CRIME FW: [Information_technology] Daily News 4/29/03

From: George Heuston (GeorgeH@private)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 11:11:13 PDT

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    -----Original Message-----
    From: NIPC Watch [mailto:nipc.watch@private] 
    Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 7:40 AM
    To: Information Technology
    Subject: [Information_technology] Daily News 4/29/03
    
    April 25, Computerworld
    Lack of terrorist activity leads to complacency. The changing of the
    cybersecurity guard at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
    coupled
    with complacency on the part of some corporate executives, has put a
    higher
    premium on information-sharing and cooperation between the private
    sector
    and the government. Michael Hershman of Virginia-based security
    consulting
    firm Decision Strategies LLC says companies have started to slow their
    efforts to boost security because there has been no terrorist activity
    recently. "I'm afraid that they may be drawing back into complacency,"
    he
    said last week at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce conference in Washington
    that
    addressed the roles and responsibilities of the government and private
    sector in homeland security efforts. "Corporations in America have spent
    billions of dollars for security, with very little cost-benefit
    analysis,"
    said Hershman. Source:
    http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,80704
    ,00.
    html
    
    April 25, London Free Press
    Cyber attacks a concern? The FBI calls cyber-terrorism a "premeditated,
    politically motivated attack against information, computer systems,
    computer
    programs and data which results in violence against non-combatant
    targets by
    subnational groups or clandestine agents." Some fear cyber-terrorists
    could
    shut down the Internet or substantially interfere with the use of oil,
    gas,
    power grids, telecommunications and emergency services. Others, however,
    say
    these fears are overstated as many critical systems are based on secured
    networks not accessible through the Internet. Terrorists and computer
    hackers can be a dangerous combination. There are reports that after
    investigations regarding several hijackings, authorities were led to
    believe
    terrorists had gained access to the architectural schematics of the
    planes
    through cyber-crime. Source:
    http://www.ds-osac.org/view.cfm?KEY=7E44514147571E0A3A0F162820
    
    April 25, SecurityFocus
    Rise of the spam zombies. Pressed by increasingly effective anti-spam
    efforts, senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail are using Trojan
    horses to
    turn the computers of innocent netizens into secret spam zombies. One of
    those programs, popped up last week. "Proxy-Guzu" arrives as a spam, and
    when executed by an unwitting user, the Trojan listens on a
    randomly-chosen
    port and uses its own built-in mail client to dash off a message to a
    Hotmail account, putting the port number and victim's IP address in the
    subject line. The spammer then routes as much e-mail as he or she likes
    through the captured computer, knowing that any efforts to trace the
    source
    of the spam will end at the victim's Internet address. "As a general
    rule
    it's legal to send someone an e-mail even if they don't want it," says
    Mark
    Rasch, a former Justice Department computer crime attorney. "But once
    you
    break into their computer and get their computer to send e-mail to
    someone
    else, then you're violating federal and state computer crime laws."
    Source:
    http://securityfocus.com/news/4217
    
    
    Internet Security Systems - AlertCon: 1 out of 4
    https://gtoc.iss.net/
    Last Changed 8 April 2003
    
    Security Focus - ThreatCon: 1 out of 4
    www.securityfocus.com
    Last Changed 18 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: 137 (netbios-ns), 80 (www), 1434 (ms-sql-m), 445
    (microsoft-ds), 25 (smtp), 113 (ident), 4662 (eDonkey2000), 7088 (---),
    139
    (netbios-ssn), 11310 (---)
    Source: http://isc.incidents.org/top10.html; Internet Storm Center
    
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