-----Original Message----- From: InfraGard [mailto:infragard@private] Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 7:11 AM To: Information Technology Subject: [Information_technology] Daily News 8/19/03 August 18, Government Computer News Emergency telecom programs gave responders access. Priority services operated by the National Communications System (NCS) gave government officials and emergency personnel access to both landline and wireless telecommunications during the blackout that shut down parts of the Northeast Thursday and Friday. Although most of the telecommunications infrastructure remained in operation, usage spikes overwhelmed resources, making access difficult for many calling to or from the affected areas. That is the situation for which the Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS) was established for landline phones, and the Wireless Priority Service (WPS) for cellular phones. GETS gives priority users access to the public-switched network. WPS gives priority to calls by federal, state and local officials and industry first responders who dial a special cellular system. Routine calls are not dropped, but priority calls are moved to the head of the queue waiting for a channel on the nearest available cell. Source: http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/23184-1.html August 18, Washington Post FCC vows to fix radio interference. The explosive growth of the mobile phone industry has crowded and tangled the nation's airwaves to such an extent that wireless company signals are increasingly interfering with emergency radio frequencies used by police and firefighters, public safety agencies said. Emergency departments across the country report many stories of officers who can't call for backup, dispatchers who can't relay suspect descriptions and firefighters who can't request ambulances because of radio "dead spots" believed to be caused by wireless phone interference. To solve the problem, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering reshuffling channels in the 800 megahertz band, which potentially could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take years to complete, industry officials said. The idea is to separate the wireless companies from the public safety departments, so they inhabit different ends of the band. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7270-2003Aug17.html August 18, U.S. Department of Homeland Security New version of the MS-RPC DCOM Worm infecting machines and creating Denial of Service Conditions. A new worm that exploits the same security weakness as the Blaster worm (also known as "lovsan" or "msblast") has been released on the Internet. This new worm, dubbed "nachi", "welchia", or "msblast.d" does not infect systems that have been updated to counter the Blaster worm but will re-infect computers that are currently infected with Blaster or one of its variants. It deletes the original worm, patches the system by downloading the update from Microsoft, and replaces the original worm with itself. The variant then begins scanning or flooding the network with high volumes of ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) traffic causing network congestion which can result in denial of service conditions. Users should patch the MS-RPC DCOM vulnerability immediately using the instructions available on the Microsoft Website: http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp. Source: http://www.nipc.gov/warnings/advisories/2003/Advisory8182003.htm August 17, Gulf News Power cut shifts focus to cyber security. Last week's blackouts showed how vulnerable our society is to disruption of such complex systems as the power grid. U.S. intelligence officials last year discovered an al Qaeda safe house in Pakistan devoted to training people for computer hacking and cyber warfare where al Qaeda operatives gathered information on the automated systems that control U.S. infrastructure, such as dams and power grids. The terrorists haven't yet demonstrated the capacity to carry out large-scale terror, but that doesn't mean they haven't achieved the necessary level of expertise to do it. This situation is alarming when one considers that America has many thousands of dams, airports, chemical plants, federal reservoirs and power plants (of which 104 are nuclear), most of whose integral systems are controlled by sophisticated computer systems or other automated controllers. Source: http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/Opinion.asp?ArticleID=95364 August 15, National Journal Congress lowers funding for intelligence, cybersecurity. The Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Committee awarded the Department of Homeland Security's information analysis and infrastructure protection directorate $823.7 million for fiscal 2004. It would use the money to collect and disseminate information on terrorist threats, integrate data with foreign intelligence agencies, and develop and implement a plan against terrorist threats and national vulnerabilities, according to the Senate committee. The Senate approved $98.5 million to monitor and coordinate work on cyber-security infrastructure, including the creation of a national cyber-security division. Some $33 million would be available for advisories, and $66 million would go for cybersecurity from funds available for remediation and protective actions. The Senate also offered $294 million to guide the development of protective measures for critical infrastructure and $155 million for the National Communications System to expand telecommunications capabilities for national security and emergency preparedness. Source: http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0803/081503td2.htm Internet Security Systems AlertCon: 2 out of 4 https://gtoc.iss.net/ Last Changed 18 August 2003 Security Focus ThreatCon: 3 out of 4 www.securityfocus.com Last Changed 19 August 2003 Current Virus and Port Attacks 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: 135 (epmap), 445 (microsoft-ds), 137 (netbios-ns), 1434 (ms-sql-m), 443 (https), 27374 (SubSeven), 80 (www), 139 (netbios-ssn), 4444 (CrackDown), 1433 (ms-sql-s) Source: http://isc.incidents.org/top10.html; Internet Storm Center _______________________________________________ Information_technology mailing list Information_technology@listserv
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