of 4
    https://gtoc.iss.net/
    Last Changed 25 March 2003
    
    Security Focus ThreatCon: 1 out of 4
    www.securityfocus.com
    Last Changed 1 April 2003
    
    Current Virus and Port Attacks
    Virus: #1 Virus in USA: WORM_LOVGATE.F
    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:
    80 (www), 137 (netbios-ns), 1434 (ms-sql-m), 25 (smtp), 113 (ident), 445
    (microsoft-ds), 139 (netbios-ssn), 4662 (eDonkey2000), 53 (domain), 0
    (---)
    Source: http://isc.incidents.org/top10.html; Internet Storm Center
    
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