Conflict & Security archives

• 29 December 2006
  "A security researcher has a devised a novel attack on online anonymity systems in which he literally takes a computer's temperature over the internet. The attack uses a phenomenon called 'clock skew' -- the tendency for the precise clocks in modern computers to drift off of the correct time at slightly different rates, which can be affected by heat. 'When a crystal is manufactured, it has a clock skew, and it's different for each crystal (throughout its) lifetime,' explains Steven J. Murdoch, a Cambridge University researcher who discussed his work at the Chaos Communications Congress on Thursday. Last year UCLA Ph.D. student Tadayoshi Kohno showed that clock skew can be used to identify computers on the internet, by charting the timestamps in a machine's traffic." Learn more in Wired News.

• 28 December 2006
  "The tussle between computer security companies trying to protect your PC and the bad guys that try to compromise it is often characterised as an arms race. Sometimes the security companies have the upper hand as they develop and deploy novel techniques to spot and stop malicious software of all stripes. And sometimes, such as in 2006, the bad guys are on top. And nowhere has this been more apparent than in the realm of that old favourite - spam. In the closing months of 2006 spam volumes jumped enormously. According to e-mail filtering firm Postini, spam volumes increased by 73% in the three months to December. '92.6% of all e-mail messages are spam,' said Dan Druker, spokesman for Postini. 'That's the highest it's ever been.' Other e-mail security specialists have not reported such big leaps in junk mail volumes, but all say that they are seeing more spam than ever before. '" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 27 December 2006
  "Hi-tech criminals are looking forward to the consumer release of Windows Vista, say security experts. Vista will be the big event in computer security in 2007, say experts and add that it will have a profound effect on both sides of the security world. Many organised crime gangs are already tearing the new version of Windows apart looking for ways to exploit its weaknesses, say some. Others are expecting to see Vista attacked soon after it debuts. While Microsoft's business customers have been able to buy Vista since 30 November, consumers are being forced to wait until late January 2007 to get their hands on the next version of the Windows operating system. Microsoft has said that the whole development process of the operating system has been run with better security in mind. Within Vista are several technologies that could stop many people falling victim to the most common sorts of malicious attack, said Kevin Hogan, director of security operations at Symantec. In particular, he said, the way Vista handles user accounts will limit the freedom malicious programs have to run and install themselves surreptitiously. '" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 26 December 2006
  "Zapping buried landmines with powerful sound waves and listening to them vibrate could reveal their location, say US researchers who have developed an acoustic sensor system capable of spotting hidden landmines from a distance. Reliable methods of detecting mines and other unexploded ordinance are desperately needed in many places around the world. '26,000 people are either killed or maimed by mines each year,' says Robert Haupt, an MIT researcher who built the array. 'The majority are civilians and more than half of them are under the age of 16.' Handheld metal detectors are by far the most common tools for detecting buried mines. But the detectors have a limited range and so can miss mines that are deeply buried. And plastic mines, which were specifically devised to elude metal detectors, go unnoticed. In addition, metal detectors work only over short ranges and so can only be used by minesweepers inside a mine field which puts them at risk.'" Learn more at the New Scientist.

• 22 December 2006
  "Earlier this year net giants Google and Yahoo came under fire from Human Rights Watch and Reporters Sans Frontieres, for their activities in China. But is the criticism warranted? In 2003 the Chinese police who had been monitoring message boards, blogs and personal emails, asked for the sign up account details of two anonymous bloggers. These were handed over by Yahoo China to the Chinese Government. More than 57 Chinese people have been arrested as result of discussing democracy on the internet, say Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch, a New York based campaign group, says a line has been crossed. 'Google, Yahoo and Microsoft no longer carry out the censorship for the Chinese government,' says Asia Director, Brad Adams, 'they are the censor.'" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 21 December 2006
  "The accumulation of mountains of electronic waste in Nigeria - increasingly the world's PC dumping ground - has so alarmed the country's government that there is now a national committee to deal with the problem. Up to 50 million tonnes of old PCs are thrown away each year on waste dumps where they pose a pollution threat to the environment and to people. Legislation exists that should prohibit the simple sending of old PCs to be dumped - but the problem is that Nigeria's booming second-hand computer industry gives ample scope for computer waste to be smuggled in. Most used machines are not tested for functionality before they are exported to Nigeria, and according to John Oboro, assistant general secretary of the dealers' association Capdan, there are far more bad computers coming in than good." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 20 December 2006
  "On Thursday, Kevin Poulsen, senior editor for Wired News, noted in his blog, a milestone in the number of records that have been compromised in data breaches since the ChoicePoint breach nearly two years ago: “Rapid-fire announcements this week by U.C.L.A. (800,000 records) and Aetna (130,000) moved the total to the threshold, when Boeing revealed yesterday that a laptop recently stolen from an employee’s car contained names, Social Security numbers and other data on 382,000 current and former employees of the aerospace giant — bringing the total to a grim 100,152,801 records (as of this post). One might at least hope that the thief in the Boeing incident was simply after the laptop, rather than the data. And the Aetna case, well, that data was stored on backup tapes that were in a lockbox, which thieves lifted — along with DVD players, cash and other items —in a routine burglary. But in the incident involving the University of California, Los Angeles, announced last Tuesday, there was really no question about the motive and the quarry. A hacker, or hackers, had been entering the restricted database — which contained the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other private information of current and former students and faculty —for over a year before the breach was discovered." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 19 December 2006
  "The exotic murder-by-polonium of the former K.G.B. spy Alexander Litvinenko has embroiled Russia, Britain and Germany in a diplomatic scuffle and a hunt for more traces of the lethal substance. But it also throws into question most of the previous analyses of 'dirty bombs,' terrorist attacks using radioactive isotopes wrapped in explosives (or using other dispersion techniques) to spread radioactive material in crowded areas. Essentially all analysts, myself included, played down the possibility of using alpha radiation — fast-moving helium nuclei ejected during the radioactive decay of certain isotopes, such as of polonium 210, the substance that killed Mr. Litvinenko — as a source of dirty bombs. Dirty bombs based on gamma emitters, analysts have learned, can’t kill very many people. Mr. Litvinenko’s death tells us that 'smoky bombs' based on alpha emitters very well could." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 18 December 2006
  "It's very likely that when you call 911 from your cell phone in an emergency, the operator on the other end won't automatically know your location. This is despite the fact that most U.S. mobile phone companies have met a Federal Communications Commission mandate to provide location information to 911 operators for millions of wireless subscribers. After years of work, the wireless phone industry is still a long way from full deployment of what is known as enhanced 911 service, or E911. With the exception of only a few companies, wireless carriers have met obligations set forth by the FCC to get their networks and phones ready to provide the service to 95 percent of their subscribers." Learn more at News.com.

• 15 December 2006
  "While most U.S. cities are blanketed with advanced cell phone service at least four times over, huge patches of rural America still don't have cell phone coverage. What's more, the problem could get worse before it gets better when rules requiring carriers to offer older, analog service expire early in 2008. The Federal Communications Commission in 2002 gave the mobile phone industry five years to transition their networks from analog technology to digital technology. Starting in February 2008, cell phone companies will no longer be required to offer analog service. Cell phone operators have made tremendous strides in their network deployments...But economic realities have meant that some remote areas of the country that have only analog service today may not have any service until carriers can fully upgrade their networks to digital technology." Learn more at News.com.

• 14 December 2006
  "Security expert Bruce Schneier has highlighted privacy concerns around the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, a technology that lets people track time and other statistics while running. He drew attention to a demonstration by researchers at the University of Washington of a surveillance system that automatically tracks people through the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, which consists of a wireless sensor that fits into Nike+ Air Zoom Moire sneakers and a small white receiver that plugs in to an iPod Nano. 'Basically, the kit contains a transmitter that you stick in your sneakers and a receiver you attach to your iPod. This allows you to track things like time, distance, pace and calories burned. Pretty clever. However, it turns out that the transmitter in your sneaker can be read up to 60 feet away.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 13 December 2006
  "Computer hackers will open a new front in the multi-billion pound "cyberwar" in 2007, targeting mobile phones, instant messaging and community Web sites such as MySpace, security experts predict. As people grow wise to email scams, criminal gangs will find new ways to commit online fraud, sell fake goods or steal corporate secrets. 'The attacks are becoming more sophisticated,' said Dave Rand of Internet security firm Trend Micro. 'It's all about making money. And they're making a lot of it,' he told Reuters. In 2007, hackers will be scouring social networking sites such as MySpace to gather information for more focused attacks on people's computers. 'It is definitely an area that is ripe for more exploitation by malware (malicious software),' said Ed English, Trend Micro's Chief Technology Officer for anti-spyware." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 12 December 2006
  "Melody Millett was shocked when her car loan company asked her if she was the wife of Abundio Perez, who had applied for 26 credit cards, financed several cars and taken out a home mortgage using a Social Security number belonging to her actual husband. Beyond her shock, Melody Millett was angry. Five months earlier, the Milletts had subscribed to a $79.99-a-year service from Equifax, a big financial data warehouse, that promised to monitor any access to her credit records. But it never reported the credit activity that might have signaled that they were victims of identity theft. 'I feel like the whole thing is a sham,' said Melody Millett, a 37-year-old information-technology manager from Overland Park, Kansas. 'You feel completely violated because here are the people who know the industry. They hold all the data.' The services, she contends, are oversold." Learn more at News.com.

• 11 December 2006
  "The founder of PayPal competitor e-gold has grown tired of the government characterizing his business as a haven for money launderers, terrorists, child pornographers and credit card thieves. So a year after the Department of Justice raided his offices, Douglas Jackson, president of Gold and Silver Reserve, which operates e-gold, has been wading deep into his customer transaction logs to identify and fight back against people who misuse his system. In the last month, he's blocked about 2,000 accounts from his system, and he's voluntarily turned over detailed account and transaction histories to federal law enforcement. In the process, Jackson says he's exposed an illicit and previously invisible economic underground. E-gold is a privately issued digital currency backed by real gold and silver stored in banks in Europe and Dubai. Jackson says about 1,000 new e-gold accounts are opened daily, and the system processes between 50,000 and 100,000 transactions a day." Learn more in Wired News.

• 8 December 2006
  "All cargo sent by container ships to the United States from three ports — in Pakistan, Honduras and Southampton, England — will be scanned for hidden nuclear weapons or components starting next year under a federal antiterrorist program that some in Congress want to see mandated worldwide. The program, called the Secure Freight Initiative, will require United States-bound containers before departure to pass through both a radiation detection machine and an X-ray device, a combination intended to find bomb-making materials that have intentionally been shielded. It will cost a total of $60 million to set up the system in Pakistan, Honduras and Southampton, as well to begin scanning at least some United States-bound traffic from Korea, Singapore and Oman, officials said. The cost will be split by the Departments of Homeland Security and Energy, they said." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 7 December 2006
  "A newly revealed system that has been assigning terrorism scores to Americans traveling into or out of the country for the past five years is not merely invasive, privacy advocates charge, it's an illegal violation of limits Congress has placed on the Department of Homeland Security for the last three years. The Identity Project, founded by online rights pioneer John Gilmore, filed official objections to the Automated Targeting System, or ATS, on Monday, calling the program clearly illegal. The comment cited a little-known provision in the 2007 Homeland Security funding bill prohibiting government agencies from developing algorithms that assign risk scores to travelers not on government watchlists." Learn more in Wired News.

• 6 December 2006
  "Hearing from a lot of new friends lately? You know, the ones that write “It’s me, Esmeralda,” and tip you off to an obscure stock that is 'poised to explode' or a great deal on prescription drugs. You’re not the only one. Spam is back — in e-mail in-boxes and on everyone’s minds. In the last six months, the problem has gotten measurably worse. Worldwide spam volumes have doubled from last year, according to Ironport, a spam filtering firm, and unsolicited junk mail now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages sent over the Internet. Much of that flood is made up of a nettlesome new breed of junk e-mail called image spam, in which the words of the advertisement are part of a picture, often fooling traditional spam detectors that look for telltale phrases. Image spam increased fourfold from last year and now represents 25 to 45 percent of all junk e-mail, depending on the day, Ironport says." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 5 December 2006
  "The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty. You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects. According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games. The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves." Learn more in Wired News.

• 4 December 2006
  "When Matthew Burton arrived at the Defense Intelligence Agency in January 2003, he was excited about getting to his computer. Burton, who was then 22, had long been interested in international relations: he had studied Russian politics and interned at the U.S. consulate in Ukraine, helping to speed refugee applications of politically persecuted Ukrainians. But he was also a big high-tech geek fluent in Web-page engineering, and he spent hours every day chatting online with friends and updating his own blog. When he was hired by the D.I.A., he told me recently, his mind boggled at the futuristic, secret spy technology he would get to play with: search engines that can read minds, he figured. Desktop video conferencing with colleagues around the world. If the everyday Internet was so awesome, just imagine how much better the spy tools would be." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 1 December 2006
  "The U.S. government warned of a possible Internet attack on U.S. stock market and banking Web sites from a radical Muslim group, but officials said the threat was unconfirmed and seemed to pose no immediate danger. The notice was issued Thursday to the U.S. cyber security industry after officials saw a posting on a 'Jihadist Web site' calling for an attack on U.S. Internet-based stock market and banking sites in December, said Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke. There is no information corroborating the threat, Knocke said, adding that the alert was issued 'as a routine matter and out of an abundance of caution. There is no immediate threat to our homeland at this time.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 30 November 2006
  "Sensitive data sent using VoIP is vulnerable to attack because call centres are failing to secure their networks robustly enough, according to new research. Customers' private details could be easily hacked into using the wiretapping method with a staggering 7 out of 10 calls open to attack, said security company Scanit, which audited data transfer at various busy call centres and service providers. It found lax security for networks at call centres which deal with thousands of calls from around the world and was able to pick up data that included tone-dial PIN numbers used to access phone banking services." Learn more in the Register.

• 29 November 2006
  "The Bush administration wants North Korea's attention, so like a scolding parent, it's trying to make it tougher for that country's eccentric leader to buy iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters. The U.S. government's first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run his communist nation. Kim, who engineered a secret nuclear weapons program, has other options for obtaining the high-end consumer electronics and other items he wants. But the list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim's swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 28 November 2006
  "Scientists at a U.S. weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war. Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said they trained honeybees to stick out their proboscis -- the tube they use to feed on nectar -- when they smell explosives in anything from cars and roadside bombs to belts similar to those used by suicide bombers. Researchers in the program, dubbed the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project, published their findings Monday. By exposing the insects to the odor of explosives followed by a sugar water reward, researchers said they trained bees to recognize substances ranging from dynamite and C-4 plastic explosives to the Howitzer propellant grains used in improvised explosive devices in Iraq." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 27 November 2006
  "Criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted e-mails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips. The number of 'spam' messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 e-mails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini. As Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer. 'E-mail systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam,' said Dan Druker, a vice president at Postini. His company has detected 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June. Spam in Britain has risen by 50 percent in the last two months alone, according to Internet security company SurfControl." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 22 November 2006
  "Drivers who get stopped by the police could have their fingerprints taken at the roadside, under a new plan to help officers check people's identities. A hand-held device being tested by 10 forces in England and Wales is linked to a database of 6.5m prints. Police say they will save time because people will no longer have to go to the station to prove their identity. Officers promise prints will not be kept on file but concerns have been raised about civil liberties. Bedfordshire are the first force to use the equipment, which is being distributed among the forces in Essex, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, North Wales, Northamptonshire, West Midlands and West Yorkshire, as well as to British Transport Police and the Metropolitan Police, over the next two months." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 21 November 2006
  "At a place called Arak in the desert southwest of Tehran, behind barbed wire and antiaircraft guns, Iran is building a heavy-water nuclear reactor. The government says it will produce radioactive isotopes for medical treatments. As an unavoidable byproduct, it will also make plutonium, one of the primary fuels for atom bombs. At the International Atomic Energy Agency, inspectors are trying to make sure that Tehran never uses its nuclear infrastructure to make weapons. Indeed, for just that reason, the agency’s board has repeatedly called on the Iranians to abandon the Arak reactor. Yet when the board meets this week in Vienna, it will consider an Iranian request for technical help in safely completing the reactor, which is to go online as soon as 2009." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 17 November 2006
  "Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday. The flying robot, nicknamed the 'bionic hornet,' would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said. It is one of several weapons being developed by scientists to combat militants, it said. Others include super gloves that would give the user the strength of a 'bionic man' and miniature sensors to detect suicide bombers." Learn more at News.com.

• 16 November 2006
  "World oil production will not begin to fall for at least another 24 years, contrary to doomsday theories that supply is already in terminal decline, a prominent energy consulting group said Tuesday. Cambridge Energy Research Associates said in a report that the world has some 3.74 trillion barrels of oil left -- enough to last 122 years at current consumption rates and triple the amount estimated by 'peak oil' theorists. The world consumes nearly 85 million barrels of oil per day, with the United States using about a quarter of that, according to the Department of Energy. 'Oil is too critical to the global economy to allow fear to replace careful analysis about the very real challenges with delivering liquid fuels to meet the needs of growing economies,' said Peter Jackson, director of oil industry activity for Cambridge, a Massachusetts-based consultant to the oil, natural gas and electric power industries." Learn more at MSNBC.com.

• 15 November 2006
  "A U.K. law has been passed that makes it an offense to launch denial-of-service attacks, which experts had previously called 'a legal gray area.' Among the provisions of the Police and Justice Bill 2006, which gained Royal Assent on Wednesday, is a clause that makes it an offense to impair the operation of any computer system. Other clauses prohibit preventing or hindering access to a program or data held on a computer, or impairing the operation of any program or data held on a computer. The maximum penalty for such cybercrimes has also been increased from 5 years to 10 years. The law that attempted previously to deal with this area of computer crime was the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA), which was drafted before widespread use of the Internet began." Learn more at News.com.

• 14 November 2006
  "Gmail's popularity may be viral, but the e-mail software is not a virus — despite a Microsoft alert. From late last week until Sunday night, the Windows Live OneCare security software incorrectly flagged the Google e-mail service as a threat. A warning popped up when OneCare users opened the Gmail website, telling them that their systems were infected with a virus called 'BAT/BWG.A.' 'This was a limited false positive issue with our anti-virus protection,' a Microsoft representative said Monday. 'After we became aware of the issue, we released a new anti-virus signature that resolved the issue for our customers on Sunday evening.' The problem started last week, when Google made some changes to its Gmail website, Microsoft said. The software maker is reviewing its procedures and processes in order to minimize the occurrence of further false positives, the Microsoft representative said." Learn more in USA Today.

• 13 November 2006
  "In the five years since his divorce, Eric Wagenhauser had moved on with his life. He had remarried and was sharing custody of the three children from his first marriage. Then, last year, Mr. Wagenhauser discovered a new wrinkle on American divorce: his former wife had used the children’s Social Security numbers to apply for nine credit cards in their names. She obtained two. Mr. Wagenhauser’s ordeal over the next year, which involved police departments in two Texas counties, banks, credit bureaus and the Social Security Administration, is familiar to many identity theft victims — the crime often begins at home." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 10 November 2006
  "At First, it looked like typical network congestion. So the system administrators weren't too concerned when TypePad blogs and LiveJournal social networks flickered like a light bulb in a faulty socket. But 15 minutes later, at 4 pm on May 2, 2006, the sites went dark, and so did the mood at Six Apart, the company that owns them. In the blink of an eye, 10 million blogs and online communities disappeared. "It looked like the servers had freaked out," CEO Barak Berkowitz recalls. Flash floods of data thundered into one network port, stopped inexplicably, then reappeared to overwhelm another. The engineers pored over logs, desperately looking for a cause. After an agonizing hunt, they found it: a distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS. Six Apart's servers had been inundated with so many requests that the machines couldn't possibly process them all. It was the digital equivalent of filling a fish tank with a fire hose." Learn more in Wired.

• 9 November 2006
  "Google on Tuesday inadvertently sent the Kama Sutra e-mail worm to the 50,000 subscribers of a Google Video e-mail group. Three postings were made Tuesday evening to an e-mail list that sends out postings to the Google Video blog. 'Some of these posts may have contained a virus called W32/Kapser.A@mm--a mass-mailing worm,' Google said in a note on its Web site apologizing for the incident. W32/Kapser.A is better known as the Kama Sutra worm. Some antivirus companies raised an alarm about the threat in February, but it ultimately shriveled. Kama Sutra was designed to overwrite files on infected computers on a specific date. However, the worm, which spread under the guise of pornographic content, caused virtually no damage." Learn more at News.com.

• 8 November 2006
  "The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders named 13 countries on Tuesday as the worst culprits for online censorship, singling out China, Cuba, Iran and North Korea among others. Also on the list are Belarus, Egypt, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. An online protest was ending at 5 a.m. Wednesday EST. 'No one should ever be prevented from posting news online or writing a blog,' said the Paris-based group, Reporters Sans Frontieres in French, which taps more than 100 journalists who are 'keeping us informed.' Worldwide, 61 people, 52 in China, are in prison for posting what the countries claimed was "subversive" content, the reporters' group said in its annual report." Learn more in the International Herald Tribune.

• 7 November 2006
  "A surge in 'phishing' in the first half of 2006 has produced a sharp rise in the amount of money being lost to online banking fraud. Phishing involves using fake websites to lure people into revealing their bank account numbers. The number of recorded incidents rose 16-fold to 5,059, said the Association of Payment Clearing Services (APACS). That led to a 55% rise in losses from online fraud against banks, reaching £23m in the first half of 2006. However, the amount of money lost to credit and debit card fraud fell again. Apacs said this was due to the continued impact of the new chip-and-pin cards. Plastic card fraud in the first half of 2006 was down 5% on a year ago, at £209m, with losses due to cards that were stolen in the post being more than halved. 'These latest fraud figures show that the industry's efforts are making their mark,' said Sandra Quinn of Apacs." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 6 November 2006
  "The U.S. Air Force said Thursday it was setting up what could become a new four-star command to fight in cyberspace, where officials say the United States has already come under attack from China among others. 'The aim is to develop a major command that stands alongside Air Force Space Command and Air Combat Command as the provider of forces that the President, combatant commanders and the American people can rely on for preserving the freedom of access and commerce, in air, space and now cyberspace,' Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told an industry conference. The Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana-based 8th Air Force -- already home to about 25,000 military personnel involved in everything from electronic warfare to network defense -- will house the fledgling Cyberspace Command, Wynne said." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 3 November 2006
  "Last week Christopher Soghoian created a Fake Boarding Pass Generator website, allowing anyone to create a fake Northwest Airlines boarding pass: any name, airport, date, flight. This action got him visited by the FBI, who later came back, smashed open his front door, and seized his computers and other belongings. It resulted in calls for his arrest -- the most visible by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) -- who has since recanted. And it's gotten him more publicity than he ever dreamed of. All for demonstrating a known and obvious vulnerability in airport security involving boarding passes and IDs. This vulnerability is nothing new. There was an article on CSOonline from February 2006. There was an article on Slate from February 2005. Sen. Chuck Schumer spoke about it as well." Learn more in Wired News.

• 2 November 2006
  "A Morocco-born computer virus that crashed the Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT border screening system last year first passed though the backbone network of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement bureau, according to newly released documents on the incident. The documents were released by court order, following a yearlong battle by Wired News to obtain the pages under the Freedom of Information Act. They provide the first official acknowledgement that DHS erred by deliberately leaving more than 1,300 sensitive US-VISIT workstations vulnerable to attack, even as it mounted an all-out effort to patch routine desktop computers against the virulent Zotob worm. US-VISIT is a hodgepodge of older databases maintained by various government agencies, tied to a national network of workstations with biometric readers installed at airports and other U.S. points of entry." Learn more in Wired News.

• 1 November 2006
  "The story seems simple enough. An outside privacy and security advisory committee to the Department of Homeland Security penned a tough report concluding the government should not use chips that can be read remotely in identification documents. But the report remains stuck in draft mode, even as new identification cards with the chips are being announced. Jim Harper, a Cato Institute fellow who serves on the committee and who recently published a book on identification called Identity Crisis, thinks he knows why the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee report on the use of Radio Frequency Identification devices for human identification never made it out of the draft stage. 'The powers that be took a good run at deep-sixing this report,' Harper said. 'There's such a strongly held consensus among industry and DHS that RFID is the way to go that getting people off of that and getting them to examine the technology is very hard to do.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 26 October 2006
  "In November 2004, during the second battle of Fallujah, an American uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) - a robot plane - located a mortar battery that had been hampering the US operation to retake the town.The mortar's position was logged by the UAV's operator, who was sitting at his desk in Nellis Air Force base near Las Vegas, thousands of miles away. Using the internet, the operator contacted the operator of another armed UAV at a desk in central command ("Centcom") - a safe area away from the theatre of war, with centres in Kuwait, Qutar or Iraq. The two operators swapped information on the mortar in a secure internet chat room, guiding the armed drone to its position to destroy the mortar and its crew. According to Lieutenant General John Sattler, commander of the coalition forces at the battle, it was a proving ground for the use of remote vehicles." Learn more in the Guardian.

• 25 October 2006
  "Malicious remote control software continues to be one of the biggest threats to Windows PCs, according to a new Microsoft security report. More than 43,000 new variants of such insidious software were found in the first half of 2006, making them the most active category of malicious software, Microsoft said in a Security Intelligence Report published Monday. In June Microsoft also flagged zombies as the most prevalent threat to Windows PCs. 'Attackers, with financial gain in mind, are clearly concentrating a significant amount of development focus on this category of malware,' Microsoft said in the report. Of 4 million Windows PCs found to be infected with some kind of malicious software in the first half of this year, about 2 million were running malicious remote control software, Microsoft said." Learn more at News.com.

• 24 October 2006
  "Flip a switch and make something disappear? It's been the stuff of science fiction for decades. Now, two Duke University scientists and their colleagues have built the world's first device to render an object invisible. At least, it's invisible to microwaves. But researchers say the work demonstrates that, in principle, objects could be made to disappear from radar, cameras, and other detection devices. The trick? A new class of engineered substances called metamaterials. These materials could someday add muscle to microscopes, reduce the size and increase the capability of radar, sonar, and other remote-sensing devices, and cloak or shield objects, researchers add. The rudimentary microwave cloaking device was reported in Friday's edition of the electronic journal Science Express." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 23 October 2006
  "They call it the 'Johnny Carson attack,' for his comic pose as a psychic divining the contents of an envelope. Tom Heydt-Benjamin tapped an envelope against a black plastic box connected to his computer. Within moments, the screen showed a garbled string of characters that included this: fu/kevine, along with some numbers. Mr. Heydt-Benjamin then ripped open the envelope. Inside was a credit card, fresh from the issuing bank. The card bore the name of Kevin E. Fu, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was standing nearby. The card number and expiration date matched those numbers on the screen. The demonstration revealed potential security and privacy holes in a new generation of credit cards." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 20 October 2006
  "Web-based maps are handy for keeping tabs on weather and traffic, so why not for disease outbreaks, too? The new Healthmap website digests information from a variety of sources ranging from the World Health Organization to Google News and plots the spread of about 50 diseases on a continually updated global map. It was developed as a side project by two staffers at the Children's Hospital Informatics Program in Boston -- physician John Brownstein and software developer Clark Freifeld. While working on a state-funded program to track disease outbreaks in Massachusetts, the two discovered some inconsistencies in how information is reported. Some sources, such as ProMed-mail, provide very specific data that is verified by medical experts, but the process can be lengthy. At the other extreme, newspaper articles and blog entries come out far more quickly, but they are more likely to contain errors such as unconfirmed reports about avian flu infections in a country." Learn more in Wired News.

• 19 October 2006
  "One in three people write down computer passwords, undermining their security, and companies should look to more advanced methods, including biometrics, to ensure their systems are safe, a new study shows. A study released Tuesday by global research firms Nucleus Research and KnowledgeStorm found companies' attempts to tighten information technology (IT) security by regularly changing passwords and making them more complex by adding numbers as well as letters had no impact on security. Staff still had a tendency to jot down passwords for systems designed by such firms as McAfee and CA, Inc., on a piece of paper or in a text file on a PC or mobile device." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 18 October 2006
  "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will urge the countries of northeast Asia to create a strict system of radiation monitoring and inspections to prevent North Korea from smuggling nuclear materials into or out of the country, a senior State Department official said Tuesday. But in what appears to be an effort to cajole China to enforce the new United Nations sanctions against North Korea aggressively, the United States will ask the countries to focus their efforts on conducting inspections in their own territories, including ports, and on suspicious ships, trucks and aircraft rather than every piece of cargo." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 17 October 2006
  "Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday. 'We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet,' Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police. 'They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,' Chertoff said. 'Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.'" Learn more in News.com.

• 16 October 2006
  "High-tech crooks are hijacking online brokerage accounts by using spyware and operating from remote locations, sometimes in Eastern Europe, U.S. market regulators said on Friday. The computer 'incursions' are a growing problem, said Walter Ricciardi, deputy enforcement director at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 'It's something we're very concerned about,' he said in remarks at a legal conference in Washington. About 25 percent of U.S. retail stock trades are made by online investors through roughly 10 million online accounts, according to brokerages regulator NASD. Crooks will load a victim's computer or a public PC with a spy program to monitor a user's activities and capture vital information, such as account numbers and passwords." Learn more in News.com.

• 13 October 2006
  "Widespread worms, viruses or Trojan horses spammed to millions of mailboxes are typically not a grave concern anymore, security experts said at the Virus Bulletin conference here Thursday. Instead, especially for organizations, targeted Trojan horses have become the nightmare scenario, they said. "Targeted Trojan horses are still a tiny amount of the overall threat landscape, but it is what the top corporations worry about most," said Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec Security Response. 'This is what they stay up at night worried about.' The stealthy attacks install keystroke-logging or screen-scraping software, and they are used for industrial espionage and other financially motivated crimes, experts said." Learn more at News.com.

• 12 October 2006
  "A cellphone that automatically disables itself when separated from its owner for too long is to be launched by Japan's leading mobile telephone operator, NTT DoCoMo. The company announced details of the new P903i handset on Thursday. It is designed to prevent unauthorised usage if the phone becomes lost or stolen. Made by Panasonic, the handset will be sold with a wireless ID card that fits inside a wallet or handbag and lets the phone detect when its owner moves more than a few metres away. 'Once the signal between the two objects stops transmitting, because they are too far apart, the telephone blocks itself,' a Panasonic spokesman told AFP. It also comes with a fingerprint reader and voiceprint identification capability." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 11 October 2006
  "It isn't over yet, but 2006 is already a record year when it comes to security vulnerabilities. There is, however, a silver lining: A smaller chunk of the flaws are high risk. Last year, researchers at Internet Security Systems identified 5,195 vulnerabilities in software. On Monday, the count for this year stood at 5,450, according to the Atlanta-based company's survey, and the projected total for the whole of the year is almost 7,500 bugs. 'Three-quarters through the year, 2006 is looking to be a huge jump in terms of security vulnerabilities,' said Gunter Ollmann, director of X-Force, the research and development group at ISS." Learn more in News.com.

• 10 October 2006
  "The US has issued a new national space policy that reflects a more aggressive and unilateral stance than the previous version issued a decade ago by former president Bill Clinton. 'There is definitely a difference in approach and mentality,' says Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington DC, US. The earlier statement said US operations should be 'consistent with treaty obligations'. But the new one, issued on Friday, flat-out rejects new agreements that would limit the US testing or use of military equipment in space. The new version also uses stronger language to assert that the US can defend its spacecraft, echoing an air force push for 'space superiority' made in 2004. The new policy states the US has the right 'to protect its space capabilities, respond to interference, and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 6 October 2006
  "It was the nightmare many had been expecting. Five years ago, hard on the heels of 9/11, someone sent anthrax spores through the US mail to journalists and politicians. Five people died, and at least 17 more got sick. The culprit was never caught. This relatively unsophisticated attack confirmed fears, already growing in the US, that with a bit more effort a determined bioterrorist could spread disease and mayhem across the nation. To combat the threat, the Bush administration launched an unprecedented biodefence effort. To date it has spent $44 billion - three-quarters of it aimed at protecting civilians - on new organisations, training, and buying existing remedies such as the classic smallpox vaccine. Has this massive spending made Americans any safer? According to experts at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh, the answer is no." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 5 October 2006
  "The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge's ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The president has said the program is needed in the war on terrorism; opponents argue it oversteps constitutional boundaries on free speech, privacy and executive powers. The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest." Learn more in Wired News.

• 4 October 2006
  "A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas. Such a 'sentiment analysis' is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said. Researchers at institutions including Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the system on hundreds of articles published in 2001 and 2002 on topics like President Bush’s use of the term 'axis of evil,' the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, and the coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 3 October 2006
  "North Korea is to conduct a nuclear test 'in the future', the foreign ministry said in a statement. The move would 'bolster' the country's self-defence in the face of US military hostility, official agency KCNA said. Pyongyang has faced mounting international pressure over its nuclear programme, and in July was condemned by the UN for test-launching missiles. The news has been condemned by the US, Japan, South Korea and Russia - all members of the six-nation talks. The US state department said any nuclear test would further isolate the North Korean regime and said the US would work with allies to discourage 'such a reckless action.'" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 2 October 2006
  "By now, millions of anthrax vaccine shots developed through cutting-edge genetic engineering were supposed to be filling a new national stockpile of biodefense drugs. Instead, five years after anthrax attacks left five dead, sickened 17 and panicked the country, the nearly $1 billion contract awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to a tiny and struggling San Francisco Bay Area biotechnology company is plagued with misfortune and delays. Delivery has been put off until at least 2008 -- and maybe later -- while the government and VaxGen trade barbs over who is at fault. The dispute has further tarnished Project Bioshield, a government program that has alienated many potential biodefense contractors." Learn more in Wired News.

• 29 September 2006
  "Hewlett-Packard employed a commercial service that tracks e-mail paths to bug a file sent to a CNET News.com reporter, an HP investigator said Thursday. HP investigators used the services of ReadNotify.com to trace an e-mail sent to reporter Dawn Kawamoto in an attempt to uncover her source in a media link, Fred Adler, an HP security employee, said during testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee. Adler's testimony, for the first time since the HP boardroom drama erupted, specified how the company bugged the e-mail it sent to Kawamoto. Moreover, Adler said that it's still company practice to use e-mail bugs in certain cases." Learn more in News.com.

• 28 September 2006
  "For a few hours a day, Steven Peisner calls strangers across the USA — sometimes at night — and reads to them their Social Security numbers and credit card data. Though many recipients immediately suspect he is an ID thief, Peisner's intent is just the opposite: He is a digital whistle-blower. 'My motivation is to be a good citizen and put a dent in (fraudulent e-mail) phishing scams,' says Peisner, president of SellitSafe.com, which provides anti-phishing services for online merchants. He works closely with law enforcement and computer-security experts." Learn more in USA Today.

• 27 September 2006
  "The European Central Bank (ECB) knew the US was conducting a secret probe of the world's private financial records without official oversight but failed to tell privacy authorities. The central banks of the G10 countries might also be implicated in the scandal because they were told about the US snooping of transactions conducted by their indigenous firms five years ago when, in the wake of 9/11, the US Treasury first started poring through the world's financial transactions in search of terrorist financiers. The European Parliament has called on the ECB to state officially what it knew about the controversial intelligence operation in a hearing on 4 October." Learn more in the Register.

• 26 September 2006
  "In the past, virus writers seeking fame and attention wrote their malicious programs to spread as quickly and broadly as possible, boasting to colleagues when they manage to cripple hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide in a matter of hours. But now, many writers are driven by money instead. They write code to turn the computers of unsuspecting individuals into 'botnets'— networks for spreading junk e-mail or stealing financial data from others. Security experts find that some are even taking measures to make sure their programs don't spread too quickly or too broadly, lest they get detected and blocked." Learn more in USA Today.

• 25 September 2006
  "Home computer users are now the favourite targets of hi-tech criminals, reveals research. The report by security firm Symantec found that cyber criminals are targeting home PC owners because they are the easiest to catch out. It saw an 81% rise in phishing messages which attempt to trick people into handing over personal details. Another study by a banking industry body shows many home users do not take basic steps to stay safe online. Criminals typically use bogus or booby-trapped e-mail messages to lure people into handing over banking details. Symantec's bi-annual Internet Threat Report said that more than 157,000 unique phishing messages were sent during the first six months of 2006." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 22 September 2006
  "Republicans on a key congressional committee on Wednesday approved legislation they described as a necessary rewrite to electronic surveillance law but attacked by Democrats, civil libertarians and technology advocacy groups as flawed and unconstitutional. In a 20-16 vote mostly along party lines, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee backed an amended version of the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act of 2006, a Republican-sponsored measure introduced in July. Two Republicans and all 14 Democrats present rejected the proposal. 'This legislation is a priority for the president and critical to our national efforts to detect and disrupt acts of terrorism before they occur,' said Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, who co-sponsored the controversial bill." Learn more at News.com.

• 21 September 2006
  "The future of Internet freedom is being decided in Asian cyberspace, and judging by recent trends and developments, that future looks increasingly dim. Past hopes that an unfettered Internet would empower lots of little information-driven democratic uprisings have more recently been met and systematically squashed by a number of censorious Asian governments. China's highly restrictive state-run firewall - which significantly is built into all levels of the country's Internet infrastructure, from routers, to Internet service providers, to e-mail and in chat rooms - is fast emerging as the region's cyberspace censorship and surveillance model of choice." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 20 September 2006
  "The nation's airports face a looming crisis in their ability to screen checked luggage for bombs that will require billions of dollars to avert, a new report ordered by Congress says. Many airports have too few screeners and use slow, labor-intensive bomb detectors that are being overwhelmed by increasing passenger traffic, the study says. The report criticizes how bomb detectors were installed in airports after 9/11. Because of a tight deadline, 'many if not most of the implementations were suboptimal,' it says. The van-sized machines clog terminals and operate so slowly that flights are sometimes held up or bags don't make it onto their flights, airport officials say. Those problems will worsen unless luggage scanners are replaced at most U.S. airports with faster machines that are part of baggage-conveyor systems." Learn more in USA Today.

• 19 September 2006
  "Despite the California attorney general's assertion that he has enough evidence to press charges against people inside and outside Hewlett-Packard, a criminal case may be hard to prosecute, legal specialists say. The California prosecutors are still collecting evidence and have filed no charges. But they think people hired by HP or a string of subcontractors used fraudulent means to gain access to phone records, thereby violating some or all of four state statutes, Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said Monday. Those laws are being used to go after people who the prosecutors believe pretended to be someone else to get private phone records, a practice known as pretexting. HP has acknowledged that the method was used in an investigation of news leaks from its board. Records of directors, employees and reporters were obtained." Learn more in News.com.

• 18 September 2006
  "The last of the anthrax-laced letters was still making its way through the mail in late 2001 when top Bush administration officials reached an obvious conclusion: the nation desperately needed to expand its medical stockpile to prepare for another biological attack. The result was Project BioShield, a $5.6 billion effort to exploit the country’s top medical and scientific brains and fill an emergency medical cabinet with new drugs and vaccines for a host of threats. 'We will rally the great promise of American science and innovation to confront the greatest danger of our time,' President Bush said in starting the program. But the project, critics say, has largely failed to deliver. So far, only a small fraction of the anticipated remedies are available. Drug companies have waited months, if not years, for government agencies to decide which treatments they want and in what quantities." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 15 September 2006
  "Can people really tell what I search for over the Internet? You may be searching from the privacy of your home, but when it comes to just about anything online, there's no guarantee of privacy. Your Internet service provider may know about the controversial group you just researched. Your search engine may know about the divorce you're contemplating. And if you're surfing from work, your boss may know about the disease you just looked up. Some advice from Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and privacy advocate: 'Assume that everything you put into those search engines is being saved and might be handed out to somebody, someday, perhaps linked to your identity.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 14 September 2006
  "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday sustained more bashing of its cybersecurity efforts from politicians and government auditors. In what has become a familiar refrain, a chorus of Republicans and Democrats--all from the U.S. House of Representatives panel on telecommunications and the Internet--urged the agency to get its act together and appoint a long-awaited cybersecurity czar. Then, at a sparsely attended afternoon hearing here, members of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security panel grilled department officials about shortcomings in the Homeland Security Information Network, which was intended to ease sharing of counterterrorism information among federal, state and local investigators." Learn more at News.com.

• 13 September 2006
  "Senate Republicans blocked Democratic attempts to rein in President Bush's domestic wiretapping program Wednesday amid a sustained White House campaign to give the administration broad authority to monitor, interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects. While refusing to give the president a blank check to prosecute the war on terrorism, Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee kept to the White House's condition that a bill giving legal status to the surveillance program pass unamended. By voice vote and roll calls, Republicans defeated Democratic amendments to insert a one-year expiration date into the bill and require the National Security Agency to report more often to Congress on the standards for its domestic surveillance program." Learn more in USA Today.

• 12 September 2006
  "Having a common enemy brings out the best in men, a new study has shown. Psychologists created an economics game, asking groups of volunteers to decide whether to keep money for themselves or invest in a group fund. The men in the study were much kinder to groupmates if they thought that other groups were competing with them. The findings, reported at the British Association's Science Festival, may help explain the evolutionary roots of men's interest and behaviour in war. 'One of the things that distances us from many other species is that males actually co-operate with each other,' said Professor Mark van Vugt, of the University of Kent." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 11 September 2006
  "Second Life, the fast-growing online site where hundreds of thousands of people play out fantasy lives online, has suffered a computer security breach that exposed the real-world personal data of its users. Linden Lab, the San Francisco-based company behind the Second Life site, said in a letter to its 650,000 users this weekend that its customer database, including names, addresses, passwords and some credit card data, had been compromised. All users -- or residents in Second Life parlance -- are being required to request a new password. Some 286,000 residents have used the site in the past 60 days, according to a count on the home page. 'While we realize this is an inconvenience for residents, we believe it's the safest course of action,' Cory Ondrejka, the chief technology officer of Linden Lab said in the message to Second Life customers released late on Friday. Second Life is a three-dimensional software world on the Web inhabited by animated characters that users design for themselves to interact with other participants." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 8 September 2006
  "Climate change is 'potentially the most serious threat there has ever been' to security and prosperity, according to Britain's new climate ambassador. In an article for the BBC News website - his first since taking the post in June - John Ashton says climate change must be tackled 'whatever it costs'. He argues that the costs of not solving it will inevitably be larger. Environmentalists welcomed Mr Ashton's appointment, but warned the UK position is undermined by its rising emissions. Greenhouse gas production is increasing in virtually every country, and it is this that Mr Ashton believes makes climate change a real and urgent threat in Britain and around the globe." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 7 September 2006
  "Many more white children use the internet than do Hispanic and black students, a reminder that going online is hardly a way of life for everyone. Two of every three white students — 67 percent — use the internet, but less than half of blacks and Hispanics do, according to federal data released Tuesday. For Hispanics the figure is 44 percent; for blacks, it's 47 percent. 'This creates incredible barriers for minorities,' said Mark Lloyd, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and an analyst on how communications influence civil rights. Not using the internet 'narrows their ability to even think about the kind of work they can be doing,' Lloyd said. 'It doesn't prepare them for a world in which they're going to be expected to know how to do these things.' The new data come from the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the Education Department. They are based on a national survey of households in 2003." Learn more in Wired News.

• 6 September 2006
  "Microchips similar to those used to pay highway tolls and enter an office building with a swipe card can also help you assemble an ensemble. Need a dress shirt to match that new red plaid tie you got for your birthday? BLEEP! Or how about a "smart shelf" that catalogues your DVD collection or tells you whether you have the ingredients necessary to make chocolate chip cookies? Or a suitcase that alerts you when you forget to pack your toothbrush? These are some of the already-possible applications for RFID, radio frequency identification, a technology that is quickly becoming a part of our every day lives. Katherine Albrecht, author of Spychips, said anything that tracks certain items or stores data could be used to compromise security or invade a person's privacy by identifying, without their knowledge, what they are carrying in their purse or have in their living room. 'People could walk around with RFID readers and find out what you paid for your clothing and what is in your bag,' she said. 'That's pretty invasive.'" Learn more in USA Today.

• 5 September 2006
  "Software that claimed to provide increased privacy whilst surfing the web has been criticised by computer experts and the blogging community. The application Browzar has been branded "adware" by many because it directs web searches to online adverts. Some technical experts also say Browzar, which claims to leave no trail of webpages visited, does not work. Browzar's developers say they are examining the feedback but strongly deny that it is adware. Mr Ajaz Ahmed, founder of internet service provider Freeserve and the man behind Browzar, told the BBC News website that he thought people were misusing the term. 'This is not adware at all,' he said. 'Like every search engine, Browzar has sponsored advertising.' Adware is typically a piece of software that generates advertising on a user's computer. Learn more at BBC.com.

• 1 September 2006
  "The married man's girlfriend sent a text message to his cell phone: His wife was getting suspicious. Perhaps they should cool it for a few days. 'So,' she wrote, 'I'll talk to u next week.' 'You want a break from me? Then fine,' he wrote back. Later, the married man bought a new phone. He sold his old one on eBay, at Internet auction, for $290. The guys who bought it now know his secret. The married man had followed the directions in his phone's manual to erase all his information, including lurid exchanges with his lover. But it wasn't enough. Selling your old phone once you upgrade to a fancier model can be like handing over your diaries. All sorts of sensitive information pile up inside our cell phones, and deleting it may be more difficult than you think." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 31 August 2006
  "Personal data, including credit card information, of thousands of AT&T customers was stolen by hackers over the weekend, the company reported late Tuesday. The breach, which affected customers who purchased DSL equipment through AT&T's (Charts) Web store was discovered within hours and the online store was shut down immediately, said AT&T in a press release. AT&T said it was sending notifications to nearly 19,000 customers, and that it would pay for credit monitoring services for the affected customers. 'We recognize that there is an active market for illegally obtained personal information. We are committed to both protecting our customers' privacy and to weeding out and punishing the violators,' said Priscilla Hill- Ardoin, chief privacy officer for AT&T, in a statement." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 30 August 2006
  "That ear-piercing ring you hear in a restaurant might not be somebody who forgot to set their cell phone to vibrate. A new service called Mobile Manager, from Synchronica, can remotely make a Windows Mobile-based handset emit an 'annoying and embarrassing high-pitched wail,' so it can be found after it has been stolen or misplaced. Synchronica is a U.K.-based vendor of mobile-device management tools that aims to help victims of cell phone theft to strike back, according to a company statement sent Monday. Thousands of mobile phones are stolen every month, according to Synchronica. If these are smart phones, they can contain sensitive information such as e-mail messages and computer files, potentially causing embarrassing data leaks." Learn more in News.com.

• 29 August 2006
  "Microsoft technology that protects digital files from copyright infringement has been breached, according to reports. A program called Fairuse4wm has been posted on the net and is apparently capable of breaching Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) system. It could spell problems for internet music shops, potentially enabling users to download unlimited files. However, an analyst said Microsoft was probably working to 'close the hole'. DRM is used to control people's access to digital data. It is commonly employed on music downloading sites to restrict the use of music purchased and downloaded online to ensure copyright is not infringed. Many internet stores offer files for use on a Windows Media platform wrapped in Microsoft's DRM technology." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 28 August 2006
  "A man was sentenced to three years in prison Friday for launching a computer attack that hit tens of thousands of computers, including some belonging to the Department of Defense, a Seattle hospital and a California school district. Christopher Maxwell, 21, of Vacaville, California, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty in May to federal charges of conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer and conspiracy to commit computer fraud. U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman said the crime showed 'incredible self-centeredness' with little regard for the impact on others. She said the prison time was needed as 'deterrence for all those youth out there who are squirreled away in their basements hacking.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 25 August 2006
  "Potential bomb attacks on aircraft could be more easily detected thanks to a new test for hydrogen peroxide, one of the liquids that have sparked dramatic security clampdowns at airports around the world. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, US, say that a test they developed to help diagnose diseases in the human body could be adapted to detect the chemical precursors of homemade explosives. UK authorities recently uncovered an alleged plot to blow up aircraft using homemade explosives produced on board using chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide. Similar homemade explosives were used in the London subway bombings last year, which killed over 50 people." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 24 August 2006
  "Life-saving operations on soldiers in combat zones could become possible thanks to a portable robotic surgeon that allows doctors to perform surgery on the battlefield without endangering themselves. Surgical robots that can be operated remotely are already used in some civilian hospitals. These include a system called "da Vinci" made by US company Intuitive Surgical, and another system called ZEUS, made by US firm Computer Motion. However, these existing systems are large and cumbersome, taking up much of an operating room. Now Blake Hannaford and colleagues at the University of Washington, in Seattle, US, have come up with a system small enough to travel with troops into combat zones in the back of an armoured vehicle." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 23 August 2006
  "When Tommy Thompson stood down as US health secretary in 2004, he delivered a stark warning. 'I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do,' he said. Why was he so worried? Is 'agro-terrorism' - attacking farming or the food supply - really so easy? The only reported case in the US happened more than two decades ago in 1984, when a cult poisoned salad bars at a number of restaurants in Oregon. Forty people were taken to hospital, no-one died. Mr Thompson had probably been listening to academics like Larry Wein, of Stanford University, who studies terrorist attacks that could kill more than 100,000 people." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 22 August 2006
  "Last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to bolster U.S. port defenses with radiation scanners. The program, primarily aimed at detecting nukes smuggled by terrorists in shipping containers, will cost an estimated $1.15 billion, but won't be completed until 2011. Here on the San Francisco Bay, a group of do-it-yourself volunteer researchers are not waiting for the mushroom cloud. They say they are close to perfecting a portable device that could do much the same thing right now, for total out-of-pocket costs of about $12,000." Learn more in Wired News.

• 21 August 2006
  "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced a new public service campaign Monday that will warn teenage girls against posting information on the Internet that could put them at risk of attack by child predators. 'Every day, these predators are looking for someone to hurt,' Gonzales said at the 18th annual Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas. 'Every day, we must educate parents and children about the threat.' About 2,700 law enforcement officials from around the world are attending the conference, which runs through Thursday." Learn more in USA Today.

• 18 August 2006
  "The Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping on Amercians' telephone and internet communications is unconstitutional and must stop immediately, a federal judge ruled Thursday. The ruling is the first court order barring the National Security Agency's ambitious domestic surveillance activities, which have spurred a string of lawsuits against the government and telecommunications companies around the country. It also marks a serious blow to the administration's sweeping interpretation of executive authority under the Constitution, a stance that's riled politicians and legal scholars alike. Detroit U.S. District Court judge Anna Diggs Taylor, presiding over an ACLU challenge to the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program", rejected the government's assertion that the state secrets privilege prevents any review of the NSA surveillance." Learn more in Wired News.

• 17 August 2006
  "The arrests and release of five young Arab-American men who bought hundreds of cellphones in the Midwest show broader concerns about wireless technology in an era of global terrorism. Nearly as cheap as the mundane box cutter and potentially just as dangerous, cellphones have become a tool of choice for those wanting to stay a step ahead of government wiretappers as well as for insurgents triggering bombs. Reselling them on the black market also has become a way of funding illicit activities. In the Michigan case, local prosecutors backed off charges that one target for possible attack may have been the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge connecting the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan." Learn more in USA Today.

• 16 August 2006
  "All too familiar with hackers looking to exploit security flaws in its software, Microsoft Corp. warned video game developers Monday that their PC games are now a target for criminals. Popular massively multiplayer online games, such as 'World of Warcraft,' have created a market for valuable game identities loaded with gold or other hard-earned forms of in-game currency that can be used to buy new weapons, magic spells or other trappings to advance within the game. Using malware or software designed to infiltrate a computer system, hackers steal account information for users of MMO games and then sell off virtual gold, weapons and other items for real money." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 15 August 2006
  "Phil Zimmermann gave free e-mail encryption to the world more than a decade ago in the form of software called Pretty Good Privacy. Now Zimmermann, who became an instant Internet hero in part because of a threat of federal prosecution for much of the 1990s, is trying to bring the same kind of encrypted security to Internet phone calls. Last year, Zimmermann announced software called Zfone, which wraps voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls in an additional layer of security. Today, Zimmermann is busy trying to convince VoIP makers to glue Zfone into their own products and announced the first licensing deal this week. 'The architecture matters,' Zimmermann, who is self-funding Zfone, said in an interview at the recent Defcon hacker convention here. 'This is a different way of doing it and it's better.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 14 August 2006
  "It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills -- morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves. Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done. Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil. There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes he knows the cause, but he cannot convince anyone caring for him that the military's new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick." Learn more in Wired.

• 10 August 2006
  "Nearly one in 10 people believe they have fallen victim to identity fraud, according to a survey. People aged under 30 are most prone to falling victim because they are the poorest at protecting personal details, the survey suggests. Two-thirds in these groups admitted to giving a PIN or bank details to friends and family and 28% did not know a utility bill could be used in ID crime. The poll of 2,200 adults by YouGov was commissioned by energy firm Npower. The survey revealed widespread ignorance over how to combat identity fraud. About eight out of 10 people surveyed among the under-30s age group did not know what their credit rating was. Moving house was pinpointed as a particularly dangerous time, as far as falling victim to identity theft is concerned." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 9 August 2006
  "Scientists have discovered a new method for detecting deadly pathogens like Anthrax or smallpox almost immediately after they've been released into the air. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said this week that they've developed a so-called nanowire bar-code system that could one day be used to create portable, quick-acting sensors designed to identify hundreds of airborne pathogens within minutes. 'If there is an outbreak, we want to know in a fast, efficient manner what agent has infiltrated the room,' said Jeffrey Tok, a scientist in LLNL's biosecurity and nanosciences lab and the lead researcher on the development." Learn more at News.com.

• 8 August 2006
  "If there are two technologies that have shaped the life I lead today, they’re jets and nets. Affordable airfare lets me go where the action is – wherever adventure beckons, necessity compels, or duty calls – without having to establish residency anywhere. And the Internet lets me do business and stay in touch no matter where I find myself. Cheap flights and ubiquitous worldwide communications are the stuff of globalization. Ready travel lets people oppressed at home taste the joys of free society, while the Net exposes them to the ideas and customs underpinning that social order. The effect is viral, spreading liberal values and economic growth to benighted dictatorships and hopeless pits of poverty. So it’s difficult to grasp that these two innovations might also be an imminent menace to Western civilization. Yet that’s the counterintuitive thesis of UK rear admiral Chris Parry, a Falklands vet, former commander of HMS Fearless, and the British military’s go-to guy for identifying emerging threats." Learn more in Wired.

• 7 August 2006
  "Pundits and political junkies may have put blogs on the map. But now individuals all over the planet are using new blogging tools to share gritty, uncensored information. 'If you see a car bomb blast, your first thought is not to go to an Internet cafe and start blogging,' said digital media expert Erik Sundelof. But almost everywhere in the world, cell phones are available, with the ability to send text, photos, even video of such events instantly, he said. Sundelof is the creator of 'Lebanon-Israel Conflict Via Cell Phones,' a blog that is different from the tens of thousands of web logs sharing facts, opinions, pictures and often unfettered anger about events in the Middle East and elsewhere. The text and images he's publishing about the Lebanon-Israel conflict are sent from mobile phones, not from computers. 'What this is really creating is a way for normal people to tell their perspective,' said Sundelof, who is working in the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University in California." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 4 August 2006
  "Incoming college students are hearing the usual warnings this summer about the dangers of everything from alcohol to credit card debt. But many are also getting lectured on a new topic -- the risks of Internet postings, particularly on popular social networking sites such as Facebook. From large public schools such as Western Kentucky to smaller private ones like Birmingham-Southern and Smith, colleges around the country have revamped their orientation talks to students and parents to include online behavior. Others, Susquehanna University and Washington University in St. Louis among them, have new role-playing skits on the topic that students will watch and then break into smaller groups to discuss. Facebook, geared toward college students and boasting 7.5 million registered users, is a particular focus. But students are also hearing stories about those who came to regret postings to other online venues." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 3 August 2006
  "A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year. The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery. But Lukas Grunwald, a security consultant with DN-Systems in Germany and an RFID expert, says the data in the chips is easy to copy. 'The whole passport design is totally brain damaged,' Grunwald says. 'From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all.' Grunwald plans to demonstrate the cloning technique Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. The United States has led the charge for global e-passports because authorities say the chip, which is digitally signed by the issuing country, will help them distinguish between official documents and forged ones." Learn more in Wired News.

• 2 August 2006
  "'This is very scary for a lot of people,' says Rob McLay, gesturing at a computer screen that displays a bleak cityscape. 'If you want to stop, say, "Stop."' Bobby Meadors, 27, listens, nodding. He's a baby-faced Navy medic from Memphis, Tennessee, with a soft southern accent. For several weeks during 2003, he drove an ambulance in southern Iraq and treated injured soldiers. Now he’s getting ready to go back – virtually. First, though, McLay asks Meadors to talk about his time in Iraq. 'We did nightly ops up and down the coast,' Meadors says. 'It was pretty antsy. I totally thought we were going to get RPG’d.' McLay’s face is empathetic. He’s a Navy psychiatrist with both a PhD in neuroscience and a medical degree...Meadors removes his headset and smiles grimly. He has just experienced a small sampling of a treatment that might soon be used to help thousands of GIs recover from their experience in Iraq." Learn more in Wired.

• 1 August 2006
  "The Bush administration has asked a federal appeals court to halt a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of illegally opening its communication networks to surveillance by the National Security Agency. Permitting the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit to proceed would endanger national security and possibly expose classified information, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a legal brief filed on Monday. The administration also nominated Laurence Silberman, a federal appeals court judge in Washington, D.C., to serve as an expert in this case. A former deputy attorney general, Silberman was appointed by President Reagan and serves on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. The brief is a response to a July 20 ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco, who surprised lawsuit watchers by saying there are 'sufficient' grounds to let the lawsuit continue." Learn more at News.com.

• 31 July 2006
  "Web 2.0 is causing a splash as it stretches the boundaries of what Web sites can do. But in the rush to add features, security has become an afterthought, experts say. The buzz around the new technology echoes the '90s Internet boom--complete with pricey conferences, plenty of start-ups, and innovative companies like MySpace.com and Writely being snapped up for big bucks. And the sense of deja vu goes even further for some experts. Just as in the early days of desktop software, they say, the development momentum is all about features--and protections are being neglected. 'We're continuing to make the same mistakes by putting security last,' said Billy Hoffman, lead engineer at Web security specialist SPI Dynamics. 'People are buying into this hype and throwing together ideas for Web applications, but they are not thinking about security, and they are not realizing how badly they are exposing their users.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 28 July 2006
  "The US has passed legislation which controls what website operators are allowed to put in their site meta tags. The law bans the use of words which might lead anyone to obscene content. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is named after a six-year-old who was abducted in 1981 and killed. His parents have since dedicated their lives to protecting children from child predators. The law contains meta tag controls which were rejected when proposed as part of another law, the Stop Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Youth (SAFETY) Act. The SAFETY Act was not passed by legislators." Learn more in the Register.

• 27 July 2006
  "In January 2004, Stuart Romm traveled to Las Vegas to attend a training seminar for his new employer. Then, on Feb. 1, Romm continued the business trip by boarding a flight to Kelowna, British Columbia. Romm was denied entry by the Canadian authorities because of his criminal history. When he returned to the Seattle-Tacoma airport, he was interviewed by two agents of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. They asked to search his laptop, and Romm agreed. Agent Camille Sugrue would later testify that she used the 'EnCase' software to do a forensic analysis of Romm's hard drive. During the trial, Romm's attorney asked that the evidence from the border search be suppressed." Learn more at News.com.

• 26 July 2006
  "Eight in 10 cities say their emergency responders still can't communicate with each other or area towns, 44% have not created or updated their evacuation plans, and nearly three-quarters say they're not prepared to handle a flu pandemic outbreak. A survey of 183 cities by the U.S. Conference of Mayors set to be released today paints a grim picture of the nation's disaster preparedness nearly five years after the 9/11 attacks and nearly one year after Hurricane Katrina. 'Does the public want to hear this? I don't think so,' says Dearborn, Mich., Mayor Michael Guido, a Republican and head of the mayors' group. He says cities need more money from Washington but also must do more on their own — sign mutual-aid agreements with area towns, plan to share equipment in emergencies and line up companies ahead of time for tasks such as debris removal." Learn more in USA Today.

• 25 July 2006
  "Shoppers browsing online for new designer sunglasses or that ultrathin cellphone have a new temptation: a speedy-looking blue shopping-cart icon offering to whisk them to a purchase. Last month, Google, by far the most popular way to find things on the Internet (it processes about 45 percent of all searches), added Google Checkout to its burgeoning list of related products. By signing up, shoppers can quickly and painlessly (at least until the bill arrives!) click to buy anything where they see the Google Checkout shopping-cart symbol without entering their credit-card number or other information. Consumers can also keep track of what they've bought anywhere online in one place. But [some] worry that Google, in particular, is beginning to accumulate a tremendous amount of personal and financial data on consumers." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 24 July 2006
  "Teens looking to hook up with a friend on the popular web community MySpace may bump into an unexpected buddy: the U.S. Marine Corps. So far, over 12,000 web surfers have signed on as friends of the Corps in response to the latest military recruiting tactic. Other military branches may follow. MySpace.Com, the internet's most popular social networking site with over 94 million registered users, has helped redefine the way a generation communicates. Users, many in their teens and 20s, post personal profiles and accumulate lists of friends and contacts with common interests. The Marine Corps MySpace profile -- featuring streaming video of barking drill sergeants, fresh recruits enduring boot camp and Marines storming beaches -- underscores the growing importance of the internet to advertisers as a medium for reaching America's youth." Learn more in Wired News.

• 21 July 2006
  "In a landmark ruling Thursday, a federal judge forcefully refused to dismiss a civil liberties group's lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged complicity in widespread warrantless government surveillance, despite the government's argument that the suit could reveal state secrets -- a rarely used claim that nearly always terminates a lawsuit. In a 72-page written ruling, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker rejected the government's argument that merely allowing the case to proceed would cause critical harm to U.S. national security. The decision marks a significant victory for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and puts a rare limitation on the reach of the president's "state secrets privilege" to sweep alleged illegal government activities under the cloak of national security. Walker found that the program was not a secret since 'public disclosures by the government and AT&T indicate that AT&T is assisting the government to implement some kind of surveillance program.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 20 July 2006
  "U.S. intelligence agencies have invested millions of dollars since 9/11 on computer programs that search through financial, communications, travel and other personal records of people in the USA and around the world for connections to terrorism, according to public records and security experts.The software is designed to find links between terrorism suspects and previously unknown people; track the international flow of money, operatives and materials; and search for clues in the worldwide communications over phone lines, wireless connections and Internet links. Industry officials, government reports and contracting records do not say specifically how much the CIA and Pentagon have spent to develop, purchase and upgrade such data-mining programs, because that information is classified." Learn more in USA Today.

• 19 July 2006
  "President Bush personally sidetracked an internal Justice Department probe into the warrantless domestic surveillance program earlier this year, even as other Justice officials were assigned to defend the program in court and investigate who may have leaked information about it to the news media, according to administration officials and documents released Tuesday. Raising new questions about the administration's accountability for secret anti-terrorism programs, the White House acknowledged Tuesday that Bush withheld security clearances that attorneys within the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility said they needed to investigate whether department lawyers had acted properly in approving and overseeing the controversial spy program run by the National Security Agency." Learn more in the LA Times.

• 18 July 2006
  "The days when car thieves and cat burglars could cover their tracks just by donning a pair of gloves may be over. An experimental Justice Department program has police departments collecting DNA evidence in nonviolent crimes for the first time, so a single stray hair can lock up a casual sneak thief. Until recently, DNA evidence was used almost solely to investigate violent offenses such as murders or rapes -- CSI kinds of stuff. The Department of Justice hopes to expand that focus. As part of a five-year, $1 billion White House initiative, the department has launched an 18-month program in five major cities to get cops to apply CSI-style DNA-analysis techniques to routine crimes." Learn more in Wired News.

• 17 July 2006
  "Critics of the Bush administration’s program for wiretapping without warrants said Friday that they would fight a new White House agreement to let a secret court decide the constitutionality of the operation, and the compromise plan failed to deter lawmakers from offering up competing proposals of their own. The agreement, completed Thursday by Senator Arlen Specter after negotiations with the White House, drew immediate scrutiny in Washington, as politicians, national security lawyers and civil rights advocates debated its impact and legal nuances." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 14 July 2006
  "Four years ago, a former FBI project manager lamented the state of the agency's primitive electronic case-management system. 'There's no mouse; there's no icon,' the official told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2002, according to a recent government report. 'There's no year 2000 look to it. It's all very keyboard-intensive.' Not much has changed since then. According to recent reports, a string of managerial blunders, financial indiscretions and assorted snags have accompanied efforts to modernize the agency's computer systems. A former government contractor assigned to an earlier incarnation of the upgrades was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation, six months' home detention and $20,000 in restitution after pleading guilty in March to 'exceeding authorized access' to FBI records, the agency said." Learn more at News.com.

• 13 July 2006
  "Northrop Grumman forecast Wednesday a potential "very large" market for a laser-based system it has developed to shield airports and other installations from rockets, ballistic missiles and other threats. Los Angeles-based Northrop said it had already pitched the system, called Skyguard, to Israel, which worked with the company and the Army to develop the technology. Northrop also is pushing Skyguard - described as capable of generating a shield five kilometers in radius - to each of the armed services and the Department of Homeland Security, company executives told a news briefing. Setting up a protective 'bubble' around a typical airport might cost $25 million to $30 million once enough systems were installed, said Mike McVey, vice president of directed energy systems at Northrop's Space Technology business unit." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 12 July 2006
  "When the Scottish economic development agency injected about $9 million into the biotechnology company Cyclacel last October, the country’s enterprise minister explained that 'there could not be a more important company for Scotland’s future.' But only two months later, this flag-bearer for Scottish biotechnology said it would move its headquarters to Short Hills, N.J., and merge with a publicly traded American company. Cyclacel executives say there was no slight intended to Scotland. 'The issue was one of access to the capital markets of the United States,' Spiro Rombotis, Cyclacel’s chief executive, said in a recent interview. Only American investors, he said, could supply the tens of millions of dollars needed to carry the company’s cancer drugs through clinical trials. Cyclacel is not alone among European biotechnology companies that consider their science second to none, while conceding the superiority of American financial markets." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 11 July 2006
  "The search for land mines is not something done in haste. Nor, as it turns out, is the search for new technology that could be used to find mines. Despite a lot of promises about high-tech advances, people working in land mine clearance are using technology that hasn't changed dramatically since the Second World War. And a lot of them say that--given the risks of using technology that's still in its shakeout period--they'd just as soon stick with the tried-and-true. 'We need more of what we know works, rather than new technologies," said Noel Mulliner, technology coordinator for the U.N. Mine Action Service. 'New technology is not going to get into the field fast enough. We want more of the simple stuff.' Land mines are a serious problem in many countries, from postconflict places like Bosnia to simmering trouble spots such as Afghanistan and Sri Lanka." Learn more in News.com.

• 10 July 2006
  "Every month seems to bring another episode of sensitive personal information escaping into the wild because a corporate or government laptop computer is lost or stolen. A common response is a lot of hand-wringing over how the data should have been encrypted. But some key questions usually go unanswered. Why is so much private data allowed to be on laptops to begin with? What do people do all day that compels them to tote around records on, say, 26 million Americans, the staggering number seen in the recent Veterans Affairs case? 'It's pure laziness. There's actually no excuse for it,' said Avivah Litan, a security analyst for Gartner 'There's no good business reason for it.' Litan advocates a few simple steps: Organizations should keep sensitive information only on secure, centralized servers. Workers can access the data from PCs in the office or over private internet connections." Learn more in Wired News.