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London, Thursday, October 31, 2002
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[News Index]
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[1] Businesses overlook intellectual property security, ASIS reports
[2] BCS presses Whitehall on new security rules
[3] Transformation driving DOD IT
[4] Was it hacking or public property?
[5] Islamic site's peaceful path
[6] Country bodies threaten ICANN walkout
[7] Merkur Worm Hits File Swappers
[8] Digital copyright law on trial
[9] Australia is sure al-Qaida was in on Bali bombing
[10] 'Internal Look' to Test CENTCOM Command and Control Capabilities
[11] US may set up MI5-style spy agency in security shake-up
[12] Outlook bright for many e-tailers
[13] Kournikova author loses appeal
[14] Aust police, manufacturers in standoff over device security
[15] (ZA) Hacker continues trail of malice
[16] Verizon settles lawsuit against spammer
[17] MasterCard to send anti-skimming cards to Australia
_________________________________________________________________
News
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[1] Businesses overlook intellectual property security, ASIS reports
Access Control & Security Systems, Oct 1, 2002
Businesses must make information protection a higher priority, contends
a recent report by ASIS International, through its Council on
Safeguarding Proprietary Information.
The report includes a Proprietary Information Loss Survey conducted
among CEOs of Fortune 1,000 companies and of 600 small and mid-sized
companies that belong to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Responses suggest
proprietary information and intellectual property (IP) losses totalling
between $53 billion and $59 billion from July 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001.
http://www.industryclick.com/magazinearticle.asp?magazineid=119&releasei
d=10640&magazinearticleid=159088&siteid=2
----------------------------------------------------
[2] BCS presses Whitehall on new security rules
Thursday 31 October 2002
The BCS is pressing the Government on legislation which could lead to
the regulation of the IT security sector, writes John Kavanagh.
The society is monitoring the working of the new Private Securities
Industries Act and the associated Security Industry Authority, which is
focusing initially on the activities of security firms, wheel clampers
and private detectives. The BCS wants to ensure that if the authority
turns its attention to IT security any regulation it sets in motion will
be appropriate.
The legislation has caused controversy by being unclear on whether it
covers IT security specialists, and whether IT security should be
regulated at all. Activities covered by the Act include security
consultancy - defined partly as advising on security precautions in
relation to any risk to property or person.
http://www.cw360.com/bin/bladerunner?REQUNIQ=1036073088&REQSESS=De57013&;
REQHOST=site1&2131REQEVENT=&CFLAV=1&CCAT=2&CCHAN=28&CARTI=117101
----------------------------------------------------
[3] Transformation driving DOD IT
BY Dan Caterinicchia
Oct. 31, 2002
Driven by Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's vision of transformation, the
Defense Department's fiscal 2003 information technology budget is more
than $26 billion and should grow steadily at 5 percent for the next
decade, according to the Government Electronics and Information
Technology Association (GEIA).
DOD's transformation activities affect "every nook and cranny of the
services" and are the main driver of IT budget dollars, said Mike Kush,
director of public-sector marketing for Identix Inc. and GEIA's DOD IT
forecast chairman. He added that the DOD should be receiving an
increasing amount of IT funding in the future, "but the percentage is
not necessarily going up."
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/1028/web-budget-10-31-02.asp
----------------------------------------------------
[4] Was it hacking or public property?
Reuters
October 29, 2002, 5:51 AM PT
A Swedish company has filed criminal charges against Reuters, claiming
that the news agency broke into its Web site to get access to an
earnings report.
But Reuters that the information was publicly available on the company's
Web site, and said there was "no substance" to the charges.
Intentia International, which makes collaboration software, said Monday
that it has filed charges with Sweden's National Criminal Investigation
Department's computer crime division regarding the incident, which took
place earlier this month.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-963658.html
----------------------------------------------------
[5] Islamic site's peaceful path
Daniel J. Wakin The New York Times
Wednesday, October 30, 2002
CAIRO Inside a run-down building in a middle-class Cairo neighborhood, a
hybrid group of eager young dot-commers and idealistic religious
messengers gets together to produce www.islam-online.net, one of the
Islamic world's leading Web sites. At Islam Online, "We all consider
this an act of jihad, how to liberate people's minds from ignorance,"
said Ahmed Mohammed Sa'ad, using "jihad" in its sense of spiritual
struggle. Sa'ad is a recent religious school graduate and a
prize-winning reciter of the Koran who helps channel readers' requests
for religious rulings, or fatwas, to Islamic legal scholars around the
world.
Islam Online says it wants to present a positive view of the faith to
non-Muslims, to strengthen unity in the Muslim world and to uphold
principles of justice, freedom and human rights. Scholars say they see
the Web site as a leading example of efforts by moderate Muslims to push
for the Islamization of societies by nonviolent means.
http://www.iht.com/articles/74914.html
Web Site
http://www.islamonline.net
IO article
http://www.islamonline.net/Arabic/Science/2001/06/article2-3.shtml
----------------------------------------------------
[6] Country bodies threaten ICANN walkout
By ComputerWire
Posted: 31/10/2002 at 09:32 GMT
Spokespeople for the organizations that run country-code top-level
internet domains (ccTLDs) threatened this week that they could take
their leave of ICANN, the international body that has been trying to woo
them for four years, writes Kevin Murphy.
According to reports from the floor of ICANN's quarterly meeting in
Shanghai this week, the ccTLDs formally folded the constituency of
ICANN's Domain Name Supporting Organization that represented them, and
said they are going to work on a proposal that could attempt to take
over some of ICANN's powers.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27860.html
----------------------------------------------------
[7] Merkur Worm Hits File Swappers
New Virus Spreads Via E-Mail and File-Sharing Networks
By Becky Worley, Tech Live
Oct. 30 - There's another new virus on the loose, only this one poses as
a fix for other viruses and spreads on popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file
sharing networks.
The Merkur worm is a Visual Basic script that spreads through file
sharing networks such as KaZaA, Bearshare, and eDonkey, as well as
through mIRC, an Internet Relay Chat program.
It also sends itself out to contacts mined from Outlook address books
and targets computers running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT,
Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Me.
The computer worm does not delete information from a computer's hard
drive or have any other destructive "payload," say security experts.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/TechTV/techtv_merkurworm021030.ht
ml
----------------------------------------------------
[8] Digital copyright law on trial
09:30 Thursday 31st October 2002
Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com
A researcher argues that the DMCA will prevent him from carrying out
legally-protected studies of Internet filtering software. The case could
be the first to limit the controversial law's broad reach
A security researcher asked a federal judge on Wednesday to let a
challenge to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) continue.
Attorneys for Ben Edelman, who specialises in investigating flaws in
Internet blocking software, filed a 26-page document arguing that his
work is imperilled by legal threats from N2H2, a filtering company based
in Seattle.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2125060,00.html
----------------------------------------------------
[9] Australia is sure al-Qaida was in on Bali bombing
The head of Australia's intelligence service claims there is no doubt
al-Qaida was involved in the Bali bombing.
He also warned of more attacks despite international counter-terrorism
efforts.
The Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence
Organisation made the statement at a rare public appearance to address a
homeland security conference in Canberra.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_700471.html?menu=
----------------------------------------------------
[10] 'Internal Look' to Test CENTCOM Command and Control Capabilities
By Kathleen T. Rhem
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2002 -- A joint exercise in early December will
test U.S. Central Command's ability to provide command and control from
a forward-deployed location.
Army Gen. Tommy Franks, CENTCOM commander, described Exercise Internal
Look in a Pentagon media briefing today.
"Combatant commands in our country have not, by and large, had
deployable command and control capabilities like their smaller
formations have for a long, long time," Franks said.
In militarese, such deployable command and control elements are called
TOCs (pronounced "tocks"), short for tactical operations centers.
CENTCOM will deploy one such TOC from its headquarters in Tampa, Fla.,
to the small Persian Gulf nation of Qatar beginning in late November.
The general described the TOC as "containers of communications gear,
very large communications pipes that we're able to put in the back of
an airplane, fly it a long ways, land it on the ground and then set up
a command and control complex."
Franks said the actual exercise period would be for a week to 10 days
in early December. Add deployment and tear-down time and U.S. forces
will be involved in the exercise for a month to six weeks, he said.
The TOC will be set up in Qatar to test its communications capabilities
to all forces in the Central Command area of operations. Franks said it
is important to verify the capability to talk to air, land, maritime
and special operations components.
No decision has been made concerning the disposition of the TOC after
Internal Look is finished, Franks said. He described three
possibilities: "Pack it all up" and bring it back to Tampa; leave the
components in Qatar with staff officers to man them; or bring the staff
officers home and leave a caretaker detachment with the TOC elements in
Qatar.
"And actually, we haven't decided yet which of those courses to take,"
Franks said.
----------------------------------------------------
[11] US may set up MI5-style spy agency in security shake-up
By Toby Harnden in Washington
(Filed: 31/10/2002)
America is contemplating a radical overall of the FBI and the creation
of a domestic spying organisation modelled on Britain's MI5, according
to US intelligence sources.
Tom Ridge, President George W Bush's director of homeland security, will
hold talks in London next week focusing on the British experience of
combating the IRA over more than three decades.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$PYKEH33NMFIUPQFIQM
FCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2002/10/31/wfbi31.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/10/31/i
xworld.html
----------------------------------------------------
[12] Outlook bright for many e-tailers
10:30 Thursday 31st October 2002
Reuters
Online retail stores look set to reap the rewards this holiday season
with sales looking brighter than ever
The online retail industry has been under a cloud in recent years, with
scores of businesses folding as stubborn customers failed to embrace
what was to have been the sales channel of the future.
Yet as holiday season 2002 approaches, several stores from Amazon.com to
Wal-Mart Stores' online division and a lot of smaller niche shops, are
looking forward to their brightest year ever.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2125065,00.html
----------------------------------------------------
[13] Kournikova author loses appeal
According to media reports the author of the infamous Anna Kournikova
worm has lost an appeal against his sentence for writing and
distributing the virus in February 2001. The appeal took place at a
court in Leeuwarden at the beginning of this week.
Jan de Wit, aka OnTheFly, launched his appeal after being sentenced to
150 hours of community service by a Dutch district court last September.
It is reported that he contested the verdict due to fears that the
conviction would damage his career.
http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/articles/kourappeal.html
----------------------------------------------------
[14] Aust police, manufacturers in standoff over device security
By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
30 October 2002
Australia's law enforcement agencies are refusing to disclose to
manufacturers when and how they breach the security systems of embedded
devices, to avoid changes being made to those systems, an Australian
Federal Police forensic specialist claims.
Chris Buttner, a specialist with the AFP's Computer Crime Team, said
while most manufacturers of embedded devices are generally helpful when
asked how to extract information from their products to assist in a
case, cooperation in cracking the security features is less forthcoming.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/security/story/0,2000024985,20269472,00
.htm
----------------------------------------------------
[15] Hacker continues trail of malice
Author: Alastair Otter , ITWeb journalist
[ITWeb, 28 Oct 2002] A malicious hacker, going by the name r00t3rs,
continued to deface Web sites with a .co.za domain name last week. The
hacker has been linked to more than 30 Web site defacements over the
past two weeks.
The hacker tends to focus on Web sites hosted at hosting companies,
making it possible to compromise a much greater number of sites at a
time. So far he appears to have focused on two hosting companies, but
others may be targeted.
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/business/technology/Tech2.asp
----------------------------------------------------
[16] Verizon settles lawsuit against spammer
Thursday 31 October 2002
The owner of a US commercial e-mail company has agreed to a permanent
injunction barring him from sending spam to customers of Verizon Online,
a unit of Verizon Communications.
Under the settlement, Alan Ralsky - whose company Additional Benefits is
thought to be one of the largest senders of bulk e-mail - will also have
to pay Verizon a monetary settlement. Bobbi Henson, a spokeswoman for
Verizon, declined to release financial details of the settlement.
Henson said the injunction covers thousands of e-mail domain names owned
by Verizon, including verizon.net, verizon, and vzw.com. However, Henson
said the settlement does not include companies' Internet services that
are hosted by Verizon but who have their own domain names.
http://www.cw360.com/bin/bladerunner?REQSESS=De57013&2149REQEVENT=&CARTI
=117084&CARTT=14&CCAT=2&CCHAN=28&CFLAV=1
----------------------------------------------------
[17] MasterCard to send anti-skimming cards to Australia
MasterCard International plans to make available to Australian banks in
the first or second quarter 2003 new technology designed to minimise a
type of credit card fraud known as card skimming, executives said this
week.
http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1106-963931.html
----------------------------------------------------
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Copyright 2002, IWS - The Information Warfare Site
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IWS - The Information Warfare Site
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