DAILY BRIEF Number: DOB02-029 Date: 28 March 2002 NEWS
Ottawa Learned Lessons from Anthrax Scares The Citizen reports that Ottawa learned crucial lessons about emergency response following a string of anthrax hoaxes last October. Dr. Cushman, Ottawa's medical officer of health, said city hospitals might have overreacted by mobilizing emergency teams to treat "busloads of people" who never arrived. In the process, hospitals ground to a virtual standstill. Dr. Cushman learned from the false alarms that, in a real emergency, the first priority should be to get inspectors to the affected site to cordon off the area. The next priority for medical staff should be to treat anthrax like a disease outbreak, and focus on containing the early cases. (Source: The Ottawa Citizen, 28 March 2002) http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/ Comment: Future strategic terrorist hoaxes, threats or incidents may be designed to provoke reactions from critical infrastructure owners, operators or stakeholders that impact Canadian society more dramatically than the incident itself. Agency Prepares For Food Safety Threats An emergency planning expert for Canada's food inspection agency was quoted by media sources as saying that, if bioterrorism becomes a real threat, Canadians should be prepared for an increase in the number of hoaxes aimed at undermining people's faith in food safety. As with other acts of terror, the goals of "agri-terrorism" are to create fear, disrupt the economy and inflict mass casualties, says Louise Laferriere of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). She said that, since September 11, the agency has taken extra precautions against the threat of agriterrorism. CFIA has conducted additional searches at border checkpoints and has boosted inspectors at airports by 50 percent. A majority of the new inspectors were originally hired to boost airport surveillance during last year's foot and mouth disease outbreak in Europe. Internally, the agency has increased staff in its emergency planning office, added extra security to safeguard labs that store samples of harmful bacteria, and stockpiled chemicals needed for detection tests in the event of a food contamination incident. (Source: The Ottawa Citizen, 28 March 2002) http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/ Comment: An agri-terrorism incident could have significant repercussions on the flow of trade between the U.S. and Canada, adversely impacting the economy of both countries. U.S. Energy Officials Can't Account for Plutonium Loaned Abroad The U.S. Department of Energy cannot account for small, but potentially dangerous, amounts of plutonium that the United States has donated or loaned to foreign countries since the 1950s, according to a U.S. energy inspector general report released this month. The report concluded that "the oversight of radioactive sealed sources provided by the U.S. to foreign entities was inadequate given current realities." The U.S. loaned, or gave, two to three kilograms of plutonium to 33 countries as part of the Atoms for Peace program, according to a 1996 departmental report. Several of those countries have since developed nuclear weapons programs or raised concerns about nuclear proliferation including India, Pakistan, Iran and Israel. (Source: GovExec.com, 27 March 2002) http://www.govexec.com Comment: The U.S. has expressed concern since September 11 about the possibility of nuclear or radiological terrorist incidents. IN BRIEF Wireless London is Wideopen Almost all the wireless networks in London are vulnerable to attack. A comprehensive seven-month audit found that 92 percent of the 5,000 wireless networks in the capital had not taken basic steps to protect themselves against attacks. (Source: BBC News, 26 March 2002) http://news.bbc.co.uk Comment: A laptop and homemade antenna can be used to execute successful remote breaches of wireless networks. Spoof Site Takes Aim at Aliant Telecom On Monday, a new web site appeared spoofing Aliant Telecom at the following address: www.alianttelecom.com. Aliant, a consortium of four telecommunications companies in the Atlantic provinces - Island Telecom of PEI, Maritime Telephone and Telegraph of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick Telephone and Newfoundland Telephone - maintains its own web site at www.aliant.com. (Source: The Globe and Mail, 26 March 2002) http://www.theglobeandmail.com Comment: The spoofing of web addresses can result in a loss of reputation and revenue for the organization being spoofed. The spoofing of government or news sites could cause societal disruption through the spread of disinformation. Pilots Want Airbus Planes Grounded American Airlines pilots have told the U.S. government that it should consider grounding the Airbus A300-600, one of which crashed in New York last year, because of safety concerns with this aircraft type. American Airlines and Airbus Industrie, however, say the plane is safe. The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered new inspections of Airbus A300-600s but has not ordered the aircraft be grounded. (Source: The Globe and Mail, 27 March 2002) http://www.theglobeandmail.com CYBER UPDATES See: What's New for the latest Alerts, Advisories and Information Products Threats McAfee reports on W32/Goround, which is a network aware worm that propagates via open network shares. The worm will place itself into the startup, and attempt to put the infected system into a reboot loop. http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_99423.htm Vulnerabilities Cisco reports on a vulnerability that has been found in Cisco CallManager 3.1. A memory leak in the Call Telephony Integration (CTI) Framework authentication can cause the server to crash and result in a reload. This bug could allow a Denial of Service (DoS) attack to be launched. http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/callmanager-ctifw-leak-pub.shtml SecurityFocus provides information on a vulnerability that has been found in csSearch, a free perl cgi search script. http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/1/264169 Tools No updates to report at this time. CONTACT US For additions to, or removals from the distribution list for this product, or to report a change in contact information, please send to: Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For urgent matters or to report any incidents, please contact OCIPEP’s Emergency Operations Centre at: Phone: (613) 991-7000 Fax: (613) 996-0995 Secure Fax: (613) 991-7094 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For general information, please contact OCIPEP’s Communications Division at: Phone: (613) 991-7066 or 1-800-830-3118 Fax: (613) 998-9589 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web Site: www.ocipep-bpiepc.gc.ca Disclaimer OCIPEP publications are based on information obtained from a variety of sources. The organization makes every reasonable effort to ensure the accuracy, reliability, completeness and validity of the contents in its publications. However, it cannot guarantee the veracity of the information nor can it assume responsibility or liability for any consequences related to that information. It is recommended that OCIPEP publications be carefully considered within a proper context and in conjunction with information available from other sources, as appropriate. IWS INFOCON Mailing List @ IWS - The Information Warfare Site http://www.iwar.org.uk
