Conflict & Security archives

• 30 December 2005
  "Unbeknown to the Bush administration, an outside contractor has been using internet tracking technologies that may be prohibited to analyze usage and traffic patterns at the White House's website, an official said Thursday. David Almacy, the White House's internet director, promised an investigation into whether the practice is consistent with a 2003 policy from the White House's Office of Management and Budget banning the use of most such technologies at government sites. 'No one even knew it was happening,' Almacy said. 'We're going to work with the contractor to ensure that it's consistent with the OMB policy.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 29 December 2005
  "The National Security Agency got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, literally, on Wednesday. The NSA, which functions as the United States’ information systems watchdog, admitted it has been posting cookies on the computers of visitors to its web site, despite federal rules banning such activity. Cookies are small files placed on computers by web programs residing on sites visited by those computers. They were originally designed to hold identifying information to make web surfing easier and faster. Today cookies are used to store all kinds of information, including the content of a web surfer’s electronic shopping cart. Many web surfers are concerned about the lack of privacy involved in the surreptitious placement of cookies on their computer hard drives." Learn more in Red Herring.

• 28 December 2005
  "I'm a regular James Bond, all right. Before I left for the airport to fly home last Thursday, I hatched my plan at a Walgreens up the block from my hotel near Union Square. There I bought a nice sharp pair of barber's scissors with 31/2-inch blades. Thursday was the day the Transportation Security Administration changed procedures at airport checkpoints. The revisions were aimed mostly at introducing greater chance into the screening process, to thwart terrorists who have figured out how predictable the old system was." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 27 December 2005
  "2005 has been a banner year for cyber-villains. Thanks to hackers, some of the United States’ largest corporations, including financial services giant Citigroup and media powerhouse Time Warner, had sensitive data swiped from their supposedly secure databases....Data theft wasn’t the only danger in 2005. An Internet worm, Zotob, infected computers at media companies like CNN and financial behemoths like Visa in August. And email nuisances, spam and phishing, were also on the rise. Will it get better in 2006? Not really, say security experts. In fact, the threats may get worse. That’s because just as security systems become more sophisticated, the threats will become more complex and innovative—all in an effort to stay a step ahead." If it ain't one thing, it's another, or so it seems in this report at Red Herring.

• 26 December 2005
  "Behind the sterile white brick walls of Brunnenplatz school, Ahmet Ruhi Cosgun dreams of a professional soccer career - not at a German club, but at Galatasaray in Istanbul. At 15, this son of Turkish immigrants knows just how unlikely that is. But international soccer stardom still seems more feasible than college in his native Germany. 'If you didn't have to go to university, I might try to become a lawyer instead - I think I'd be quite good at it,' said Cosgun, a black woolen hat pulled low over his forehead, as he leaned forward over a classroom table one recent afternoon. But a university, he added categorically, 'is just not an option.'" Creating a secure society is a complex issue in in times of conflict in more nations than Iraq, reports Paris' International Herald Tribune.

• 23 December 2005
  "With the holidays just days away, shoppers rush around late into the night, radio stations blare seasonal tunes--and cybercriminals busily try to scam unsuspecting targets. 'Fraudsters use current affairs to create legitimacy,' said Melih Abdulhayoglu, chief executive of Comodo Group, a provider of Web site security certificates in Jersey City, N.J. Credit card fraud is easier now than any other time of year because of the high volume of transactions, experts warn. 'The holidays are a great reason to send people e-mail to try to scam them into giving up their information,' Abdulhayoglu said. Internet users, in fact, can expect to see almost twice as many phishing attacks this December." Learn more at News.com.

• 22 December 2005
  "When Google introduced Google Earth, free software that marries satellite and aerial images with mapping capabilities, the company emphasized its usefulness as a teaching and navigation tool, while advertising the pure entertainment value of high-resolution flyover images of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the pyramids. But since its debut last summer, Google Earth has received attention of an unexpected sort. Officials of several nations have expressed alarm over its detailed display of government buildings, military installations and other important sites within their borders." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 21 December 2005
  "Any resistance movement is generally only as good as the weapons it uses, and that is something that has bedeviled the poorly-equipped Taliban-led anti-US forces in Afghanistan for a long time. The resistance has steadily taken steps, though, to beef up its arsenal to include modern automatic weapons and ground-to-air missiles. This it has done in part by forging closer links with the resistance in Iraq, as well as with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. According to intelligence sources who spoke to Asia Times Online, al-Qaeda concluded that its attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 was a failure, even though 17 American sailors were killed. As a result, al-Qaeda sent a team to the LTTE to gain expertise in maritime combat operations. The LTTE, as part of its longstanding battle against the Sri Lankan government, has developed a relatively sophisticated maritime wing." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 20 December 2005
  "Identity thieves are always looking for new ways to pry out personal information, from trolling through trash cans to phishing for bank accounts online. But here is one method they may not have tried: using fake fingers made from Play-Doh and gelatin, or taking digits from a cadaver's hand. In a study, researchers at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., tested 66 fake fingers to see if they could outwit biometric devices, which identify individuals based on the physiological properties of their fingerprints or other body parts. The fake fingers went undetected more than half the time. 'Even if it comes from Play-Doh, the scanner has no way of knowing that. It is just taking a picture of an image,' said Stephanie C. Schuckers, a Clarkson electrical and computer engineering professor who helped lead the research." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 19 December 2005
  "The saturation of society with modern electronics, while certainly a good thing overall, gives us an Achilles' heel. The more dependent we become on such electronics, the more vulnerable we are to societal chaos if a substantial portion of them fail simultaneously. It is said that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, could cause such a failure. An EMP is generated by a nuclear explosion, or by a smaller-scale "e-bomb." If a terrorist or rogue nation detonated a nuclear bomb a few hundred miles above the United States, the resulting shock wave could damage or disrupt electronic components throughout the country. The consequences could be catastrophic." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 16 December 2005
  "Pentagon analysts appear not to have followed guidelines that require deleting information on American citizens and groups from a counterterrorism database within three months if they pose no security threats, Pentagon officials said on Thursday. As a result, dozens of alerts on antiwar meetings and peaceful protests appear to have remained in the database, even though analysts had decided that those involved presented no threat to military bases or personnel, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program is classified." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 15 December 2005
  "Hot on the trail of identity thieves, veteran Edmonton Police Service detectives Al Vonkeman and Bob Gauthier last winter hustled to a local motel, a cinder-block establishment where rooms rent by the hour. Twice before police had descended on locations in Edmonton and Calgary, 200 miles away, chasing down a tip about someone accessing a dial-up Internet account linked to an e-mail folder full of stolen identity data. Evidence in the motel room would ultimately lead them to a much bigger revelation: The Edmonton ring had gone global. It no longer relied solely on dumpster-diving, mailbox-pilfering street addicts to supply stolen credit cards, checks and account statements, the grist for local thefts. Instead, it had advanced to complex joint ventures, conducted over the Internet." Learn more in USA Today.

• 14 December 2005
  "The arrest of six animal rights activists and environmental radicals last week is the clearest sign in years that law-enforcement authorities now are able to infiltrate the shadowy world of 'ecoterrorism.' But the apprehension of four men and two women in five states around the country - all charged with firebombings and other criminal acts committed years ago in the Pacific Northwest - also indicates how hard it is to do that. While the arrests are significant, many more crimes carried out in the name of protecting animals and the environment remain unsolved. " Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 13 December 2005
  "E-tailers have circled Tuesday on their calendars — and so have cyberthieves. That's because it's the last day for many consumers to order a gift online and have it delivered before Christmas without paying extra for shipping. It's also the day hackers and fraudsters attack with a vengeance. 'If the Monday after Thanksgiving is the day to shop online, the Tuesday in mid-December is the time to steal,' says Ken Leonard, CEO of ScanAlert, a security-software firm that tracks data from nearly 70,000 e-commerce sites. Leonard predicts a 50% spike Tuesday in fraudsters using stolen credit-card numbers to buy online, and from hackers trying to gain illegal access to customer and employee data on websites." Learn more in USA Today.

• 12 December 2005
  "Worms and viruses will use any available channel to spread, as recipients of infected email attachments, visitors to websites loaded with malicious software and users of peer-to-peer networks can all testify. Instant messaging networks are not immune, since most allow users to exchange files. Now it seems that the latest worm to infect AOL's instant messaging community, Aim, actually chats with the users it is targeting in order to persuade them to download and run an infected file. Called IM.Myspace04.AIM - and someone really needs to think about the naming scheme used for viruses and worms, because that one is just dull - it uses infected computers to send itself to people on any Aim buddy list it finds, and even responds to messages sent to it in order to allay suspicion. It can do this because it is a bot, or software robot, a program that can interact with people. " Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 9 December 2005
  "If you have internet access at work, there's a very good chance your employer has a system in place to monitor your online activities. So, if you're concerned about privacy, take heed. Under current U.S. law, there's little you can do to protect the confidentiality of your internet use on the job. Here's a rundown of the rights you don't have at work. Only two states (Connecticut and Delaware) require that employers inform workers if they are monitoring online activity, according to Jeremy Gruber, legal director, the National Workrights Institute. Federal legislation requiring such disclosure has been proposed but not enacted." Learn more in Wired News.

• 8 December 2005
  "Terrorist groups lack the capability to launch a damaging Internet-based attack on the United States but foreign governments are probably behind many online spying attempts, FBI officials said on Wednesday. Al Qaeda and other militant groups do not have the ability to disable power plants, airports and other 'critical infrastructure' through the Internet, said FBI Assistant Director Louis Reigel, who heads the enforcement agency's Cyber Division. 'There's nothing on my desk today or the director's desk that would cause any concern today,' Reigel told reporters in a briefing at FBI headquarters. Peter Trahon, who heads the FBI unit that handles computer intrusions, added, 'We're not aware of any plan to attack U.S. infrastructure.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 7 December 2005
  "The federal government is not making enough progress in protecting critical infrastructures such as communications networks and the Internet, said former members of the commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Progress also is lacking in airline security and providing radio spectrum to first responders, according to the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, which is made up of the 10 individuals--five Republicans and five Democrats--who served on the Sept. 11 commission. The 9/11 Public Discourse Project on Monday issued a report card with an A- for battling terrorist financing, but all 40 of the other grades were lower." Learn more at News.com.

• 6 December 2005
  "Iran says it is ready for 'constructive and serious' talks over its controversial nuclear program, but Monday spelled out a bedrock position on enriching uranium that European negotiators deem 'unacceptable.' Ali Larijani, Iran's top national security official, described a "win-win game" in which Iran would carry out the entire nuclear fuel cycle on Iranian soil, while providing Europe guarantees that nuclear material that results will not be diverted for weapons use. But just as Iran draws its red line, Europeans are sticking to theirs, insisting that no enrichment can take place in Iran." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 5 December 2005
  "Beyond the tragedy of more than 70,000 lives being lost in the October 8 earthquake that devastated large sections of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the disaster alerted US intelligence to the fact that the financial conduits that feed militancy and terror remain very much intact. At very short notice, millions of dollars poured into the coffers of the jihadi group Jamaatut Dawa (formerly Lashkar-i-Taiba), allowing it to immediately take over relief operations in Kashmir while the Pakistan government dallied. As a direct consequence of this realization, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) once again prevailed on Islamabad to launch an offensive against al-Qaeda-linked foreign elements sheltering in the country." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 2 December 2005
  "When the popular search engine Google debuted a free global location tool in June, Internet users were given an opportunity to view full-color satellite photos from thousands of far-flung areas - from the Rocky Mountains to the Taj Mahal. But this fall, Google Earth encountered an unexpected backlash: complaints from government officials who believe easy availability of high- resolution satellite images compromises their national security. In India, President Abdul Kalam expressed concern that terrorists could use Google Earth to plan assaults on the Indian Parliament, which shows up clearly in one of Google's aerial photos. The program disproportionately endangers 'developing countries, which are already in danger of attacks,' Mr. Kalam said at an October meeting of police officials in Hyderabad." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 1 December 2005
  "A cure for computer viruses that spreads in a viral fashion could immunise the internet, even against pests that travel at lightening speed, a mathematical study reveals. Most conventional anti-virus programs use 'signatures' to identify and block viruses. But experts must first analyse a virus before sending out the fix. This means that rapidly spreading viruses can cause widespread damage before being stopped. Now Eran Shir, and colleagues at Tel-Aviv University in Israeli, have applied network theory to the problem, and believe they have come up with a more effective solution. They propose developing a network of 'honeypot' computers, distributed across the internet and dedicated to the task of combating viruses." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 30 November 2005
  "The technology used for decades by law enforcement agents to wiretap telephones has a security flaw that allows the person being wiretapped to stop the recorder remotely, according to research by computer security experts who studied the system. It is also possible to falsify the numbers dialed, they said. Someone being wiretapped can easily employ these 'devastating countermeasures' with off-the-shelf equipment, said the lead researcher, Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 29 November 2005
  "America's Army is one of the most popular computer games on the planet and like many games, it is a shoot-em-up, get-the-bad guys kind of affair. But unlike other games, America's Army is truly a product of the US military. The Army first released the game a few years ago as a recruiting tool. But, at the recent Serious Games Summit in Washington, DC, the Army showed off a new use for its computer game - training soldiers for combat. America's Army now has six million registered users, and scores of fansites, worldwide. That is not just because the Army gives the game away online for free." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 28 November 2005
  "Page after page, self-appointed hate hunters underline passages in Pakistani schoolbooks. They flag hard-edged Muslim views toward other faiths, such as those describing past efforts by Hindus and Christians to 'erase' Muslims. They note sections that speak of martyrdom and the duty to battle perceived religious enemies. 'We are fighting for the future of Islam. Children are sometimes being force-fed a diet of hate, anger and intolerance,' said Ahmad Salim, leader of a campaign to push Pakistan's education system to remove what activists consider extreme language and images from the curriculum. The demands to reform textbooks have begun to draw attention at the highest levels. Educators and activists argue that battles against Islamic extremism are only superficial without deep revisions of schoolbooks." Brian Murphy describes this little-noticed practice in his report to the Chicago Sun-Times.

• 25 November 2005
  "Security experts have revealed details about a group of Chinese hackers who are suspected of launching intelligence-gathering attacks against the U.S. government. The hackers, believed to be based in the Chinese province of Guangdong, are thought to have stolen U.S. military secrets, including aviation specifications and flight-planning software. The U.S. government has coined the term 'Titan Rain' to describe the hackers. The team is thought to consist of 20 hackers. Paller said that the Chinese government is the most likely recipient of the information they intercepted. " Learn more at News.com.

• 24 November 2005
  "Bruce Schneier, who has written several books on security and is the founder of Counterpane Internet Security, told ZDNet UK that officials claiming terrorists pose a serious danger to computer networks are guilty of directing attention away from the threat faced from criminals. 'I think that the terrorist threat is overhyped, and the criminal threat is underhyped,' Schneier said Tuesday. 'I hear people talk about the risks to critical infrastructure from cyberterrorism, but the risks come primarily from criminals. It's just criminals at the moment aren't as 'sexy' as terrorists.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 23 November 2005
  "A major change in the methods used by hackers to break into computers has been revealed in a report issued by an influential research institute on Tuesday. The study suggests that computer criminals have shifted attention away from bugs in operating system software, such as Microsoft's Windows platform, to focus on flaws in individual software packages. The non-profit SANS Institute, based in Maryland, US, reveals the change in tactics in its Top 20 report on software vulnerabilities. 'We are seeing a trend to exploit not only Windows, but other vendor programs installed on large numbers of systems,' says Rohit Dhamankar, project manager for the report." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 22 November 2005
  "Parliament approved a bill Sunday requiring the government to block international inspections of its atomic facilitiesThere is little difference between the aims of IT security and insurance. Businesses make investments in both because they know they have to and it would be irresponsible not to. IT security products are purchased to protect against threats that it is hoped will never occur. In the same way, when we insure our houses, we do not intentionally burn them down. Investment in IT security needs to be proportionate to risk and the problems that arise if it fails. In some cases the actuality is more serious for some organisations than others. It is worthwhile for a bank to take the step of storing customer data as encrypted because if the data falls into the wrong hands there is the potential for financial loss, brand damage if the media find out and legal consequences arising from breeching regulations." Learn more at The Register.

• 21 November 2005
  "Parliament approved a bill Sunday requiring the government to block international inspections of its atomic facilities if the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency refers Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions. The bill was approved by 183 of the 197 lawmakers present at the session, which was broadcast live on state-run radio. The vote came four days before the International Atomic Energy Agency board meets to consider referring Tehran for violating a nuclear arms control treaty. When the bill becomes law, as is expected, it will strengthen the government's hand in resisting international pressure to abandon uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to produce fuel for nuclear reactors or an atomic bomb." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 18 November 2005
  "Even in a work environment as unsafe as modern Iraq, the job of a war-zone translator stands out as exceptionally dangerous. Dozens of interpreters hired to work with U.S. troops have died in the course of the war, victims of combat or targets for assassination. To date, the principal tools-of-the-trade are body armor and a firearm. The risky business of battle-zone translation could get a technological boost, however, as researchers prepare to test a system that instantly translates spoken conversations to and from English and Iraqi Arabic. Funded by Darpa, the system would allow troops to communicate in Arabic through a laptop computer equipped with voice recognition and translation software. Troops could speak in English and have their words instantly translated into Iraqi Arabic, 'spoken' by a computerized man's voice." Learn more in Wired News.

• 17 November 2005
  "Shi Jin wears a jean jacket, has razor-cropped hair, and seems gravely earnest. An officer in the People's Liberation Army, he was wooed from a Beijing vocational college three years ago by recruiters who talked up his technical aptitude - and his patriotism. In the past decade, China has undergone two military high-tech reforms designed to give the country a modern fighting force. To sustain that progress, it must attract many more gung-ho young engineers like Shi, who spends most of his time working on an 'informational' revolution that planners hope will one day allow them to 'see' a battlefield with the same depth as the US military." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 16 November 2005
  "More than half a million networks, including military and government sites, were likely infected by copy-restriction software distributed by Sony on a handful of its CDs, according to a statistical analysis of domain servers conducted by a well-respected security researcher and confirmed by independent experts Tuesday. Sony BMG has been on the run for almost two weeks with the public relations debacle of its XCP copy-restriction software, which has installed an exploit-vulnerable rootkit with at least 20 popular music titles on PCs all over the world. While the company has committed to withdrawing the CDs from production, and is said to be pulling them from the shelves, the biggest problem remaining for the company, and perhaps the internet as well, is how many Sony-compromised machines are still out there." Learn more in Wired News.

• 15 November 2005
  "Robert Petrick searched for the words 'neck,' 'snap,' 'break' and 'hold' on an Internet search engine before his wife died, according to prosecutors Wednesday. More than two years after Janine Sutphen's body was discovered floating in a Raleigh lake, investigators continue to find new evidence on computers seized from Robert Petrick's home that prosecutors say support their arguments that Petrick killed his wife. The Google search was the latest in recently discovered evidence found on nearly a dozen computers seized from Petrick's home. Last week, a forensic investigator discovered that Petrick allegedly researched lake levels, water currents, boat ramps and access about Falls Lake just four days before he reported Sutphen missing on Jan. 22, 2003." Learn more at WRAL.com.

• 14 November 2005
  "In mid-July, senior American intelligence officials called the leaders of the international atomic inspection agency to the top of a skyscraper overlooking the Danube in Vienna and unveiled the contents of what they said was a stolen Iranian laptop computer. The Americans flashed on a screen and spread over a conference table selections from more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments, saying they showed a long effort to design a nuclear warhead, according to a half-dozen European and American participants in the meeting. The documents, the Americans acknowledged from the start, do not prove that Iran has an atomic bomb. They presented them as the strongest evidence yet that the country is trying to develop a compact warhead to fit atop its Shahab missile, which can reach Israel and other countries in the Middle East." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 11 November 2005
  "Despite the seemingly unending torrent of citizens' data pouring into the hands of identity thieves, Congress is unlikely to pass any data-security bills by the end of the year, according to Hill watchers. And consumer advocates say that's a good thing. After the nationwide uproar when ChoicePoint admitted it sold 145,000 dossiers to Nigerian identity thieves, 20 states followed California's lead and passed laws requiring companies to notify citizens when their data had been compromised. Now, companies are already acting as if the country had a national notification law, said Gail Hillebrand, a senior attorney at Consumers Union. In addition, Hillebrand said the strict state laws are more consumer-friendly than any proposals in Congress." Learn more in Wired News.

• 10 November 2005
  "You might think it would be difficult for a terrorist to obtain genes from the smallpox virus, or a similarly vicious pathogen. Well, it's not. Armed with a fake email address, a would-be bioterrorist could probably order the building blocks of a deadly biological weapon online, and receive them by post within weeks. That's the sobering reality uncovered by a New Scientist investigation into the bioterror risks posed by the booming business of gene synthesis. Dozens of biotech firms now offer to synthesise complete genes from the chemical components of DNA (See "A dollar a base pair"). Yet some are carrying out next to no checks on what they are being asked to make, or by whom. It raises the frightening prospect of terrorists mail-ordering genes for key bioweapon agents." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 9 November 2005
  "The US government has unveiled a 'non-lethal' laser rifle designed to dazzle enemy personnel without causing them permanent harm. But the device will require close scrutiny to ensure compliance with a United Nations protocol on blinding laser weapons. The Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response (PHASR) rifle was developed at the Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico, US, and two prototypes have been delivered to military bases in Texas and Virginia for further testing. The US Department of Defense (DoD) believes the weapon could be used, for example, to temporarily blind suspects who drive through a roadblock. However, the DoD has yet to reveal details of how the laser works." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 8 November 2005
  "The crew of a luxury cruise ship used a sonic weapon that blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam while being attacked by a gang of pirates off Africa this weekend, the cruise line said Monday. The Seabourn Spirit had a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, installed as a part of its defense systems, said Bruce Good, a spokesman for Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line. The Spirit was about 100 miles off Somalia when pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns as they tried to get onboard. The subsidiary of Carnival Corp. was investigating whether the weapon was successful in warding off the pirates, he said. The ship's captain also changed its course, shifted into high speed and headed out into the open sea to elude the pirates, who were in two small boats, he said. He had no further details." Learn more in USA Today.

• 7 November 2005
  "For the past few months an acquaintance of mine has been sniffing various public wireless and wired networks around the world, looking to see what plain text passwords are visible. It was an eye-opening experiment. She used a bunch of different tools, but mostly Cain. At the moment, it collects 18 different passwords or password representations, including plain text passwords sent over HTTP, FTP, ICQ, and SIP protocols, and will automatically collect the user’s log-in name, password (or password representation), and access location. Although some -- including me -- might question her ethics, the information she shared is useful in understanding our true state of insecurity." Learn more in Info World.

• 4 November 2005
  "Will the goodwill that has been built between India and China in the recent past end up being sacrificed at the altar of improved India-US relations? In another indication that there may be trouble brewing between Beijing and New Delhi, the official Chinese media have made a frontal assault on the landmark India-US nuclear pact and cautioned of its 'negative impact' on the global nuclear order. This is the first instance of a direct and open criticism of a crucial aspect of India-US relations that has been picked up by the official Chinese machinery/organs, which previously chose to be quiet about the nuclear deal inked between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W Bush in July." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 3 November 2005
  "When he logged on to his Ameritrade account earlier this year, George Rodriguez caught a cybercrook in the act of cleaning out his retirement nest egg. He watched, horrified, as the intruder in quick succession dumped $60,000 worth of shares in Disney, American Express, Starbucks and 11 other blue-chip stocks, then directed a deposit into the online account of a stranger in Austin. 'My entire portfolio was being sold out right before my eyes,' recalls Rodriguez, 41, a commercial real estate broker who alerted Ameritrade in time to stop the trades. Rodriguez had just experienced a tech-savvy consumer's worst nightmare. But it's the reality of the digital world we live in." Learn more in USA Today.

• 2 November 2005
  "When you surf the Internet, you leave footprints everywhere you go. Google conceivably knows every term you've searched for and every e-mail you've sent and received. Cookies greet you when you return to a site and track your movements when you stay within its pages or visit affiliated sites. Your ISP knows who you are and where you live or work whenever you get online. As the battle to provide ads better-targeted to online consumers intensifies, our information becomes more valuable to online marketers and publishers...So, how can we protect ourselves? We're going to have to pay for it. In the same way we fork over a few extra bucks a month for caller ID block and an unlisted phone number, we'll pay for anonymity in other areas." Learn more at Slate.com.

• 1 November 2005
  "President George W. Bush will unveil a national strategy for bird flu on Tuesday, in a bid to reduce the chance that an outbreak among people could become widespread, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said. The strategy -- to be unveiled at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland -- will include plans to identify an outbreak as soon as it appears, work to contain it and treat it 'to the best extent possible,' McClellan told reporters Monday. The announcement by Bush comes as disaster coordinators from Pacific rim countries discuss ways to head off such a crisis. One way to contain the virus would be to devise a cell-based vaccine against it and to stockpile antiviral medicines, two efforts that are currently under way, McClellan said." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 31 October 2005
  "A sniper fires on American troops in Iraq. In the milliseconds before the bullet hits -- in fact, before the shot is even heard -- a computer screen reveals the gun's model and exact location. That's the kind of intelligence that can save soldiers' lives. The Army is currently testing the technology in combat. The devices are made by Radiance Technologies, a small Alabama company, and differ in their approach to gunfire detection from systems already deployed in Iraq that rely on acoustics. Radiance's invention, WeaponWatch, is powered by infrared sensors that detect missiles or gunfire at the speed of light." Learn more in Wired News.

• 28 October 2005
  "New US electronic passports will use encryption and a metal shield to protect the data they contain. The move is in response to criticism that the passports would not be secure, and perhaps downright dangerous to carry. But critics remain unconvinced. 'It's a terrible idea,' says Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organisation based in San Francisco, US, dedicated to defending civil liberties in the digital age. In an effort to make passports harder to forge, the US and other countries plan to place Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips inside their passports. These chips would contain the same information as that printed on the passport, but in a digital form that would be hard to change without detection." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 27 October 2005
  "Wasps aren't exactly man's best friends, but when it comes to sniffing out trouble, some scientists think they're better, cheaper and easier to train than hounds. Scientists from the University of Georgia and USDA Agricultural Research Service are training a strain of the insects to detect everything from concealed explosives, drugs and human remains to -- hopefully -- diseases like cancer. The results will be published in the journal Biotechnology Progress in the next few months, and is already available online. Unlike dogs and electronic sensors currently in use, the wasps are disposable. They cost pennies and take minutes to train." Learn more in Wired News.

• 26 October 2005
  "Fallout from the October 1 Bali bombings put a damper on the local Hindu Galungan and Kuningan holidays celebrating the triumph of good over evil in heroic times. Bali could use a hero at the moment as tourist arrivals and hotel occupancy plummeted following the blasts. And as Indonesia's estimated 190 million Muslims wrap up the holy month of Ramadan, the entire country could use some heroes in the religious sphere. No group has claimed responsibility for the strikes against Saturday night diners in Kuta and Jimbaran Bay. No one has dared identify the neatly severed heads of the apparent suicide bombers. (Investigators now regret identifying the heads as those of suspected terrorists." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 25 October 2005
  "New federal wiretapping rules forcing Internet service providers and universities to rewire their networks for FBI surveillance of e-mail and Web browsing are being challenged in court. Telecommunications firms, nonprofit organizations and educators are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to overturn the controversial rules, which dramatically extend the sweep of an 11-year-old surveillance law designed to guarantee police the ability to eavesdrop on telephone calls. The regulations represent the culmination of years of lobbying by the FBI, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which have argued that 'criminals, terrorists and spies' could cloak their Internet communications with impunity unless police received broad new surveillance powers. The final rules, published this month by the Federal Communications Commission, apply to 'any type of broadband Internet access service.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 24 October 2005
  "Gretchen Hayes was understandably concerned when she received a letter warning that she could be at risk of identity theft. A laptop had been stolen from the University of California at Berkeley in March, and stored on it was personal information on 98,369 graduate students or graduate-school applicants, including Hayes. The breach--which exposed names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers--was widely reported in the media, and the school created a special Web site to help individuals who found themselves suddenly vulnerable. In the months since, however, not a single case of stolen identity related to the incident has been reported. The laptop was recovered in September, and police believe that the thief was interested only in the computer, not in the information in its files. The Berkeley incident underscores the reality of ID theft, which is often portrayed as a scourge in our increasingly digital society." Learn more at News.com.

• 21 October 2005
  "It's been a long day at the Port of New York and New Jersey. Officials have wasted precious time and money opening up or X-raying at least 150 incoming freight containers. They turn out to be full of cat litter, ceramic tiles or bananas - all of which happen to be naturally radioactive. What they don't realise is that they have also nodded through a container in which is stowed a 50-kilogram canister of stolen highly-enriched uranium. Unlike the bananas, the low-energy gamma rays it emits are easily absorbed by the 2-centimetre-thick sheet of lead around it, so it passes through the radiation monitors unnoticed. Some time later, home-grown terrorists build two nuclear bombs, take one across the country in a car and set off simultaneous explosions in New York and San Francisco." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 20 October 2005
  "NATO has been testing technologies, including radio frequency ID tags, to try to reduce casualties from friendly fire. Earlier this month NATO's Operation Urgent Quest exercise tested the potential of a number of combat identity systems, under battlefield conditions on Salisbury Plain in England with 800 troops, 94 combat vehicles and nine aircraft putting a number of technologies through their paces. The system allows commanders and gunners to investigate a target without having to aim the main gun at it, which could be considered threatening. U.S. Army Col. Bill McKean told Silicon.com that no single system can solve the problem of friendly fire." Learn more at News.com.

• 19 October 2005
  "After a 20th century that was perhaps mankind's most violent, all indicators point to a 21st century that will be as bad or worse. Civil wars and new ideological conflicts will multiply. The effectiveness of international forces for peace will wane. And the security of mankind will be the victim caught in the middle. Right? Wrong, says a report based on a three-year study by a group of international researchers. Contrary to widespread public perception, they find that the world is witnessing fewer wars - and those wars that do occur are killing fewer people. The study, released Monday at the UN, also concludes that global conflict-prevention and postconflict peacebuilding efforts are becoming more numerous and more effective." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 18 October 2005
  "Federal regulators will require banks to strengthen security for internet customers through authentication that goes beyond mere user names and passwords, which have become too easy for criminals to exploit. Bank websites will be expected to adopt some form of 'two-factor' authentication by the end of 2006, regulators with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council said in a letter to banks last week. In two-factor authentication, customers must confirm their identities not only through something they know, like a PIN or password, but also with something they physically have, like a hardware token with numeric access codes that change every minute." Learn more in Wired News.

• 17 October 2005
  "After a decade of painstaking research, federal and university scientists have reconstructed the 1918 influenza virus that killed 50 million people worldwide. Like the flu viruses now raising alarm bells in Asia, the 1918 virus was a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, the scientists reported. To shed light on how the virus evolved, the United States Department of Health and Human Services published the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus on the Internet in the GenBank database. This is extremely foolish. The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 14 October 2005
  "'Wanted: Video editors, writers, and webmasters to help Al Qaeda spread its message. Contact: The Global Islamic Media Front via e-mail.' It sounds unlikely, but such messages have appeared on radical Islamist Internet sites in the past week. They are just the latest sign of Al Qaeda's increasing sophistication in communications that is allowing the terrorist network to expand its universe of sympathizers around the world. Prior to 9/11, only a handful of extremist websites existed. Now there are thousands of increasingly sophisticated sites offering everything from chat rooms to videos of beheadings as well as in-depth instructions on kidnapping, bomb- making, and recruiting. Intelligence experts contend that these recent developments are a sign that the terrorist organization continues to evolve, thrive, and, in parts of the Muslim world, maintain the upper hand in the ideological debate." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 13 October 2005
  "Bad news for terrorists and drug traffickers: The hunt for narcotics, explosives and biohazards is about to get faster and easier thanks to new research from Purdue University. A new testing method can, for the first time, speedily check objects and people for traces of chemical compounds. The detection technology known as mass spectrometry is already in use by forensic scientists...The research from Purdue, led by analytical chemistry professor Graham Cooks, developed a technique called desorption electrospray ionization, or DESI, that eliminates a part of the mass spectrometry process, and thus speeds up the detection of substances to less than 10 seconds, said Williams." Learn more in Wired News.

• 12 October 2005
  "It's one of the cutest of those cute IBM Corp. TV commercials, the ones that feature the ever-present help desk. This time, the desk appears smack in the middle of a highway, blocking the path of a big rig. ''Why are you blocking the road?' the driver asks. ''Because you're going the wrong way,' replies the cheerful Help Desk lady. ''Your cargo told me so.' It seems the cartons inside the truck contained IBM technology that alerted the company when the driver made a wrong turn. It's clever, all right -- and creepy. Because the technology needn't be applied only to cases of beer. The trackers could be attached to every can of beer in the case, and allow marketers to track the boozing habits of the purchasers. Or if the cargo is clothing, those little trackers could have been stitched inside every last sweater. Then some high-tech busybody could keep those wearing them under surveillance." Learn more at the Boston Globe.

• 11 October 2005
  "The determination of countries across the Middle East and Asia to develop nuclear arsenals and other weapons of mass destruction is laid bare by a secret British intelligence document which has been seen by the Guardian. More than 360 private companies, university departments and government organisations in eight countries, including the Pakistan high commission in London, are identified as having procured goods or technology for use in weapons programmes. The length of the list, compiled by MI5, suggests that the arms trade supermarket is bigger than has so far been publicly realised. MI5 warns against exports to organisations in Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel, Syria and Egypt and to beware of front companies in the United Arab Emirates, which appears to be a hub for the trade." Learn more at the UK's Guardian.

• 10 October 2005
  "The US navy wants to protect its warships with a system that will destroy incoming torpedoes by firing massive underwater shock waves at them. The ships would be equipped with arrays of 360 transducers each 1 metre square - effectively big flat-panel loudspeakers - running along either side of the hull below the waterline. When the ship's sonar detects an incoming torpedo, the transducers simultaneously fire an acoustic shock wave of such intensity that the torpedo either detonates early or is disabled by the pulse's crushing force, according to the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is funding the project. But these are no ordinary loudspeakers: instead of having a membranous diaphragm that can vibrate in response to a range of audio frequencies, each of the devices has a ram-like cylindrical metal armature at its centre." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 7 October 2005
  "A call by President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law. Bush said aggressive action would be needed to prevent a potentially disastrous U.S. outbreak of the disease that is sweeping through Asian poultry and which experts fear could mutate to pass between humans. Such a deadly event would raise difficult questions, such as how a quarantine might be enforced, the president said. 'I'm concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world,' he told reporters during a Rose Garden news conference on Tuesday. 'One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move,' he said. 'So that's why I put it on the table.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 6 October 2005
  "A Massachusetts company best known for its robotic vacuum cleaners is teaming up with Boston University to develop a robot that can locate the source of sniper gunfire. BU researcher Glenn Thoren said the partnership with Burlington-based iRobot Corp., maker of the Roomba vacuum, aims to protect soldiers in places like Iraq by quickly locating snipers so they can either steer clear or fire back. 'These systems are primarily made for gathering and understanding the nature of the threat,' said Thoren, director of Project REDOWL, or Robot Enhanced Detection Outpost with Lasers. But the mobile robot's use of infrared light and lasers to fix on a target also raises the possibility that robots may eventually be armed to use weapons themselves, either autonomously or under human control." Learn more in USA Today.

• 5 October 2005
  "Experts speculate widely about the composition and tactics of the next generation of mujahideen. This speculation stems from the fact that transnational groups are harder collection targets than nation-states...The question arising is, of course, what threat will the next generation of al-Qaeda-inspired mujahideen pose? Based on the admittedly imprecise information available, the answer seems to lie in three discernible trends: a) the next generation will be at least as devout but more professional and less operationally visible; b) it will be larger, with more adherents and potential recruits; and c) it will be better educated and more adept at using the tools of modernity, particularly communications and weapons." Michael Scheuer examines the future of Al Qaeda at the Jamestown Foundation.

• 4 October 2005
  "It has been four years since a spate of anthrax poisonings killed five people, and the murderer is still on the loose. Many investigative missteps occurred in the first days when those packages of anthrax began showing up in the mail — including the federal government's refusal to immediately acknowledge that a crime had been committed. Combining lessons from such missteps with advances in microbiology like gene sequencing, scientists and law enforcement authorities are now working together to make 'microbial forensics' as potent an investigative tool as DNA evidence. Each microbe, whether anthrax, HIV or E. coli, has its own genetic signature, which can be used to trace the source of a disease outbreak." Learn more in USA Today.

• 3 October 2005
  "Paul Fairchild, a 34-year-old Web developer in Edmond, Okla., has never spent $500 on fine tobacco. He has never slaked a shoe fetish with $1,500 charges at Manolo Blahnik and Neiman Marcus, nor has he ever bought diamonds online, furs in SoHo, or anything at e-Luxury.com. He has never owned an apartment building in Brooklyn, and he has never peddled flesh. Over the last two years, however, his credit report has suggested otherwise. In retelling his ordeal with identity theft, Mr. Fairchild has developed the acid sarcasm and droll nonchalance of a standup comic - a defense mechanism, his wife, Rachel, says, that belies two years of hell. 'Once this happens, you can't believe how deep the rabbit hole goes,' Mr. Fairchild said." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 30 September 2005
  "Many organisations are turning a blind eye to the risks posed by PCs left unattended but logged in to networks, says a new analysis from Gartner. The main risk is that confidential information could be accessed and changed as a means of carrying out fraud, but the tendency of employees to send bogus or prank e-mails is also noted. The latter can have potentially serious legal consequences. A less obvious but equally damaging issue is that lax PC security offered employees gaining illegal access to data a cover of plausible deniability for their actions. Gartner terms this the 'someone else used my PC' defence. If companies could not prove that the actions had been those of the person using the PC, disciplining them would be difficult." Learn more at Techworld.com.

• 29 September 2005
  "A growing number of large end-user organisations are making the switch to biometrics-based solutions to overcome the perennial problems users continue to have with passwords. Barclaycard and Mitsubishi Securities are just two organisations which have recently revealed the move to biometric solutions such as fingerprint readers on computer keyboards. Speaking at the silicon.com CIO Forum, Graham Yellowley, IT director at Mitsubishi Securities, told delegates: 'We're using biometrics on our trading floor. People across the organisation have about 12 passwords to remember so a single sign-on biometric keyboard has proven very popular.'" Learn more at Silicon.com.

• 28 September 2005
  "The special police unit arrived in the darkness, carrying submachine guns and taking positions around an unmarked cargo truck parked beside a nuclear reactor. The doors to the reactor swung open and a forklift hurried three large steel casks onto the truck. Each container held several fuel rods of highly enriched uranium, potent enough for use in a nuclear bomb.This secret nuclear retrieval mission in Prague, underwritten with $2 million from the United States and completed on Monday and Tuesday, was one element of a newly reinvigorated effort to secure nuclear material marooned by the collapse of the Soviet Union." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 27 September 2005
  "Doctors in training misdiagnosed diseases caused by bioterrorism more than half the time on a multiple choice test, but a Web-based training program improved their skills, a study has found. If there were an actual attack, doctors' failure to isolate contagious patients with smallpox or plague could increase the number of victims. 'The risk of spread goes up logarithmically,' said study co-author Dr. Stephen Sisson of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The lesson of the 2001 anthrax attacks, when at least four patients first were sent home without a diagnosis, has not yet been learned, Sisson said. States and medical residency programs should require bioterrorism training for doctors, he said." Learn more in USA Today.

• 26 September 2005
  "The National Security Agency has obtained a patent on a method of figuring out an Internet user's geographic location. Patent 6,947,978, granted Tuesday, describes a way to discover someone's physical location by comparing it to a 'map' of Internet addresses with known locations. The NSA did not respond Wednesday to an interview request, and the patent description talks only generally about the technology's potential uses. It says the geographic location of Internet users could be used to 'measure the effectiveness of advertising across geographic regions' or flag a password that 'could be noted or disabled if not used from or near the appropriate location.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 23 September 2005
  "Brain-imaging techniques that reveal when a person is lying are now reliable enough to identify criminals, claim researchers. Critics maintain that the technique will never be useful for such investigations, arguing that, as with traditional polygraph detectors, liars could learn to fool the tests. And researchers in the field have previously admitted that the approach needs more work. But neuroscientists from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia have now told Nature that they believe their test is ready for real-life scenarios. Daniel Langleben and his colleagues use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track people's brains when they lie and tell the truth. By analysing brain activity during both scenarios, they have developed an algorithm that can detect lies from truth with 99% accuracy." Learn more at Nature.com.

• 22 September 2005
  "Businesspeople are treating public access terminals in airport departure lounges as their home PCs and in the process exposing confidential data and email messages to all and sundry. A mixture of curiosity and boredom led consultants from the Dubai-based network security outfit Scanit to uncover a plethora of secrets left by globe-trotting executives who log on in-between flights. Many airport executive lounges are equipped with PCs that allow business and first class fliers to surf the web. Rather than using a web-based email service and clearing the cache and password completion forms before shutting down, some execs are using Outlook Express packages on these machines to write emails. Scanit engineers found everything from intimate messages to mistresses to desktop-saved documents outlining multi-million dollar deals." Learn more in the Register.

• 21 September 2005
  "Florida State University researchers have developed a system for gathering evidence against online predators and cyberstalkers. The Predators and Prey Alert, or Papa, system monitors all communications on a victim's computer and helps police gather evidence in online harassment and solicitation cases. While e-mail can easily be saved as evidence in harassment cases, predators often use multiple modes of online communication, such as online chat rooms, which are harder to record as evidence. Plugged into a USB port of the victim's PC, the Papa system is a secure black box that automatically records all exchanges displayed on screen." Learn more in Wired News.

• 20 September 2005
  "Malicious hackers are turning their attention to the technology behind net phone calls, says a report. The biannual Symantec Threat Report identified Voice over IP (Voip) systems as a technology starting to interest hi-tech criminals. The report predicted that within 18 months, Voip will start to be used as a 'significant' attack vector. As well as prompting new attacks, Voip could also resurrect some old hacking techniques, warned the report. Voip has been in the news a lot in 2005 as more and more people realise how much money they can save by making some of their calls via the net instead of through old-fashioned phone lines. But routing phone calls via the net makes Voip systems vulnerable to a whole series of security problems, notes the Symantec report." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 19 September 2005
  "A high-profile court case in Massachusetts is once again casting doubt on the claimed infallibility of fingerprint evidence. If the case succeeds it could open the door to numerous legal challenges. The doubts follow cases in which the testimony of fingerprint examiners has turned out to be unreliable. The most high-profile mistake involved Brandon Mayfield, a Portland lawyer, who was incorrectly identified from crime scene prints taken at one of the Madrid terrorist bombings on 11 March 2004. Despite three FBI examiners plus an external expert agreeing on the identification, Spanish authorities eventually matched the prints to an Algerian. No one disputes that fingerprinting is a valuable and generally reliable police tool, but despite more than a century of use, fingerprinting has never been scientifically validated." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 16 September 2005
  "Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to turn the clicks and clacks of typing on a computer keyboard into a startlingly accurate transcript of what exactly is being typed. In a paper released last week, the researchers explained how they developed software that could analyze the sound of someone typing on a keyboard for just ten minutes and then piece together as much as 96 percent of what had been typed. The technique works because of the simple fact that the sound of someone striking an 'a' key is different from the sound of striking the 't,' according to Doug Tygar, a professor of computer science at Berkeley. 'Think of a conga drum. If you hit a conga drum on different parts of the skin, it makes a different tone,' he said." Learn more in PC World.

• 15 September 2005
  "Companies are 'fiddling while Rome burns' by continuing to put their faith in passwords to guarantee user authentication, a Gartner analyst has warned. Speaking at the Gartner IT Security Summit in London on Wednesday, Ant Allan said that 'passwords are no longer adequate, as threats against them increase.' Those emerging threats are intimately linked to emerging technology such as Wi-Fi and Web services. As the usage of these services grows, more cybercriminals will attempt to exploit them. There is a business value in adopting new technology, but security needs to keep up, according to Gartner." Learn more at News.com.

• 14 September 2005
  "In London's Speakers' Corner, the right to freedom of expression has been practised by anyone who cares to turn up for centuries. But in countries where free speech is not protected by the authorities, hiding your true identity is becoming big business. Just as remailers act as a go-between for e-mail, so there are services through which you can surf the web anonymously. After 10 years in the business, Anonymizer has two million active users. The US government pays it to promote the service in China and Iran in order to help promote free speech. But these programs are becoming popular in the West too. The software encrypts all your requests for webpages. Anonymizer's servers then automatically gather the content on your behalf and send it back to you." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 13 September 2005
  "An Air Force microsatellite successfully completed a series of orbital rendezvous maneuvers with another satellite, program officials said Friday, in the first key test of the XSS-11's mission. If future tests are equally successful, the U.S. military hopes to modify the design of the microsatellite for a wide array of space missions. The exercises so far have been made around the derelict upper stage of the Minotaur rocket that launched XSS-11 (Experimental Small Satellite #11) five months ago. Program manager Vernon Baker said XSS-11 made its first approach in late July at a distance of 1.6 kilometers, and has since done 'several others,' coming as close as half a kilometer." Learn more at MSNBC.com.

• 12 September 2005
  "Many people are taking risks with data on hard drives and memory cards which they are selling via eBay, say experts. Letters, resumes, spreadsheets, phone numbers and e-mail addresses were all found on storage hardware bought and analysed by forensics firm Disklabs. Also recoverable were temporary files from net browsers which contained login details and passwords for websites and even online bank accounts. The problems arose because sellers were only taking basic steps to delete data. In its test of how good users were at destroying data, Disklabs bought 100 hard drives and 50 memory cards from the auction site." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 9 September 2005
  "Some might say that North Korea's decision to resurrect its stalled public food distribution system (PDS) is a return to the good old days. Others might say it is only a return to the old days. It is unclear whether the isolationist state can successfully bring back the once-popular food program. Still, it's a given that all attempts to make the PDS work will be undertaken as it is not just a matter of food, but also of government control. In recent days officials across North Korea have been busy preparing for re-implementation of the PDS, which in fact never really died but rather mostly slipped into disuse." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 8 September 2005
  "The meeting of Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri and his Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom in Istanbul on September 1 was held in the midst of some strategic rethinking going on in the capitals of Islamabad and Tel Aviv. Contrary to some theories among analysts and writers placing this meeting in the context of rapprochement between Israel and the Muslim world, the major impetus behind it is a singular common interest, and that is the two nations being accepted by the world as nuclear powers and getting access to nuclear materials and advanced nuclear technologies from the Nuclear Suppliers Group. At present, most countries, with the exception of India, Pakistan and Israel, are signatories of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)...Israel and Pakistan remain locked out of the benefits ensuing from access to nuclear technology and materials. The India-US accord has completely rattled Pakistan and taken the wind out of its sails." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 7 September 2005
  "You think the Web is big? In truth, it's far bigger than it appears. The Web is made up of hundreds of billions of Web documents, far more than the 8 billion to 20 billion claimed by Google or Yahoo! But most of these Web pages are largely unreachable by most search engines because they are stored in databases that Web crawlers can't access. Now a San Mateo, Calif., startup, Glenbrook Networks, says it has a way to tunnel far into the 'deep Web' and extract this information. Glenbrook, run by a father-daughter team, demonstrated its technology by building a search engine that scoops up job listings from the databases of various Web sites, something the company claims most search engines cannot do. But there are many other applications as well, the founders say." Learn more in the Seattle Times.

• 6 September 2005
  "New technology could increase rather than solve the problem of identity theft and fraud, a British criminologist said Monday. Identity cards and chip and pin technology for credit cards will force fraudsters to be more creative and are unlikely to alleviate the problem, said Emily Finch, of the University of East Anglia in England. Dependence on technology was leading to a breakdown in individual vigilance, which experts believe is one of the best ways to prevent fraud and identity theft, Finch said. 'There is a worrying assumption that advances in technology will provide the solution to identity theft whereas it is possible that they may actually aggravate the problem,' she told the British Association science conference." Learn more at News.com.

• 5 September 2005
  "Hurricane Katrina has spawned more than misery and destruction--a new wave of scam e-mails and Web sites are exploiting the tragedy. Phony Web sites and e-mails, purporting to offer help to hurricane victims or provide more news on the destruction, are making their rounds on the Internet, security experts said Thursday. One spam campaign that's circulating offers breaking news reports but tricks people into clicking a link that takes them to a bogus Web site, according to security firm Sophos. The site attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and install malicious code, including the Troj/Cgab-A Trojan horse, on a victim's system Sophos said." Learn more at News.com.

• 2 September 2005
  "Air-raid sirens, Frank Sinatra songs and Muhammad Ali trash talk blared over the Southern California desert in a demonstration of new acoustic technology for crowd control and disaster communications. In mid-90's morning heat at Edwards Air Force Base, HPV Technologies and American Technology demonstrated prototypes of non-lethal sonic devices for a group of military and law enforcement guests, including representatives of the U.K. Home Office. Representatives of both companies say that within days, they will ship some units of their respective products to areas hit by Hurricane Katrina, so authorities can use the tools for crowd control, aid distribution and rescue operations." Learn more in Wired News.

• 1 September 2005
  "Two or three years ago, if a laptop computer was stolen on a college campus, the only concern was how to replace an expensive item. Today, the first concern is 'What sensitive data might have been stolen?' Lost laptops can give thieves access to information such as Social Security numbers, credit-card numbers, or passwords. Young students or college employees may not be savvy about protecting such data. Beyond identity thieves, colleges and universities are also threatened by hackers who can turn school computers into 'zombies' to send out spam e-mails or target Web servers with denial-of-service attacks. As students arrive on campuses, colleges and universities are becoming more aware that personal information about faculty, staff, students, and donors must be protected." Learn more in USA Today.

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