-----Original Message----- From: NIPC Watch [mailto:nipc.watch@private] Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 7:18 AM To: Information Technology Subject: [Information_technology] Daily News 5/23/03 May 22, Federal Computer Week Study details broadband in states. According to a report released Thursday by the American Electronics Association (AeA) titled Broadband in the States 2003, the pace of Internet broadband growth has slowed, but the number of subscribers increased to 16.2 million as of June 2002, up from 2.8 million in December 1999. One of the report's authors, Christopher Novak, said while the rate of growth slowed, that may change as telephone companies recently decided to drop their rates to $35 a month. Because telecommunications and other private-sector providers see little return on investment from providing infrastructure in rural areas, only 50 percent of the nation's most sparsely populated communities have a broadband provider serving customers, as opposed to 99 percent in the most densely populated communities. Among states, California, New York, Florida, Texas and New Jersey were the top five in terms of broadband subscribers. Of the total subscribers, about 9.2 million used cable, 5.1 million used DSL, and 520,000 had fiber. About 221,000 used satellite or fixed wireless and other wireline subscribers numbered 1.2 million. Source: http://fcw.com/geb/articles/2003/0519/web-band-05-22-03.asp May 22, Government Computer News Lawmakers press DHS on technology, cybersecurity. Members of a subcommittee of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security Wednesday asked Charles McQueary, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) undersecretary for science and technology, how they could channel vendor requests to the DHS. McQueary said the Science and Technology Directorate has received more than 500 e-mail messages to science.technology@private, many offering research proposals for homeland security projects. The Directorate also will receive proposals via a Broad Agency Announcement released by the Pentagon's Technical Support Working Group at www.tswg.gov. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA), chairman of the full committee, inquired whether the funds allocated to cybersecurity research in the fiscal 2004 budget will be adequate, citing DHS secretary Tom Ridge's recent statement that the department's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate would be assuming additional cybersecurity functions. McQueary said the $5 million planned for cybersecurity research could be increased if necessary by using money from other programs. Source: http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/22174-1.html May 22, ITWEB New Trojan exploits known Internet Explorer vulnerability. Data security software developer Kaspersky Labs reports that a new Trojan program, StartPage, is exploiting an Internet Explorer vulnerability for which there is no patch. If a patch is not released soon, other viruses could exploit the vulnerability. StartPage is sent to victim addresses directly from the author and does not have an automatic send function. The program is a Zip-archive that contains an HTML file. Upon opening the HTML file, an embedded Java-script is launched that exploits the "Exploit.SelfExecHtml" vulnerability and clandestinely executes an embedded EXE file carrying the Trojan program. Source: http://196.37.50.65/sections/internet/2003/0305221102.asp May 22, Federal Computer Week Information security spending forecast: $6B. By 2008, the federal government will spend almost $6 billion annually on information security, an increase of about 43 percent over 2003's $4.2 billion, according to a new report from research firm Input. The predicted increases reflect a "more normal" rate of growth than the spending spikes that came in the wake of September 11, said Payton Smith, the firm's manager of federal market analysis. However, he noted that agencies still face challenges in implementing systems and so will continue to contract with vendors. The report attributes the drive for information security investment to strong oversight from Congress and the Office of Management and Budget. The new Department of Homeland Security is also serving as a coordination point for government wide-security initiatives, the report concludes. Source: http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/0519/web-spend-05-22-03.asp 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), 445 (microsoft-ds), 1434 (ms-sql-m), 113 (ident), 139 (netbios-ssn), 4662 (eDonkey2000), 6346 (gnutella-svc), 19341 (---), 53 (domain) Source: http://isc.incidents.org/top10.html; Internet Storm Center _______________________________________________ Information_technology mailing list Information_technology@listserv
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