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| DHS OSI Report - August 7, 2007 |
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| Tuesday, 07 August 2007 | |||||
DHS Open Source Infrastructure Report for 07 August 2007
Daily Highlights• CNN reports rescue workers were searching for any sign of six miners thought to be trapped inside a coal mine southeast of Salt Lake City in central Utah that caved in early Monday, August 6. (See item 1) • InformationWeek reports eighteen people, including three physicians and two pharmacists, were indicted on racketeering and related charges for allegedly running an illegal online drug distribution network, named Affpower. (See item 28) • Two University of South Florida students, Ahmed Abda Sherf Mohamed, 24, and Yousef Samir Megahed, 21, were charged in Goose Creek, South Carolina, with possession of an incendiary device after police found a suspicious item in their car and detonated it over the weekend. (See item 34)
Energy Sector
1. August 06, CNN — Six miners trapped in Utah coal mine collapse. Rescue workers were searching for any sign of six miners thought to be trapped inside a coal mine in central Utah that caved in early Monday, August 6. The quake was centered under the Huntington Canyon area, southeast of Salt Lake City, UT. So far, rescue workers have been unable to establish communication with the miners. The miners were thought to have been working about four miles from the mine's entrance, said an official with the U.S. Mining Safety and Health Administration. By Monday afternoon, rescue teams were about a half-mile from where they think the miners were working, the official said. It is unclear whether the collapse was caused by a small earthquake or whether the collapse itself was strong enough to register on seismographs. The U.S. Geological Survey reported a quake of 3.9 magnitude jolted the region shortly before 3 a.m. (5 a.m. EDT), with an epicenter about 16 miles west of Huntington, UT, close to mine's location in Emery County
2. August 06, Platts Energy Bulletin — Toreador Resources sells U.S. oil, gas assets for $19.1 million. Independent producer Toreador Resources said on Monday, August 6, that it has agreed to sell its U.S. oil and gas properties to Dallas-based RTF Realty for $19.1million on an "as is" basis as of September 1. Dallas-based Toreador said the sale is part of its policy of divesting non-core assets. The company added that it plans to use proceeds from the sale to increase working capital, possible "modest" debt repayment, and to fund its ongoing development program in Turkey. The U.S. properties, which primarily comprise non-operated working interests in about 700 wells in five states, had proved reserves of about 700,000 barrels of oil and 4.1 Bcf of gas at the end of 2006.
3. August 02, Government Accountability Office — GAO-07-1010: Yucca Mountain: DOE Has Improved Its Quality Assurance Program, but Whether Its Application for a NRC License Will Be High Quality Is Unclear (Report). Nuclear power reactors generate highly radioactive waste. To permanently store this waste, the Department of Energy (DOE) has been working to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain about 100 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada. Although the project has been beset with delays, in part because of persistent problems with its quality assurance program, DOE stated in July 2006 that it will submit a license application with NRC by June 30, 2008. NRC states that a high-quality application needs to be complete, technically adequate, transparent by clearly justifying underlying assumptions, and traceable back to original source materials. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined (1) DOE's development of its schedule for submitting a license application and the stakeholders with whom it consulted, (2) NRC's assessment of DOE's readiness to submit a high-quality application, and (3) DOE's progress in addressing quality assurance recommendations and challenges identified in GAO's March 2006 report. GAO reviewed DOE's management plan for creating the license application, reviewed correspondence and attended prelicensing meetings between DOE and NRC, and interviewed DOE managers and NRC on-site representatives for the Yucca Mountain project. Highlights: http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d071010high.pdf
Chemical Industry and Hazardous Materials Sector :
4. August 06, Beaver County Times & Allegheny Times (PA) — Chemical spill prompts road closure. A disabled tanker truck snarled traffic in New Sewickley Township, PA, about two hours Friday, August 3, after it began leaking a highly flammable chemical. Around 12:15 p.m. EDT, New Sewickley Patrolman Dan Swab said police began routing traffic away from Taffy Run Road after methyl ethyl ketone began leaking from a truck that had become stuck in construction traffic on Taffy Run Road, near Route 68. Police closed the road as a safety measure and cleared out a fruit stand that was operating near the truck. No residents had to be evacuated, Swab said.
Defense Industrial Base Sector :
5. August 03, Federal Computer Week — DARPA seeks innovations in network monitoring. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is looking for new ways to monitor the military's burgeoning computer networks for attacks, according to a July 31 agency statement. The envisioned size of the Global Information Grid and the advent of Internet Protocol Version 6 on the Department of Defense's networks present "new challenges" to information assurance, DARPA says. As military networks continue to grow, security threats to those networks are shrinking in size and "signature," which makes them very hard to detect, the statement said. "As a result, many conventional approaches to defending our networks will not be sustainable." In response, DARPA officials in the agency's Strategic Technology Office have created the Scalable Network Monitoring program to develop new approaches to network monitoring that can be applied regardless of a network's size. Agency officials will hold an industry day Thursday, August 16, to provide information on the program, according to the DARPA statement.
6. August 01, National Defense — Equipment requests raise procurement integrity questions. The increasingly frequent practice of tagging combat equipment requests as "urgent" needs has resulted in widespread abuse of the system, military officials and congressional investigators said. Because the Pentagon's acquisition bureaucracy can take months or years to develop, test and deploy new hardware, commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan often have resorted to "urgent needs" requests, which help bypass the cumbersome procurement process. In many cases, these pleas are legitimate, but there are also instances when requisitions that are labeled "urgent" are for items of questionable value, said Lt. Gen. Donald J. Hoffman, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition. The Department of Defense (DoD) should ensure there is "proper filtering of the requirements and understanding what's an urgent requirement," he said. Pressing war requests not only are misused by military officials but also have become an expedient vehicle for contractors to push products, said Rear Adm. Jan Hamby, director of operations at the Naval Network Warfare Command. Hamby said she would like to see more integrity on the part of contractors.
Banking and Finance Sector :
7. August 06, Associated Press — Hackers: Social networking sites flawed. Social networking Websites such as MySpace.com are increasingly juicy targets for computer hackers, who are demonstrating a pair of vulnerabilities they claim expose sensitive personal information and could be exploited by online criminals. The flaws are being demonstrated this week at the Black Hat and Defcon hacker conferences, which draw thousands of people to Las Vegas each year for five days of training and demonstrations of the latest exploits. Rick Deacon, a 21-year-old network administrator from Beachwood, OH, says he's discovered a zero-day flaw in MySpace that allows intruders to commandeer personal Web pages and possibly inject malicious code. Deacon is scheduled to present his findings Sunday, August 12. So far, it only affects older versions of the Firefox Web browser and does not affect Internet Explorer, he said. The attack uses a cross-site scripting vulnerability.
8. August 06, Finextra — NAB's Internet banking service breaks down. National Australia Bank (NAB) has become the latest financial firm in the country to suffer systems problems after its Internet banking service ground to a halt on Monday morning, August 6. According to press reports, NAB customers were locked out of Web banking accounts when the system broke down on Monday morning. The service wasn't restored until late afternoon. NAB public affairs officer Rebekah Miles told reporters that the bank was still trying to work out what went wrong, but said it did not appear to be connected to any systems upgrades. The outage comes just two days after NAB rival Bank of Queensland experienced problems with its online banking service following routine IT upgrades.
9. August 03, Websense Security Labs — Phishing Alert: Banco AV Villas. Websense Security Labs has received reports of a phishing attack that targets customers of Banco AV Villas. Users receive a spoofed e-mail message, citing a technical problem on Banco AV Villas' information systems, and the need to conduct a routine verification of activity on their accounts. The e-mail provides a link to a phishing site, which attempts to collect personal and account information. This phishing site is hosted in the U.S. and was up at the time of this alert.
Transportation and Border Security Sector :
10. August 06, CNN — Bridge-collapse probe turns to computers, divers. Federal investigators planned Monday, August 6, to begin computer analyses of last week's Minneapolis bridge collapse to try to determine how the structure fell into the Mississippi River. Construction crews resurfacing the Interstate 35W bridge reported the structure began to wobble as they removed pavement from it, the severity of the wobble increasing as they took up more concrete. "We're going to be looking at that entire area where the construction was being done," said Mark Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). NTSB experts would be doing computer analysis of the loads placed on the bridge during the construction, Rosenker said. The NTSB chief said it could take weeks to get a detailed analysis of the bridge superstructure that tumbled into the water. He said investigators using high-definition cameras from helicopters would be looking at the bridge's north end on Monday to look for clues to the collapse.
11. August 06, Reuters — Northwest Airlines' pilot union approves deal. The union representing pilots at Northwest Airlines Corp. approved a deal that seeks to prevent late-month spikes in the airline's flight cancellations such as those seen in June and July. Saturday, August 4's vote by Northwest Airline Pilots Association confirms the tentative accord reached on August 1, said Northwest and its pilot union. The agreement makes contractual changes on several work rules pertaining to international flying and settles an outstanding grievance. In exchange, Northwest will reinstate premium pay of 50 percent for all pilots flying more than 80 hours a month. The No. 5 U.S. airline suffered the extraordinarily high cancellation rates at the end of the last two months, blaming the problem on "pilot absenteeism." The Air Line Pilots Association, however, said absenteeism is not the problem. Rather, it said, the cancellations resulted from the airline having too few pilots to work the hectic summer flying schedule.
12. August 06, USA TODAY — TSA fine tunes security checkpoint procedures. A new rule requiring airline travelers to remove large video game consoles and DVD players from their luggage for separate X-ray screening went into effect over the weekend without causing any serious backups, according to several airline representatives and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Small electronic items, such as cell phones, MP3 players, iPods, and portable video game systems do not have to be removed from passenger's carrying cases. Airline officials said the changes had thus far not caused significant backups at security lines.
13. August 06, Associated Press — Nearly 32 percent of flights delayed in June. Nearly a third of domestic flights on major U.S. airlines were late in June, and delays in the first six months of the year soared to the highest level since the government began tracking them 13 years ago. At least part of the explanation for the increasing delays is that demand for air travel is rising. In addition, the government said nearly 45 percent of late flights were delayed by bad weather, up 7 percent from the same month last year. So far in 2007, nearly 25 percent of flights on the 20 largest carriers have arrived late, the Department of Transportation said. Department of Transportation airline performance report: http://www.dot.gov/affairs/dot7707.htm
14. August 03, North Jersey Media — Man held in threat to bomb bus. A New Jersey man was accused Thursday, August 2, of threatening to blow up an NJ Transit bus. John M. Willey was on a No. 158 bus on July 26 when he made the threat, NJ Transit spokesperson Dan Stessel said. The bus driver reported the incident to NJ Transit officials, Stessel said, and then spotted Willey on her bus again Thursday morning, August 2. The driver alerted the bus control center, which called NJ Transit police, who then called borough police, Stessel said. Edgewater police detained Willey after he had left the bus along the route, Edgewater Lt. William Skidmore said, then turned him over to NJ Transit police. Willey was charged with making terroristic threats. If he is convicted, the maximum sentence is three to five years in prison and a $15,000 fine, Skidmore said.
15. August 03, Department of Homeland Security — DHS statement on the Privacy Act System of Records Notice for the Automated Targeting System. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has posted on its Website, and will publish in the Federal Register, four Privacy Act records involving the Automated Targeting System (ATS). The records are an updated System of Records Notice (SORN), the Discussion of Public Comments Received on the SORN, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Privacy Act Exemptions, and a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA). In doing so, the department has strengthened privacy protections for all individuals traveling into and out of the United States. ATS assists U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) frontline officers in frustrating the ability of terrorists to gain entry into the United States, enforcing all import and export laws, and facilitating legitimate trade and travel across our borders. Following publication on Nov. 2, 2006 of the initial SORN, the department received several hundred comments on the SORN and PIA, many of which concerned ATS-P, the passenger screening module used by CBP officers. Importantly, ATS does not replace human decision making. It is a decision-making support tool for use by trained law enforcement officials. It is the assessment of my office that ATS continues to have strong access controls, including regular auditing and training of personnel and strong information technology security.
Postal and Shipping Sector :
16. August 06, Washington Business Journal — FedEx puts Washington in expansion package. FedEx Kinko's plans to add 300 stores nationally through June 2008, and 15 of them are slated for Greater Washington, DC area. The Dallas-based operating company of FedEx Corp. said that as part of its expansion plan, FedEx will redesign 110 stores nationwide and significantly reduce their size. Last year, FedEx said it would open 200 stores nationwide that are 1,800 square feet, much smaller than the original prototype of 6,000 to 10,000 square feet.
17. August 06, Memphis Business Journal — FedEx to build new hub in Germany. FedEx Express will build a new ramp and sorting facilities at the Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany in 2010, the company said Monday, August 6. The new 164,000-square-foot hub will replace FedEx Express' existing German gateway at Frankfurt's airport. A subsidiary of FedEx Corp,, which is based in Memphis, TN, FedEx Express will develop the hub with Cologne's airport operator, which will share in the costs, says Denise Lauer, a spokesperson for FedEx Express. FedEx and Flughafen Köln/Bonn GmbH have signed a cooperation agreement. Lauer declined to disclose terms of the deal. FedEx said rapidly growing demand for express services in Germany and Eastern Europe have prompted the company to build the new hub.
Agriculture Sector :
18. August 05, New York Times — Two British veterinary labs searched. British health inspectors combed two veterinary laboratories in southern England Sunday, August 5, after it was discovered that the strain of foot and mouth disease at a farm four miles away was the same as used in the production of vaccine at the facilities. The Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said the facilities, which house the government's Institute of Animal Health and a private pharmaceutical company, Merial Animal Health, were a "possible" source of the virus, but a definitive conclusion had not been reached. Inspectors would concentrate on security at the facilities during their search for a possible leak of the virus, the secretary said. The Department for the Environment said the strain used at the laboratories for vaccine production is "not one currently known to be recently found in animals." It added: "The present indications are that this strain is a 01 BFS67 like virus, isolated in the 1967 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Great Britain."
19. July 06, Government Accountability Office — GAO-07-092: National Animal Identification System: USDA needs to resolve several key implementation issues to achieve rapid and effective disease traceback. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has not effectively addressed several issues that, if left unresolved, could undermine the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) program's ability to achieve the goal of rapid and effective animal disease traceback. USDA's decision to implement NAIS as a voluntary program may affect the agency's ability to attract the necessary levels of participation. USDA has not prioritized the implementation of NAIS by species or other criteria; causing federal, state, and industry resources to be allocated widely, rather than being focused on the species of greatest concern. USDA has not developed a plan to integrate NAIS with preexisting USDA and state animal ID requirements. USDA has not established a robust process for selecting, standardizing, and testing animal ID and tracking technologies. USDA does not clearly define the time frame for rapid traceback, possibly slowing response and causing greater economic losses. USDA does not require potentially critical information to be recorded, such as species or age, in the NAIS databases. USDA has not consistently monitored or formally evaluated the results of cooperative agreements or consistently shared the results with states, industry groups, and other stakeholders. Highlights: http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07592high.pdf
Food Sector
20. August 06, Associated Press — High-tech aims for Olympic food safety. Embarrassed by recent scandals over the safety of Chinese food products, organizing officials for next year's Beijing Olympics spelled out high-tech plans Monday, August 6, to make sure healthy food is delivered to the 10,500 athletes who will reside in the Olympic Village. China will use Global positioning satellites to help oversee food production, processing factories and food hygiene. Food entering the Olympic Village and other facilities will be given an Olympic food safety logistics code. Also, the food transportation vehicles will be globally positioned and tracked. Although most athletes will eat specialized diets provided by their own team officials, Olympic organizers have also promised to test food samples on mice, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported recently.
21. August 05, Reuters — China says faces arduous food safety task. China faces a long and difficult task to improve food safety, but global cooperation is the only way to do it, official media said on Sunday, August 5, after yet another week of global anxiety about the quality of Chinese goods. A range of Chinese exports, from fish and toys to pet food and toothpaste, have been found to be mislabeled, unsafe or dangerously contaminated, creating an international backlash. "At present, the food safety situation has improved, yet is still serious," Xinhua news agency quoted the deputy head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Hui Lusheng, as saying. "Since last year reports of 'red-yolk duck eggs' and so on have often caused wide concern in society about food safety, and warned us that our country is in a period of high risk," Hui said, referring to a contaminated egg scare.
22. August 04, Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan) — Japan eyes relaxing U.S. beef rules. The Japanese government plans to inform Washington as early as the end of this month that it likely will relax restrictions on U.S. beef imports by allowing meat from cattle under 30 months old, up from the current 20 months old or younger, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Friday, August 3. However, the current government demand that specified risk materials be removed from beef products will remain, according to sources.
Water Sector :
23. August 04, Associated Press — Lightning hits New Jersey plant. Repairs restored partial electrical service Saturday, August 4, to a water plant that serves more than 800,000 people, after lightning damage shut it down and left people with little or no running water, authorities said. United Water New Jersey told residents to boil water before consuming it and ordered them not to use any water for non-essential purposes. One lightning bolt struck just outside the plant Friday night, followed by a direct hit around midnight that cut power to the plant, in Haworth, and even hobbled its backup generators, according to the Harrington Park-based utility.
Public Health Sector :
24. August 06, Agence France-Presse — Indonesia increases risk by failing to share bird flu samples. Indonesia, the country hardest hit by human cases of bird flu this year, is putting the world at risk by failing to share samples of the virus, a senior international health official said Monday, August 6. The sharing of laboratory samples from H5N1 bird flu victims is essential to keep track of any mutations in the virus that might herald the development of an even deadlier pandemic strain of influenza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). "The one country that has not yet shared viruses with us this year is Indonesia," David Heymann, WHO assistant director general for communicable diseases, said in a conference call with journalists. Heymann said that by not sharing samples with WHO research laboratories, Indonesia was putting its own population in danger because anti-flu vaccines developed by industry would not contain components of Indonesian bird flu infections. "The second thing Indonesia is doing is putting the public health security of the whole world at risk because they're not sharing viruses," he added.
25. August 05, Associated Press — Puerto Rican doctors sought in medical fraud inquiry. U.S. authorities are searching for nine suspects amid an investigation of dozens of doctors accused of obtaining their licenses through fraud. A federal grand jury indicted 91 people in the case Wednesday, August 1, including a former director and a secretary of the Puerto Rico medical licensing board. A total of 88 people were accused of having obtained medical credentials by fraud. The authorities say the doctors flunked their certification exams -- more than a dozen times in some cases -- and then had the results falsified. Members of the island's medical licensing board are accused of recycling old passing exams under the name of the failed candidates from 2001 to 2005, according to the indictments. Among the nine still being sought, three were believed to be in Puerto Rico and five in Pennsylvania, Florida and the Dominican Republic, said Jose Ruiz, an assistant U.S. attorney.
26. August 04, Agence France-Presse — More bird flu cases found in Germany. More wild birds have been found dead of the H5N1 bird flu virus in Germany, where domestic poultry were infected last month, authorities in Bavaria said Saturday, August 4. Police in the southern state said restrictions on movement had been put in place around the Speichersee lake, east of Munich, after two out of three ducks found dead there were confirmed to have been carrying the virus. Press reports said around 14 other birds had also been found dead in the area, but it was not known if they were infected with the virus, which is potentially deadly to humans. More than 150 wild birds have died of H5N1 in southern and eastern Germany in the past few weeks, and a month ago the disease spread to a smallholding in the eastern state of Thueringen.
27. August 03, Associated Press — California governor declares emergency in three counties. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency Thursday, August 2, in three California counties hit hard by the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus, which has killed four this year and appears to be spreading at a rapid clip. The emergency declaration applies to Kern, Colusa and San Joaquin counties, and will provide up to $1.35 million to help combat the spread of the virus, Schwarzenegger said. The disease's epicenter thus far is Kern County, which has logged two-thirds of the state's 56 West Nile cases this year, including an 85-year-old Shafter man and a 96-year-old Bakersfield woman who died last month. Health officials announced the state's third and fourth fatalities this week: two elderly residents of San Joaquin and Colusa counties. In Sacramento County, authorities said Monday, July 30, that West Nile had reached an epidemic rate there and had to be combatted with a mass aerial-spraying campaign -- often considered a last resort. Health officials in San Jose said Thursday that a Santa Clara County resident had become infected, in their first local case this year.
28. August 03, InformationWeek — Illegal online drug network. Eighteen people, including three physicians and two pharmacists, were indicted on racketeering and related charges for allegedly running an illegal online drug distribution network. The business, named Affpower, generated more than $126 million in gross revenue from the illegal sale of prescription pharmaceuticals, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of California. The 313-count indictment, which was returned by a federal grand jury in San Diego on July 27, charged that the 18 ran their operation in the U.S. and abroad.
Government Sector :
29. August 06, New York Times — Surge in immigration laws around U.S. According to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, state legislators nationwide adopted measures to curb employment of unauthorized immigrants and to make it more difficult for them to obtain state identification documents like driver's licenses. While the political tide ran generally against illegal immigrants, some states adopted measures to help them by protecting them from exploitation and by extending education and health care to their children. State lawmakers have introduced about two and half times more immigration bills this year than in 2006, and the number that have become law is more than double the 84 bills enacted last year, according to the conference, a nonpartisan organization that includes all the state legislatures Every state debated immigration issues, and 41 states adopted immigration laws. A large number of new laws cracked down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. The broadest measure was passed in Arizona and signed into law by Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, in July. Arizona employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants face suspension of their business license for the first offense and the permanent loss of their license for a second offense within three years.
Emergency Services Sector :
30. August 06, Oklahoman — Facility prepares firefighters for fire, ice. The Edmond Fire Department's training center in Edmond, OK, will be the only place in the United States where firefighters can learn how to drive huge fire trucks on icy roads when the temperature outside tops 90 degrees. "There is no other equipment like this in the United States," said Fire Chief Gill Harryman. "No one has ever done this on a fire truck." The equipment attaches to fire engine cabs and chassis. Using hydraulics, it simulates unique road conditions that a driver must work to overcome. Edmond fire Major Mike Fitzgerald said the equipment allows engine drivers to practice braking, acceleration, and skid avoidance techniques in a variety of simulated road conditions. The equipment, expected to arrive at the training center later this year, is just one of the features that will be found here. Another phase of the five-year, multi-million dollar construction project is ongoing on 50 acres in east Edmond. Local firefighters hope to use it to establish a regional training center. Fire officials also plan to establish a training facility where firefighters from other departments can train for a fee.
Information Technology and Telecommunications Sector :
31. August 06, eWeek — Immunity unleashes automatic exploit tool. Immunity, a company already well-known for making pen testing easy, has released a new tool to make writing exploits near-automatic. Immunity released the free tool, called Debugger, at the Defcon hackers convention in Las Vegas on Friday, August 3. Debugger comes with what Immunity says is the industry's first heap analysis tool built specifically for heap creation. It also sports a large Python API for easy extensibility and has function graphing as part of its user interface. Immunity is claiming that Debugger will cut exploit development time by 50 percent. Not everybody's happy to hear that. "They've got a good development community," said Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager at McAfee's Avert Labs. "But I look at it from the other side of house: What does this mean to the computing public?" What it means is more zero days, Marcus said. "And that's certainly not a good thing. I think you'll see a spike in zero days, and contributions to the zero-day initiative, because it makes it easier to find vulnerabilities. You're making the job easier."
32. August 05, Associated Press — Researcher: Flaw exposes hack threat. Terrorists and other criminals could exploit a newly discovered software flaw to hijack massive computer systems used to control critical infrastructure like oil refineries, power plants and factories, a researcher said Saturday, August 4. Ganesh Devarajan, a security researcher with 3Com Corp.'s TippingPoint in Austin, TX, demonstrated the software vulnerability he uncovered to attendees at the Defcon hacker conference on computer security. The software is used to manage supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems -- computers that regulate the functioning of such important infrastructure as oil and gas pipelines, water treatment and power transmission facilities and the giant factories used by large technology companies. The flaw could crash certain SCADA computer systems, particularly older ones, Devarajan said. The intrusion works by attacking sensors within the facilities that are linked to the Internet through unencrypted connections. Devarajan declined to identify the software company whose product he hacked in his demonstration but said his firm has notified the company of the vulnerability so it can fix the problem. Similar weaknesses likely exist in other programs, Devarajan said.
33. August 03, InformationWeek — Mastermind of Estonia cyberattacks still a mystery. Months after the cyberattacks launched against the Baltic nation of Estonia brought the country to its knees, the dangers of targeted cyberattacks and the consequences of heavy economic reliance on the Web have become clear -- even if the identity of the mastermind behind the attacks remains a mystery. Estonia's emergency was a unique situation, since Internet connections can be blocked into the entire country, given how small it is and how concentrated its Web users are. It was a "predicament of success," Gadi Evron, security evangelist for network security vendor Beyond Security, said Thursday, August 2, during the Black Hat USA 2007 conference in Las Vegas. Because so much of Estonia's economy relies on the Internet, when the Internet was down, citizens couldn't perform the most basic functions, such buying milk, bread, or gas. One security researcher, Postini senior manager Adam Swidler, believes there's a good chance that authors behind the Storm worm terrorizing the Web today were behind the Estonia attacks. While Russians were involved in the cyberattacks, the attacks were not launched by Russia itself. Evron was very clear that there are no answers regarding exactly who initiated the attack and how much of it was pre-planned.
Commercial Facilities/Real Estate, Monument &Icons Sector :
Nothing to report.
General Sector :
34. August 06, Local10 (FL) — Two USF students charged with having incendiary device in South Carolina. Two University of South Florida (USF) students were charged Monday, August 6, in Goose Creek, SC, with possession of an incendiary device after police found a suspicious item in their car and detonated it over the weekend, authorities said. Ahmed Abda Sherf Mohamed, 24, and Yousef Samir Megahed, 21, were being held at the Berkeley County jail "They admitted to having what they said were fireworks. Based on the officer's judgment at hand, based on what he had seen, we judged it to be other than fireworks," Sheriff Wayne DeWitt said. The sheriff refused to say what items authorities found in the car. He said some items were being analyzed by the FBI. FBI spokesperson Denise Taiste said, "Right now we have a joint investigation going on looking into it further to see if there is any link to terrorism. That's all I really know." Mohamed is a native of Kuwait and Megahed is Egyptian, the sheriff said. Goose Creek is home to the Naval Weapons Station, which houses the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig, a military prison where enemy combatants have been held. Goose Creek, with a population of about 30,000, is about 20 miles north of Charleston.
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