How to take the worry out of wireless Lans Each week vnunet.com asks a different expert from the antivirus world to give their views on recent virus and security issues, with advice, warnings and information on the latest threats. This week Kevin Hogan, security response programme manager at Symantec, looks at the security headaches caused…

Police in Ecuador say at least one explosion has rocked hotel in the capital, Quito, damaging an American Airlines office inside and injuring at least one person. Officials say at least one bomb exploded late Tuesday in or near the Hilton Colon in Quito. Windows were blown at the American Airlines office, which was located…

Fighting the war on terrorism has cost the Pentagon at least $15 billion more than its budget can cover, and the gap must be filled soon or troop training will have to be cut, the Pentagon says. Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon comptroller, said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press that the military also…

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz on Wednesday denied President Bush’s allegation that his country has ties to Osama bin Laden’s militant Al Qaeda organization. “I absolutely deny that. I absolutely deny that,” Aziz said in an interview on ABC News. “And I challenge Bush and his government to present any, any evidence of that.”…

Sailors and Marines of the amphibious assault ship USS Tortuga were inoculated against anthrax and smallpox in the Gulf Wednesday as the military gathered its forces for a possible war against Iraq. “It makes it very real when they start giving you vaccinations for things you hadn’t even heard of before,” said 22-year-old Carrie Cornell,…

Marxist rebels said on Tuesday they would release in the next two days a British reporter and a U.S. photographer they kidnapped last week in a war-torn stretch of eastern Colombia. “They will be released in the next few days, in one or two days,” Antonio Garcia, a senior commander of the Cuban-inspired National Liberation…

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…

President Bush said tonight that he would create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center to merge units at the C.I.A., F.B.I. and other agencies into a single government unit intended to strengthen the collection and analysis of foreign and domestic terror threats. The center, announced by Mr. Bush in his State of the Union address, will…

In pressing his case for forceful action against Iraq, President Bush tonight cited intercepted communications, interrogations of prisoners, information from defectors and other unspecified intelligence as evidence that Saddam Hussein continues to build prohibited weapons and bankroll terrorist groups including Al Qaeda. As he spoke, American intelligence officials were still sorting out how much sensitive…

Eleven inches could be a matter of life and death. So the designers of the new 7 World Trade Center, planned by Silverstein Properties, have called for fire stairs 66 inches wide, rather than the 55 inches specified by the New York code for such a building. They say that will allow room for two-way…

HANY KIARELDEEN left family court on Monday after another round in the custody fight for his dark-eyed, ebullient 8-year-old daughter. “The case belonged here from the beginning,” he said. “They should never have believed what was said by a mad wife about her husband.” The case of Hany Kiareldeen went far beyond family court, and…

A Kurdish leader says members of the Iraqi opposition will arrive soon in northern Iraq for a conference to map out the political transition if Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is ousted. Dissident exile groups that met Dec. 14-18 in London agreed to reconvene in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq on Jan. 15. The follow-up meeting, now planned…

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…

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 on Dec. 22, 2001, when he tried to ignite explosives hidden in his shoe…

Authorities allowed a United Airlines flight to take off from Boston late Tuesday after the discovery of a box cutter forced the plane to be grounded and all passengers to be rescreened. Flight 179 took off for San Francisco from Logan International Airport about three hours after its scheduled departure time after a search turned…

President George W. Bush asked members of Congress on Tuesday for $6 billion to support Project Bioshield, a focused program to develop new treatments and vaccines against bioterrorism weapons such as anthrax, smallpox and Ebola. “We must assume that our enemies would use these diseases as weapons, and we must act before the dangers are…

The White House said Tuesday that the nation’s first unified Terrorist Threat Integration Center, proposed by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union message, will bring together intelligence gathered at home and abroad by a variety of agencies. Among them are the CIA, which will appoint its director, the FBI, the Department…

A prominent U.S. civil rights and advocacy group urged the Department of Justice Tuesday to rescind a new policy directive to the FBI to count local mosques for inclusion in performance goals in counter terrorism investigations. The Council on American-Islamic Relations made that demand following the publication of an article in Newsweek magazine detailing the…

Next week 5,000 peasants recruited from small villages around Colombia will return to 144 villages as full-fledged soldiers where, backed by regular troops, they will attempt to reassert the rule of Bogota over the war-ravaged region, Gen. Carlos Ospina Ovalle, head of the Colombian Army since August, said Tuesday. The program to turn campesinos into…

President Bush said Tuesday that the United States will make a public case next week that Iraq is not only deceiving weapons inspectors but maintaining links to terrorists. But how clear-cut a case can be made? In his annual State of the Union address to Congress, Bush said he would send Secretary of State Colin…

Colombia’s interior minister insisted Monday that the government was still in control of Arauca state, a region where one rebel group killed six soldiers and a civilian with a car bomb over the weekend and another kidnapped two foreign journalists. Colombian Defense Minister Martha Lucia Ramirez and the commander of the armed forces, Gen. Jorge…

Chechen rebel leaders yesterday signalled a willingness to compromise on demands for independence from Russia in exchange for guarantees to end human rights violations in the republic. In an interview with the FT, Akhmed Zakayev, deputy to Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, said: “We are open to discussions. The important thing is international guarantees for…

Five people have been murdered at a religious retreat in Bangladesh. Police say unidentified attackers stormed the compound of the Abdul Gafur Chishti astana in northern Joypurhat district, killing a caretaker and four cooks. Another caretaker has been arrested. Police say they believe robbery may have been the motive for the attack. A BBC correspondent…

Thousands of civilians are reported to be on the move in central Burundi, amid reports of heavy fighting between the army and ethnic Hutu rebels of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD). There are reports of the army using heavy artillery in the central province of Gitega, and fierce battles in the east…

The leader of the Mouvement de liberation du Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba, announced on Tuesday he would withdraw his troops from the Central African Republic (CAR) in February. “We will withdraw our troops from Bangui on 15 February at the latest,” he told IRIN from his headquarters in Gbadolite, a town in Equateur Province in the…

Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi warned on Tuesday that drastic action was needed to reverse what he termed the trend in South Africa to anarchy. The minister said in a statement that January 20 should be remembered as a day all South Africans received a “wake-up call” to the levels of lawlessness and criminality in…

Sierra Leonean police said on Tuesday they had arrested 48 people in connection with what they called a “conspiracy to destabilise” the West African country as it recovers from a brutal civil war. But still eluding them are former junta leader Johnny Paul Koroma, who evaded arrest on Saturday, and eight others. Sierra Leone’s deputy…

The extremist Boeremag and their plans for a coup d’état, coupled with the series of bomb attacks, led to increasing tension between farmers and their labourers and could spark more farm attacks. According to AgriSA vice-president Lourie Bosman, farmers are now considered the “enemy”, even though the vast majority of them have distanced themselves from…

Top officials have called for tighter security after a recent warning about the threat of a terrorist attack, but police said Monday that no orders have been passed down from on high and it’s business as usual for them in Moscow. The chorus of cries for increased security is largely aimed at assuaging public jitters…

Zimbabwe’s High Court has begun hearing a case the government hopes will prove that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change is what the government calls a terrorist organization. Six men, including an opposition member of parliament, are accused of murdering Cain Nkala, a veteran of Zimbabwe’s war for independence, 13 months ago in the city…

The chief investigator of the Bali bombings said yesterday that Mukhlas, a leader of Jemaah Islamiah (JI) had been the ‘controller’ of the attack. General Made Mangku Pastika also said militant Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was JI’s top leader, something some officials had said before but the widely respected Gen Made had not. ‘We…

Government security forces are massing units to meet an upsurge of communist guerrilla attacks in some areas of the archipelago, a military spokesman said yesterday. The New People’s Army (NPA) is “trying to mass forces” in certain areas, including Northern Luzon and some central islands, Brig. Gen. Eduardo Purificacion said over ABS-CBN. “They take potshots…

In this warren of cinder blocks, cement and corrugated tin roofs where 120,000 of Jordan’s Palestinian refugees live, the slogans speak to the converted. Whitewashed graffiti along a muddy alley declare, “Islam is the solution,” and signs overhead exhort residents of the Middle East’s largest refugee camp to remember God. Fathi Barakat, glum, disillusioned and…

British Prime Minister Tony Blair echoed close ally George W. Bush Wednesday, claiming Iraq had links with al Qaeda militants, while recasting himself in a role as global ambassador ahead of possible war against Baghdad. Blair flies to Washington this week to meet Bush, talked to the leaders of France, Canada, Australia, Turkey and Greece…

Iraq has links with the al-Qaida terrorist network, but the “exact extent” of their cooperation is unknown, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday. Blair’s comment came a day after President Bush said in his State of the Union speech that there was evidence that Saddam Hussein “aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida.” Blair…

Government supporters rioted for a second day today in the streets of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s main city, venting their anger with an accord signed on Saturday in Paris to end Ivoirians’ civil conflict. Rioters erected barricades across the city, singling out foreigners, looting shops and effectively shutting down Abidjan, a vital port for West Africa.…

Tibetan groups in India on Tuesday condemned the execution in western China of a Tibetan whom the Chinese government blamed for a string of bomb attacks in support of Tibetan independence. Lobsang Dhondup, 28, was executed Sunday afternoon in Ganzi, a city near the Tibetan border in Sichuan province, immediately after a court upheld his…

Japan on Tuesday admitted that 206kg of its plutonium – enough to make about 25 nuclear bombs – is unaccounted for. Government scientists said that 6,890kg of plutonium had been extracted since 1977 from spent nuclear fuel at a processing plant about 120km north east of Tokyo. But that is 3 per cent short of…

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has moved a major step closer toward normalizing military ties with the Indonesian military (TNI), which it hopes will be a key ally in its ”war against terrorism” in Southeast Asia. The Senate voted 61-36 Thursday to defeat an amendment that would have barred funding for enrolling…

An explosion rocked American Airlines’ offices in a Quito hotel late on Tuesday, injuring three people, officials said. The explosion occurred at American’s offices at about 7:20 p.m. local time (0020 GMT), witnesses told Reuters. Police commander Col. Milton Martinez said the explosion was likely caused by a “pamphlet bomb,” a device commonly used to…

The Sudanese rebels announced yesterday that government forces took over Leir town after the eruption of fighting in what is considered as a violation to the truce agreement reached by representatives for the warring factions currently in Kenya to hold peace talks. The spokesman for the rebels, George Ganarg, said that the “government launched a…

A Somali professor says that his arm was broken by thugs hired by warlords at the ongoing peace talks in the Kenyan town of Eldoret. Professor Mohammed Abdi Gandhi told the BBC that he was beaten up after he and other representatives of civil society, including women, stormed a meeting of warlords. They were arguing…

Thousands of government loyalists surrounded the U.S Embassy in Ivory Coast Tuesday to demand that Washington oppose a peace deal they say concedes too much to rebel forces. Waving U.S. flags, the 6,000 people appealed to Washington to block the French-brokered power-sharing accord with rebels who control about half of Ivory Coast, once the economic…

Disruptions from the weekend attack on the Internet are shaking popular perceptions that vital national services, including banking operations and 911 centers, are largely immune to such attacks. Damage in some of these areas was worse than many experts had believed possible. The nation’s largest residential mortgage firm, Countrywide Financial Corp., told customers who called…

Even before Sept. 11, it was on the FBI’s most-wanted list — a computer upgrade to replace the creaky, largely paper-driven information system that the bureau had relied on for decades. Then, amid concern that primitive technology might have prevented agents from sharing leads that could have led them to some of the terrorists who…

‘–If you’ve ever used a peer-to-peer network and swapped copyrighted files, chances are pretty good you’re guilty of a federal felony. It doesn’t matter if you’ve forsworn Napster, uninstalled Kazaa and now are eagerly padding the record industry’s bottom line by snapping up $15.99 CDs by the cartload. Be warned–you’re what prosecutors like to think…

The Federal Trade Commission reported last week that complaints about identity theft nearly doubled in 2002, topping its consumer frauds list for the third consecutive year. And the District now leads the nation in those complaints per capita. But if the huge response from readers to the prevention checklist in the Jan. 7 column (“Identity…

If you work at or for the Homeland Security Department, you’re under strict rules to keep data under wraps. The department today issued three regulations that take effect immediately to prevent release of information it deems sensitive. The department issued the interim final rules without the normal comment period because, as the documents signed by…

The computer worm that clogged Internet traffic and shut down vulnerable corporate networks this weekend also provided another boost to the emerging market for hacker insurance, experts said on Monday. Hacker insurance, also known as “network risk insurance,” has been on the market for about three years, but is expected to explode from a $100…

The two-day-old computer worm that wreaked havoc on the Internet over the weekend was finally losing steam on Monday as companies scrambled to secure their networks, while computer security experts warned more dangerous spin-offs might emerge in the next few days. Authorities were probing the “SQL Slammer” bug, the most damaging Web attack in 18…

The Web site of the U.S. recording industry’s trade group remained offline Tuesday, as federal officials probed the source of the hacking attack that has rendered the site unreachable since Friday. The Web site of the Recording Industry Association of America, http://www.riaa.org, has been a favorite hacker target since at least last summer, as the…

U.S. cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke will step down after he finishes a comprehensive Internet-security plan next month, industry and government sources said Tuesday. Clarke, a longtime White House aide who has led efforts to combat terrorism and bolster the security of the nation’s computer systems, will look for work in the private sector rather than…

UK firms prefer to stay mum rather than jeopardise corporate image UK companies are still refusing to report cyber-crime in the workplace. According to a survey by security consultant Defcom, firms are deciding to protect their reputations rather than report hacking to the police. More than two thirds of those surveyed cited a risk to…

Crooks, operating in the Birmingham, area, are preying on people using public access terminals for Internet banking. The scam came to light after a Reg reader discovered to his horror an authorised transfer of £6,300 from the joint account he and his wife hold with Lloyds TSB earlier this month. When he contacted his branch,…

A Chinese computer hacker group is suspected to be behind a virus that wrecked havoc on the Internet over the weekend, South Korean police said on Tuesday. Police had found a website the Chinese hacker group used to publicise an Internet attack programme last October by taking advantage of a weakness in Microsoft Corp’s Windows…

The Social Security number has come a long way in the nearly 70 years since its inception as an identifier for a government retirement program. These days, Social Security participants may be called upon to display the nine-digit numbers for tasks as routine as punching a timecard, checking out library books, looking up a test…

Government officials and communications experts are assessing the public safety and security implications of a newly posted online article that provides directions for making cheap devices that can jam Global Positioning System (GPS) signals. Information in the article that appears in the current issue of the online hacker magazine Phrack potentially puts at risk GPS…

Although digital attackers are motivated by profits and peer pressure an increasing number of hackers are driven by ideological values claims report. In a report released on Tuesday, the UK-based e-security company mi2g said that computer attacks on Western organisations are on the rise, partly because of radical groups and individuals based in predominantly Islamic…

Hewlett-Packard Norway will no longer guarantee their cordless keyboards for security after yet another report that they transmit keystrokes far afield. This time typing went astray in Oslo. Are Wormnes got a shock when his neighbor Ørjan Stokkeland rang him up and asked him if he by any chance was writing a letter to telephone…

For better or for worse, 2003 will be an exciting year for information assurance professionals and for the Internet in general, particularly on the policy and technical fronts. As always, the phrase “never a dull moment” will apply to us involved in the security field, which will hopefully mean that we’ll stay gainfully employed. Perhaps…