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  • Expert Weighs Code Release in Wake of Slammer Worm

    Saturday’s Slammer worm was based on sample code published to help explain the threat posed by the security vulnerability that Slammer exploited, according to David Litchfield, the security expert who discovered the vulnerability. The stunning success of the worm in spreading itself across the Internet had Litchfield questioning whether he will publish proof-of-concept (or “exploit”)…

  • CERT's 'favoritism' draws fire

    A group widely used by security companies as a clearinghouse for newly discovered software vulnerabilities has raised the ire of a well-known researcher, who criticized its policy of disclosing information early to preferred members. In an e-mail released to a public security mailing list this week, a vulnerability research company took to task the nonprofit…

  • Researcher Reconsiders Flaw Disclosures

    The British computer expert whose research was linked to the weekend’s damaging Internet attack pledged Wednesday to reconsider publishing blueprints for attack programs that exploit flaws he discovers in popular software. Leading researchers have concluded that the software in Saturday’s attacks was modified by unknown hackers from blueprints published months earlier by David Litchfield of…

  • Slammer may not feed on Microsoft alone

    Microsoft products may not be alone in contributing to the spread of the SQL Slammer worm, security researchers said on Wednesday. Other companies also make products containing the Microsoft database software that has been exploited by the worm. More than 30 products, from security scanners to backup servers, use the vulnerable Microsoft SQL Server 2000…

  • Better patch management could have slowed Slammer

    The worm that slowed Internet traffic around the world and blocked some services over the weekend didn’t come as a complete surprise, Symantec Corp. president John Schwarz said today. The failure of many organizations to apply a patch that had been available since the summer contributed to the worm’s spread. “We’d seen signals as early…

  • Far Too Many Viruses in January 2003

    The beginning of this year saw far too many new malwares and variants released in the wild: Naith (alias Avril or Lirva) and Sobig hit the Internet at roughly the same time (January 8th and 9th respectively). Then came SQLSlammer, a worm that havily struck the Internet on January 25. New variants of Yaha, Opaserv…

  • Slammer a harbinger of new breed of malware

    While the Slammer worm hit the Internet like a runaway freight train, it was nowhere near the costliest malicious software attack so far. But it is a harbinger of nastier things to come for those who stick with old-style approaches to network security, experts warn. “Throughout history, crime has always followed money,” said Simon Perry,…

  • Worm affected many banks, says EDS

    EDS has pointed out that many banks were affected by the SQL Slammer worm that crashed systems around the world on Saturday. This follows a Standard Bank statement blaming EDS for its card processing systems crash. The worm crashed Standard Bank’s systems for several hours on Saturday, making it impossible for shoppers to get authorisation…

  • Few Clues in Web Worm Whodunit

    Leading experts on Internet security are skeptical that the FBI and other investigators will be able to track down whoever was responsible for last weekend’s attack on the Internet. These experts, including many who provide technical advice to the FBI and other U.S. agencies, said exhaustive reviews of the blueprints for the attacking software are…

  • Home Office defiant on data retention

    ISPs will be forced to save all traffic data. The government is to press ahead with plans to make internet service providers (ISPs) retain communication traffic data, despite opposition from MPs. A report by the All Party Internet Group (APIG) said that government plans to force ISPs to retain traffic data in order to aid…

  • Defend your databases, firms told

    Lawyers issue warning after two major theft attempts in one week. Lawyers have warned companies to protect their databases, following two attempts to steal information from major organisations in the last week. Jonathan Armstrong, technology lawyer with Eversheds, said: “We are seeing increased evidence of attacks on databases, often simply to steal email addresses for…

  • The worm that turned: A new approach to hacker hunting

    After 23 years as a CIA analyst, having briefed the president and his team on every conceivable threat to national security, Bob Gerber was scared. More scared than he’d been in a long time. Holed up in his cramped, 11th floor office on a stark, colorless hallway at FBI headquarters in Washington, Gerber’s stomach turned…

  • Net Attacks Down, But Sophistication Is Up

    We saw fewer security incidents last year, but we should expect more serious attacks in the future, experts say. The number of security attacks on the Internet seem to be leveling off after a rocket-like rise during the last decade, but the attacks still happening are more sophisticated, said the president and chief operating officer…

  • Canada's biggest Identity theft?

    IBM has lost a hard drive containing the records of 180,000 clients of an insurance company. Details include “names, addresses, beneficiaries, social insurance numbers, pension values, pre-authorized checking information and mothers’ maiden names”, according to wire reports. Anything else? Oh yes, their bank account details. But is it carelessness, or is it theft? No-one knows…

  • Bush’s new antiterror database plan

    A forthcoming government database will compile information from all federal agencies and the private sector on people deemed possible terrorist threats, President Bush said Tuesday evening. Bush used his State of the Union address to announce the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), a mammoth data-collection project intended to fuse information collected domestically by police and…

  • Terrorism police arrest fourth man

    A fourth man has been arrested under anti-terrorism laws, following a series of raids in Manchester and Bury. The 31-year-old, who is believed to be of north African origin, was arrested at an address in Stretford, Greater Manchester, police said. He was detained at around 1100 GMT under the Terrorism Act 2000. Three other men,…

  • FBI target Iraqi exiles in search for terror suspects

    FBI supervisors have been ordered to count the number of Muslims and mosques in their areas and interview up to 5,000 Iraqi-Americans and immigrants in order to assess how vulnerable they are to terrorist attack. The information would help gauge how many terrorism investigations and intelligence warrants field offices across the United States could reasonably…

  • Shoe bomber steadfast in his holy war beliefs

    Defiant Reid is ‘expendable’ foot soldier, one of many in al-Qaeda, terrorism experts say. Richard Reid, who found his life’s purpose in the rhetoric of the terrorist group al-Qaeda, remains a true believer as he heads to prison. The British petty crook is as committed to a holy war against the West as he was…

  • Terrorism Agency Planned

    President Bush announced plans last night for a new center to integrate intelligence on terrorism collected at home and abroad, saying it was necessary to create the most comprehensive picture of possible threats to the United States and its citizens. A senior administration official said the new Terrorist Threat Integration Center will assess intelligence gathered…

  • Fairfax to Confine Students In Case of Terrorist Attack

    If the Washington area were hit by a chemical or biological attack, Fairfax County students would be kept in locked-down schools, inaccessible to parents, while teachers helped undress and shower any who needed decontamination, according to a plan adopted by school authorities. In a throwback to the “duck-and-cover” exercises of the 1950s and ’60s, schools…

  • Troops Search Afghan Caves After Clash

    American forces were carefully combing through a vast cave network on a steep mountain slope Wednesday after the fiercest battle in Afghanistan in nearly a year, the U.S. military said. Two men detained in the fighting were being questioned. King said the military believes the men were followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade warlord who…

  • China Detains U.S. Sect Member, Frees Australian

    China has detained an American follower of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, accusing him of sabotaging television and radio broadcasting systems on the mainland, the U.S. embassy said Thursday. But an Australian member of the sect detained a week ago in southwestern China had been freed and was on her way home, an Australian…

  • Homeland Security 2004 Budget $41.3 Billion

    President Bush will request $41.3 billion in the fiscal 2004 budget, which he will submit next week, to fund domestic homeland security efforts, a U.S. official said on Thursday. The budget figures include $36.2 billion for the newly created Department of Homeland Security. This compares to an overall homeland security budget of $37.7 billion in…

  • U.S. Consulate in Berlin Closes After Warning

    The consular section of the U.S. embassy in Berlin was closed on Thursday after police reported receiving a warning of possible terrorist attacks on both the Israeli and the U.S. embassies in the German capital. “We had to take some security-related precautionary measures,” a spokeswoman for the embassy said, confirming the consular section of the…

  • Shoe-Bomber Set to Be Sentenced in U.S.

    Richard Reid, a British-born follower of Osama bin Laden, will learn on Thursday how many years he must spend behind bars for trying to bring down a transatlantic flight with explosives stuffed in his shoes. Despite a last-ditch attempt by Reid’s lawyers to delay his sentencing, Chief U.S. District Judge William Young was still scheduled…

  • U.S. Says It Would Help Saddam Find Place of Exile

    The United States said on Wednesday it would help Iraqi President Saddam Hussein find a place to go into exile if he left the country to avoid war. “If he were to leave the country and take some of his family members with him and others in the leading elite, … we would I’m sure…

  • D.I.Y. Tools That Leave Spam D.O.A.

    The trickle of unsolicited commercial e-mail that started a few years ago had long since become a tsunami, but I realized that my problem had reached an absurd extreme when I got the spam about stopping spam. Scrolling through my various mail accounts, I routinely waded through countless unwanted messages advertising pornographic Web sites, and…

  • In Net Attacks, Defining the Right to Know

    As electronic sieges go, the so-called Slammer worm that attacked the Internet last weekend fell short of calamitous. Although the rogue program hit tens of thousands of computers and clogged parts of the network all over the world, Slammer paled in comparison with Code Red, the worm that attacked the White House Web site in…

  • City Offers New Spying Rules in Exchange for More Leeway

    In a last-minute proposal to settle a dispute over spying on terror suspects, city officials said in federal court yesterday that the police would promise to adopt new guidelines to protect civil liberties if the court lifted a 20-year-old order that limits police surveillance and undercover operations. But, in final arguments before Judge Charles S.…

  • Indonesia Clears Top Islamic Militant in Attacks on Christians

    An Indonesian court acquitted a prominent Islamic militant leader today on charges of inciting Muslims to attack Christians on the religiously divided Maluku Islands. The cleric, Jaffar Umar Thalib, the head of a paramilitary group called Laskar Jihad, walked free to chants of “Allahu akbar!” (God is great!) from his followers. In contrast, two Christian…

  • Security Officials Considering Plan to Combine Terror Forces

    Moving quickly on President Bush’s plan to create a national terrorism threat center, national security officials said today that they were considering moving all counterterrorism operations at the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. into the same building. The idea goes beyond the concept Mr. Bush announced on Tuesday night in his State of the Union address…

  • U.S. Focuses on Iraqi Links to Group Allied to Al Qaeda

    After months of scouring for hard evidence of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the Bush administration is focusing on possible links between Saddam Hussein and Islamic extremists who may have produced poisons in northern Iraq and a Qaeda terrorist leader who spent time in Baghdad last year. Those suspected ties are at the…

  • Terrorism analysis center would merge information

    President Bush’s plan for a new government center that would analyze potential terrorist threats could take months to develop, U.S. officials said Wednesday. But civil libertarians already are questioning the appointment of the CIA director to oversee the center’s work with foreign and domestic intelligence. As outlined in Bush’s State of the Union address Tuesday,…

  • Deported American woman lands at LAX

    An American woman deported by Russia after allegations that she contacted al Qaida, offering help in attacking Hollywood targets, arrived Wednesday night at Los Angeles International Airport, where FBI agents were waiting to question her. Local television reports showed her Aeroflot plane, Flight 321 from Moscow, landing at around 9:30 p.m. PST at LAX. The…

  • Iraq rejects al-Qaeda links

    Iraq has categorically rejected United States allegations that it has links to Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, US President George W Bush said Iraq had links to terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, and might supply weapons of mass destruction to militants. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair echoed…

  • Iraq sheltering al-Qaeda says UK

    There is evidence al-Qaeda “operatives” are being sheltered in Iraq, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman has said. It is the first time that the British Government has explicitly linked al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime, which flatly denied the claim. Last week the prime minister said that there were some links between al-Qaeda and people…

  • Sharon to meet Mubarak, but Arafat's offer of talks rejected

    In a surprise move, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and congratulated him on his election victory. A year ago, Mubarak declared he could not work with Sharon; the two have not met since Sharon took office. Sharon told U.S. President George W. Bush that he would continue to work towards implementing…

  • Arafat ready to meet Sharon, for negotiations; Hamas, al-Jihad for escalation of resistance

    The Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has announced he wishes to meet with the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon immediately and to return back to the negotiations in order to end the conflict. Meantime, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movements and the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine called for escalating resistance operations against the…

  • Kurds brace for gas attacks

    Authorities in northern Iraq’s Kurdish-run enclave say they’re certain Saddam Hussein will target them with chemical weapons if the United States attacks Iraq. But they are delaying a public education campaign because they are afraid it will create panic. The Iraqi dictator is believed to have used chemical agents against the Kurds at least 11…

  • Kurdish Demonstrators Back War Against Hussein but Want Gas Masks

    A small group of Kurds gathered outside a United Nations compound here today, voicing support for a war to remove President Saddam Hussein from power but demanding international help to protect Kurdish civilians from chemical or biological attacks. The demonstration, which included several survivors of previous chemical attacks by the Iraqi military, was modest in…

  • Europeans Warn of Terror Attacks in Event of War in Iraq

    European investigators have evidence that over the past six months, Islamic militants have been recruiting hundreds of fellow Muslims to carry out attacks in the event of a war against Iraq, according to French and other European antiterrorism experts. A French expert, who requested anonymity, said one threat to Europe came from radical groups who…

  • Bush: new al-Qaida link to Iraq

    President Bush served notice yesterday that he would not wait for international support before taking on Iraq, promising the course of the US “does not depend on the decisions of others”. In his annual state of the union address, the president set out the case against Iraq, saying there was no evidence Saddam Hussein had…

  • UK alleges al-Qaeda links with Baghdad

    The UK on Wednesday went further than it had ever done before in alleging ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, although it remained more circumspect than President George W. Bush on the nature of the ties. Tony Blair, the prime minister, told a hostile House of Commons, the lower house of parliament: “We do know of…

  • Bush Enlarges Case for War by Linking Iraq With Terrorists

    President Bush, enlarging the case for going to war with Iraq soon, said tonight that there was intelligence showing that Iraq was helping and protecting terrorists. He warned that Saddam Hussein could distribute weapons of mass destruction to terrorists who could use them against the United States. Iraq’s alleged terrorist connection is just one reason…

  • Flotilla of patrol boats off Spain forms first joint guard of Europe's frontiers

    Patrol boats from Spain, Britain, France, Portugal and Italy launched Europe’s first joint maritime surveillance scheme against illegal immigrants yesterday, in an operation hailed by Spain as a prototype for a future European border police. The pilot project, called Operation Ulysses, is to monitor the western Mediterranean from Algeciras in southern Spain to Palermo in…

  • New Agreement 'to exclude Sinn Fein'

    There should be a new political agreement which would prevent Sinn Fein members taking their places in a devolved executive, Ian Paisley has said. In a speech to his party supporters in North Antrim, the Democratic Unionist Party leader said Ulster Unionists were running scared of elections. He said the assembly election would provide an…

  • Tirade against Islam dismays Dutch Muslims

    The Netherlands’ one million-strong Muslim community has become embroiled in a furious row over free speech after its chief critic – a woman MP who has been dubbed the Dutch Salman Rushdie – called the prophet Mohammed a “perverse tyrant”. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a 33-year-old Somali-born immigrant to the Netherlands and a former Muslim, has…

  • Gunman killed in Dutch court drama

    A gunman has been shot dead in the Netherlands after police stormed a courtroom where he was holding a prosecutor hostage. The prosecutor was wounded in the assault, though it was not clear who had shot him. The 20-year-old gunman – of Albanian origin – entered a hearing room in the courthouse, in the eastern…

  • CIA Report Sought in 9/11 Trial

    Attorneys for a Moroccan on trial in Germany for alleged involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are pinning hopes of acquittal on securing last-minute access to a secret CIA interrogation report. The German government received the report from the CIA and has shown it to prosecutors in the case. But the government is resisting…

  • Sept 11 Relatives Confront Accused in German Court

    Five relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks confronted the man on trial for supporting the plot on Thursday, recounting their suffering since their loved ones perished. Mounir El Motassadeq, a Moroccan student, is the first suspected plotter to stand trial anywhere for the attacks on September 11, 2001 and is charged with being…

  • Russia Is Said to Force Chechens to Return

    Russia is pressuring thousands of Chechen refugees to return to their war-ravaged homeland from the neighboring Russian republic of Ingushetia, even though they fear for their lives and will have nowhere to live, human rights activists said today. Officials of Human Rights Watch, an international rights group, said Russian authorities are resorting to threats and…

  • Sri Lankan government, Tamil rebels to discuss power sharing in Berlin

    Sri Lanka’s government and Tamil Tiger rebels will discuss how to share power when they meet next week in Berlin for the fifth round of peace talks, the top government negotiator said Wednesday. The rebels say they have given up their demand for an independent homeland and are willing to settle for autonomy within Sri…

  • Russia: Unaware of Iraq Links with Al Qaeda

    Russia has no knowledge of links between Iraq and al Qaeda extremists, blamed by Washington for the September 11, 2001, suicide attacks, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said during a visit to Bulgaria on Thursday. “So far, neither Russia nor any other country has information about Iraq’s ties with al Qaeda. Nobody has provided us with…

  • Insurgents in Nepal Announce Cease-Fire

    Maoist rebels in Nepal announced a cease-fire tonight and said they would enter into peace talks with the government, raising hopes for an end to a six-year conflict that has claimed more than 7,000 lives. In a statement faxed to news organizations in the capital of Katmandu, the rebels’ leader, who goes by the name…

  • U.S. Links Indonesian Troops to Deaths of 2 Americans

    Bush administration officials have determined that Indonesian soldiers carried out a deadly ambush that killed two American teachers returning from a picnic in a remote area of Indonesia last August, senior administration officials say. The conclusion, which follows a preliminary investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is likely to muddy relations between Washington and…

  • Colombia Rebels Plan Handoff of US, UK Journalists

    Marxist Colombian rebels called on Wednesday for an official commission to receive a U.S. photographer and British reporter kidnapped last week in a violent stretch of eastern Colombia, and reiterated plans to release the journalists “safe and sound.” “We are requesting a commission from the public prosecutor’s office and the (government’s) human rights office ……

  • Colombian Rebels Free TV Crew

    Journalists are released in the province where a photographer and writer on assignment for The Times are being held by other rebels. Guerrillas on Tuesday freed a five-person television crew kidnapped last weekend in the same area of northeastern Colombia where a reporter and photographer on assignment for the Los Angeles Times are being held.…

  • US advice adds to England's Zimbabwe fears

    The England players’ representative Richard Bevan said the team’s World Cup opener in Harare must be moved to South Africa after the US State Department urged Americans to consider leaving the country. The US advice came after the England players issued a statement on Monday saying they wanted their match against Zimbabwe in Harare on…

  • South African 'truth' row resolved

    The last obstacle to the publication of the final report of South Africa’s Truth an Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been removed. In an out-of-court settlement in Cape Town, the TRC has agreed to amend a number of sections which blamed the mainly-Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party for human rights abuses during the final years of apartheid.…

  • Ivory Coast Army Rejects Power-Sharing Deal With Rebels

    A French-brokered peace accord aimed at ending a brutal four-month-long civil war in this country seemed to teeter this evening, as the army rejected key elements of a power-sharing deal with rebel groups and aligned itself with supporters of Ivory Coast’s elected government. The military made its position clear in a letter to Ivory Coast’s…