Conflict & Security archives: November-December 2004

• 30 December 2004
  

  "Just over a year ago, a hacker penetrated the corporate servers at Valve, the game company behind the popular first-person shooter Half-Life. He came away with a beta version of Half-Life 2. 'We heard about it,' says 23-year-old Frank, a well-connected media pirate. 'Everyone thought it would get bootlegged in Europe.' Instead, the hacker gave the source code to Frank - it turned out that he was a friend of a friend - so that Frank could give Half-Life 2 to the world. 'I was like, 'Let's do this thing, yo!'' he says. 'I put it on Anathema. After that, it was all over.' Anathema is a so-called topsite, one of 30 or so underground, highly secretive servers where nearly all of the unlicensed music, movies, and videogames available on the Internet originate. Outside of a pirate elite and the Feds who track them, few know that topsites exist. Even fewer can log in. Within minutes of appearing on Anathema, Half-Life 2 spread. One file became 30 files became 3,000 files became 300,000 files as Valve stood helplessly by watching its big Christmas blockbuster turn into a lump of coal." P2P sounds so innocent and is so controversial. Here's a good example of the controversy at Wired magazine.

• 29 December 2004
  

  "Companies and advocacy groups opposed to the FBI's plan to make the internet more accommodating to covert law enforcement surveillance are sharpening a new argument against the controversial proposal: that law enforcement's Internet spying capabilities are just fine as it is. In comments filed with the FCC Tuesday, advocates with the Center for Democracy and Technology argue the government hasn't offered any evidence that law enforcement agencies face obstacles in conducting internet wiretaps under current regulations - which obligate ISPs and other companies to cooperate with court-authorized surveillance, but do not force them to retrofit their networks with special surveillance gear, as the government is asking. 'In the absence of evidence of any problem, it is impossible for the Commission to act,' wrote CDT..." Read the latest at Britain's Register.

• 28 December 2004
  

  "...Researchers at Sophos scanned all spam messages received at its global network of ‘honeypots’ – a system developed by network security firms to track illegal activities on the Internet - throughout 2004. The top of the list was the United States, which was responsible for exporting 42.11 per cent of all spam. South Korea followed with 13.43 per cent of spam originations, China with 8.44, Canada with 5.71, Brazil with 3.34, Japan with 2.57 and France with 1.37 percent. Other counties in the top twelve were Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Taiwan and Mexico. Sophos report said: 'When we first reported on the top spamming countries back in February 2004, the USA had the excuse that the Can-Spam Act had been in existence for a couple of months. Almost a year and millions of spam messages later, it is quite evident that that the CAN-SPAM legislation has made very little impact stopping spam.'" The US may get a lot of spam, but it sends out as well as described at the Earth Times.

• 27 December 2004
  

  "The Los Angeles Police Department is experimenting with facial-recognition software it says will help identify suspects, but civil liberties advocates say the technology raises privacy concerns and may not identity people accurately. "It's like a mobile electronic mug book," said Capt. Charles Beck of the gang-heavy Rampart Division, which has been using the software. 'It's not a silver bullet, but we wouldn't use it unless it helped us make arrests.' But Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the technology was unproven and could encourage profiling on the basis of race or clothing. 'This is creeping Big Brotherism,' Ripston said. 'There is a long history of government misusing information it gathers.'" The security-privacy debate is only just beginning. Here's another example reported at Wired magazine.

• 24 December 2004
  

  "When faced with rowdy protesters, police forces have a number of tools at their disposal with which to disperse crowds and quell violence, including batons, shields, rubber bullets and water cannons. But these antiquated devices are crude and rely on brute force, which can lead to further violence and can, in some situations, prove lethal. A number of new crowd-control technologies take a different approach, employing sounds, shocks and stinks to disperse or incapacitate protesters. Such “non-lethal weapons” (NLWs) have been talked about for years, but they are now attracting much more interest, for a simple reason: Iraq. Between 1997 and 2003, America's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Programme, which co-ordinates the development of NLWs for the American military, had an annual budget of around $22m. In 2004, it was increased to $43.3m. The extra funding reflects the growing need, in Iraq in particular, for ways to control crowds while causing as little harm as possible." Non-lethal weapons include a "mega-megaphone" and especially malodorous stink bombs. Read more at the Economist.

• 23 December 2004
  

  "In a sign that mobile devices might be gaining favor as a target for virus creators, a new Trojan horse aimed at smart phones using the Symbian Latest News about Symbian operating system has been discovered in the wild. The Trojan, known as 'MetalGear.a,' was discovered earlier this week and attacks the smart phones, which are wildly popular among gamers. The Trojan poses as a freeware version of the fight game 'Metal Gear Solid,' but once activated, it disables antivirus programs and installs a version of the Cabir worm. That worm, which was identified earlier this year as the first ever widely circulated worm to target mobile devices, then attempts to use the Bluetooth wireless protocol to spread a second Trojan, known as 'Sexxxy'" to other devices within short-distance wireless range." Well, it's hardly surprising, but it's sad to watch the situation worsen for mobile users. Read more at the Technology News.

• 22 December 2004
  

  "The indictment early this month of Mark Robert Walker by a federal grand jury in Texas might have seemed a coup for the government in its efforts to police terrorist communications online. Mr. Walker, a 19-year-old student, is accused, among other things, of using his roommate's computer to communicate with - and offer aid to - a federally designated terrorist group in Somalia and with helping to run a jihadist Web site. 'I hate the U.S. government,' is among the statements Mr. Walker is said to have posted online. 'I wish I could have been flying one of the planes on Sept. 11.'" They caught one. How many more are there? Read more at the New York Times.

• 21 December 2004
  

  "In the end, it wasn't a fingerprint or a blood spatter that led authorities to the woman suspected of strangling a mother-to-be and cutting the baby from her womb. It was an 11-digit computer code. Police zeroed in on Lisa Montgomery in the most 21st century of ways, by trolling computer records, examining online message boards and — most important — tracing an IP address, 65.150.168.223, to a computer at her Melvern, Kan., home. 'That in and of itself led us to the home,' Jeff Lanza, an FBI spokesman here said of the IP, or Internet protocol, address, the unique number given to every Internet-connected computer." The same technology that makes instantaneous communication possible enabled authorities to crack the case in a matter of hours and rescue the premature baby." Once noted for offering anonymity, the Internet is becoming a standard tool for finding people. Here is one example at Yahoo News.

• 20 December 2004
  

  "In an unusual application of neuroscience research, police agencies around the country may soon be able to equip street corners with microphones and video cameras to fight gun-related crime. The system, based on work by Dr. Theodore Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, uses the equipment and a computer to recognize gunshots, pinpoint where they came from and transmit the coordinates to a command center. It relies on software that mimics the way the human brain receives, processes and analyzes sound. The system has drawn the attention of several law enforcement agencies." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 17 December 2004
  

  "Australia defended a controversial maritime anti-terror plan on Friday after harsh words from neighboring Indonesia that it breached international law and Jakarta's sovereignty over its own waters. The spat over the planned zone came in the wake of warnings by Australia of a possible terror attack on an international hotel in Indonesia, with Hilton hotels specifically referred to...Indonesia also slammed the plan by Australia to create a 1,000 nautical mile maritime surveillance zone that reaches the waters of the world's most populous Muslim nation." Learn more about Australia's controversial defense plan in Yahoo News.

• 16 December 2004
  

  "President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday.Any shutdown of the network inside the United States would come under only the most remarkable circumstances, said a Bush administration official who spoke to a small group of reporters at the White House on condition of anonymity. The GPS system is vital to commercial aviation and marine shipping." Learn more at MSNBC.com.

• 15 December 2004
  

  "In this information age, the American occupying forces in Iraq have come face to face with a terrible reality: insurgents of that country have become at least as savvy in conducting information warfare - which includes 'perception management' through disinformation, propaganda, and even deception - as the US military in the ongoing battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims...But in an increasingly shrinking and highly interconnected infosphere a housewife in Ames, Iowa with a few clicks of a mouse, can reach the website of any newspaper in the Middle East." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 14 December 2004
  

  "Companies that have spent billions on cyberdefenses to thwart intruders are now addressing an even bigger threat: employees. Many are investing in software that monitors sensitive content inside corporate networks, say security analysts and venture capitalists. The new interest comes on the heels of headline-grabbing security breaches. Executives don't want a repeat of what happened at America Online, where a former employee was arrested in June for allegedly stealing 92 million screen names and selling them. Statistics for spending on internal monitoring aren't available. But nearly three-fourths of financial losses traced to security breaches are from inside businesses." Learn more in USA Today.

• 13 December 2004
  

  "A highly classified intelligence program that the Senate Intelligence Committee has tried unsuccessfully to kill is a new $9.5 billion spy satellite system that could take photographs only in daylight hours and in clear weather, current and former government officials say. The cost of the system, now the single biggest item in the intelligence budget, and doubts about its usefulness have spurred a secret Congressional battle. The fight over the future of a system whose existence has not yet been officially disclosed first came to light this week." Learn more about this costly and controversial satellite system, in the New York Times.

• 10 December 2004
  

  "In a shift away from its postwar pacifism, Japan's government overhauled its defense guidelines Friday, easing an arms exports ban and singling out North Korea and China as security threats. The overhaul, which also allows the government to develop a missile defense program with the United States, has raised concerns about a slow erosion of the pacifist society Japan built after World War II. The opposition Social Democratic Party, one of the smallest parties in parliament, criticized the government for removing self-imposed controls on military development. The changes also have been watched uneasily by some of Japan's Asian neighbors, who suffered under Tokyo's expansionist policies in the first half of the last century." Learn more about Japan's new defense policy, in Yahoo News.

• 9 December 2004
  

  "A former White House Web security chief predicted Wednesday that technology companies and law enforcers could soon stamp out most Internet 'phishing' scams that aim to trick people into giving away personal and financial information. 'I firmly believe that at this time next year we will be able to say that phishing used to be a problem,' said Howard Schmidt, who was special adviser for cyberspace security during the first term of President Bush. Separately on Wednesday, Internet companies such as EarthLink, Microsoft, AOL and VeriSign said they had joined with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Secret Secret Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to form Digital PhishNet to speed arrests and convictions against phishers." Learn more in USA Today.

• 8 December 2004
  

  "Computer-security experts, including former government officials, urged the Bush administration on Tuesday to devote more effort to strengthening defenses against viruses, hackers and other online threats. The Bush administration should spend more on computer-security research, share threat information with private-sector security vendors, and set up an emergency computer network that would remain functional during Internet blackouts, a computer-security trade group said. The Homeland Security Department should also give more authority to the official who oversees cyber security, members of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance said." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 7 December 2004
  

  "Here's one way the CIA's spies might have learned more about what Saddam Hussein was really up to with his weapons of mass destruction programs: Send in an undercover agent playing an oil businessman to curry favor with Mr. Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay, who were known to entertain such visitors and had heavy hands in the country's security apparatus...But those kinds of things weren't done. Not then, and apparently not now. With news that Osama bin Laden's trail is still cold, the failures - no eyes on the ground in Iraq before the US invasion nor among the Al Qaeda leadership prior to 9/11 - are the focus of a plethora of investigations and reports, including the current intelligence reform bill being debated in Congress." Despite all of the resources at their disposal, U.S. intelligence agencies are failing to obtain basic human intelligence. Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 6 December 2004
  

  "Many more crimes might be solved if detectives were able to compare the records for cases with all the files on past crimes. Now an artificial intelligence system has been designed to do precisely that. Working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it could look for telltale similarities in crime records and alert detectives when it finds them. Developed by computer scientists Tom Muscarello and Kamal Dahbur at DePaul University in Chicago, the system uses pattern-recognition software to link related crimes that may have taken place in widely separated areas whose police forces may rarely be in close contact." A new database system could help investigators cross-reference crimes in order to solve them more quickly. Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 3 December 2004
  

  "It's a beautiful afternoon in Shepherd's Bush, a bustling neighborhood on the outskirts of London, and Adam Laurie is feeling peckish. Heading out of the office, he's about to pick up more than a sandwich. As he walks, he'll be probing every cell phone that comes within range of a hidden antenna he has connected to the laptop in his bag...Laurie, 42, the CSO of boutique security firm the Bunker, isn't going to mess with anyone's phone, although he could: With just a few tweaks to the scanning program his computer is running, Laurie could be crashing cell phones all around him." Security experts believe that cell phones are becoming increasingly vulnerable to hacking and that it is only a matter of time before hackers and viruses start attacking phones. Learn more in Wired News.

• 2 December 2004
  

  "Former CIA Director George Tenet on Wednesday said greater government regulation of the Internet and telecommunications networks is needed in order to guard against terrorist attacks. The U.S. intelligence community needs to consider how terrorists might attempt to couple an attack on telecommunication networks with a physical attack, Tenet said during a keynote speech at the E-Gov Institute's homeland security conference. 'Efforts at physical security will not be enough, because the thinking enemy that we confront is going to school on our network vulnerabilities as well' he said." Learn more at GovExec.com.

• 1 December 2004
  

  "Surfing the Web has never been more risky. Simply connecting to the Internet — and doing nothing else — exposes your PC to non-stop, automated break-in attempts by intruders looking to take control of your machine surreptitiously. While most break-in tries fail, an unprotected PC can get hijacked within minutes of accessing the Internet. Once hijacked, it is likely to get grouped with other compromised PCs to dispense spam, conduct denial-of-service attacks or carry out identity-theft scams. Those are key findings of a test conducted by USA TODAY and Avantgarde, a San Francisco tech marketing and design firm." USA Today recently conducted a test regarding how long it takes unprotected PCs to get hijacked by hackers. The results are disturbing.

• 30 November 2004
  

  "A way of turning the tables on internet spammers was announced today. New software allows recipients of spam to band together to target known websites behind the messages. The idea is to bombard the sites with messages, slowing them down and making them more expensive to run. Lycos, the entertainment and communications site, has now designed a screensaver that can launch counter-attacks. The software waits until the computer is not in use and then sends HTTP requests – technical messages – to known spam sites. The sites are selected from a blacklist of spammers used by portals such as Lycos and internet service providers." A new service is harnessing the power of distributed computing to fight back against spammers. Learn more in the Scotsman.com.

• 29 November 2004
  

  "Legislation for national identity cards and the setting-up of a British version of the FBI were the key planks of the Queen's Speech on Tuesday, which promised 'security for all.' Both were widely expected to be included in the speech, which sets out the legislative agenda for the upcoming session of the U.K. Parliament. The speech is read by the Queen but written by the government, which will now push both pieces of legislation through Parliament before the next general election. Speaking in the House of Lords, the Queen said: 'My government recognizes that we live in a time of global uncertainty, with an increased threat from international terrorism and organized crime. Measures to extend opportunity will be accompanied by legislation to increase security for all.'" The UK moves to dramatically increase its security measures. Read more at ZDNet.

• 26 November 2004
  

  "The CIA is quietly funding federal research into surveillance of Internet chatrooms as part of an effort to identify possible terrorists, newly released documents reveal. In April 2003, the CIA agreed to fund a series of research projects that the documents indicate were intended to create 'new capabilities to combat terrorism through advanced technology'. One of those projects is research at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., devoted to automated monitoring and profiling of the behaviour of chatroom users." Chatrooms are getting increasing attention as tools for terrorists. Read more at Britain's ZDNet UK.

• 25 November 2004
  

  "On November 19, Lt. Col. Steve Iwicki, director of the Actionable Intelligence Department of the Army G2, announced that the 3rd Infantry Division’s “units of action” due for shipment to Iraq will be equipped with the first unmanned vehicles of the Prophet collection system. He disclosed that in the next few years, 9,000 of these new military intelligence positions will be deployed with US forces world wide, 5,000 with brigade-sized units, 3,000 at the division level, and 1,000 with corps." The new Prophet system is only beginning to be discussed. An early view is provided at Israel's Debka File.

• 24 November 2004
  

  "Michael Koubi worked for Shin Bet, Israel's security service, for 21 years and was its chief interrogator from 1987 to 1993. He interrogated hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including renowned militants such as Sheikh Yassin, the former leader of the Palestinian group Hamas, who was killed in an Israeli attack this year. He claims that intelligence gained in interrogation has been crucial to protecting Israel from terrorism. He tells Michael Bond that, given enough time, he could make almost anyone talk." It's an unpleasant topic and controversial. Britain's New Scientist interviews an experienced interrogator.

• 23 November 2004
  

  "Next time you make a printout from your color laser printer, shine an LED flashlight beam on it and examine it closely with a magnifying glass. You might be able to see the small, scattered yellow dots printer there that could be used to trace the document back to you. According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters. 'It's a trail back to you, like a license plate.'" Learn more about these "fingerprints" that your printer may be leaving and why some are worried about the affect they could have on privacy, in Yahoo News.

• 22 November 2004
  

  "Before Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or the war on terror, the US was waging another global battle: the war on drugs. The main front in that conflict was South America - and Colombia specifically, the origin of most of the world's cocaine supply. Lately, the drug war has taken a back seat to conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it's still being fought, and statistically, at least, it's being won. Yet behind the numbers, the drug war is changing - into a terror war of its own. And the success of that fight is harder to quantify." An article in the Christian Science Monitor examines the "war on drugs" and how it is, at least rhetorically, becoming increasingly linked to the war on terror.

• 19 November 2004
  

  "The next war could be fought partly by unmanned aircraft that respond to spoken commands in plain English and then figure out on their own how to get the job done, even dodging enemy aircraft as they carry out their assignments. This isn't just robotics, in which someone has to be on hand to issue commands to an unmanned vehicle all along the way. This is autonomy at its best, with vehicles that can make decisions similar to the way a human pilot figures out how to accomplish a task and then carries it out. Engineers and scientists at several institutions and corporations are working on the project, chiefly under the sponsorship of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They have already demonstrated that the idea can work." Learn more about the possible future of unmanned aircraft in ABC News Online.

• 18 November 2004
  

  "China is developing the means to electronically blockade rival Taiwan with attacks to the country's vital utilities, the Internet and other communications networks, a high-ranking US defense official has said. The stern warning was issued by Richard Lawless -- deputy undersecretary of defense -- during a closed-door meeting with business leaders last month in the US. A copy of Lawless' speech was obtained by The Associated Press yesterday under the US Freedom of Information Act. Lawless cautioned that if a war broke out between Taiwan and China, the first casualties might not be 'brave men and women in uniform.' He said China might first target things that keep Taiwan's high-tech society running." A U.S. Official recently warned that China may be preparing for a cyber-war with Taiwan. Learn more in the Taipei Times.

• 17 November 2004
  

  "President Vladimir Putin says Russia's armed forces will soon have access to advanced nuclear missile systems unlike those held by other countries. Speaking to high-ranking military officials Wednesday, Putin said that while international terrorism was one of the main threats facing Russia, the country's nuclear defenses also had to be kept up to date. 'We are conducting research and are testing the most up-to-date nuclear missile systems, which, I'm sure, will be supplied to the armed forces in the near future,' Putin was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency. 'What is even more important, these systems will have no analogues in the other nuclear powers during the next few years.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 16 November 2004
  

  "Bridges to Mexico in this traffic-choked city began testing a new immigration security program Monday that requires some U.S. visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed as they cross the border. The screening by the Homeland Security Department was being tested Monday at Gateways from Mexico in Laredo and Douglas, Ariz., and the Canadian border city of Port Huron, Mich. The technology which also calls for running checks on the visitors has been in place at U.S. airports and seaports since Jan. 5, but officials want to pinpoint any glitches before the program extends to the nation's 50 busiest land crossings by year's end." Learn more about the ways in which the U.S. government is using technology to track foreigners entering the country, in ABC News.

• 15 November 2004
  

  "The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future. The goal is to give all American commanders and troops a moving picture of all foreign enemies and threats - 'a God's-eye view' of battle. This 'Internet in the sky,' Peter Teets, under secretary of the Air Force, told Congress, would allow 'marines in a Humvee, in a faraway land, in the middle of a rainstorm, to open up their laptops, request imagery' from a spy satellite, and 'get it downloaded within seconds.' The Pentagon calls the secure network the Global Information Grid, or GIG." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 12 November 2004
  

  "The highway is packed as you drive home and then a car swerves in front and cuts you off. You jot down the license plate number as the traffic stalls. When you get home, you log onto the Internet, type the plate into publicdata.com, and up pops the owner's name, home address, and driving record. New neighbors move in across the street. You wonder how much they earn, how old he is, if they're married or just cohabiting. A few clicks on the county court's website and you're privy to the husband's Social Security number, details about his wife, and the fact that he had a financial spat with a local business. And it is all perfectly legal." An article in the Christian Science Monitor examines the relationship between privacy and public information.

• 11 November 2004
  

  "Australia -- President George W. Bush's re-election and the victory of a key ally, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, assure the continued deployment of the United States' so-called missile shield at Australia's Pine Gap defense facility, much to the ire of the Chinese government. Australia will support the shield, allowing Americans to use Pine Gap -- located in the Northern Territory, 10 miles outside of Alice Springs -- to detect and track missile launches using an array of sophisticated antennas." The recent re-election of Australia's Prime Minister means that the U.S. can continue implementing a missile defense shield in Australia--making a number of Asian countries uncomfortable. Learn more in Wired News.

• 10 November 2004
  

  "The battle for Muslim minds is not being fought by radicals in Falluja or in the mosques. It is being fought on the net. And one of Europe's experts on Islam in the West says governments must rethink how they are going to win this war...There are hundreds of websites, blogs or e-groups which loosely count as being radical in nature, many aligned to the fundamentalist worldview known as Salafist preaching. There are of course many others propagating more mainstream visions of Islam. Between them, they compete for young European Muslims looking for signposts to their identity." Learn why some experts believe that the real battle for the "hearts and minds" of young Muslims will be conducted on the web, at the BBC.com.

• 9 November 2004
  

  "By the light of flashlights and a crescent moon, the three-member crew catapults a 300-pound pilotless airplane into the sky. Minutes later, other U.S. soldiers behind a computer screen inside a shed monitor video images from the plane, known as a Shadow, as it loiters over a traffic circle frequently attacked by insurgent bombs. 'We fill some of the gaps in the intelligence field. We put one of these in harm's way instead of a soldier. It's all about saving lives,' says Sgt. Francisco Huereque, who is in charge of the night's launch. Unmanned aerial vehicles and other so-called 'stand-off' weapons, whether currently used or in secret testing, belong to a developing high-tech arsenal that the U.S. military says will help minimize casualties as it battles insurgents." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 8 November 2004
  

  "The world must take immediate action against the real threat of nuclear terrorism to prevent a September 11-style outrage, the head of the UN's atomic energy watchdog agency warned. Calling it a 'race against time' International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday that past assumptions about how to control the spread of nuclear materials must be radically revised. ElBaradei said his agency had never assumed until the attacks of September 11 that terrorists would deliberately use nuclear or radiological weapons or be willing to lose their own lives." Learn more about the IAEA's disturbing warning in an article at Yahoo News.

• 5 November 2004
  

  "The world's most advanced military powers are using the Internet to spy on their enemies and prepare digital attacks against rogue targets, a leading cyber security expert said on Friday. 'When there's a major cyber incident it's very difficult to prove most of the time who did it,' said Richard Clarke, former White House adviser on national security and cyber threats. 'There are incidents, I think, where governments are involved, doing either reconnaissance or testing out concepts, probing for weaknesses.' Clarke said he suspects Russia and China are the most pervasive users of Internet for intelligence-gathering on suspected enemy states and plotting ways to use the information for military purposes." Learn more in Yahoo News.

• 4 November 2004
  

  "Soldiers of the future will head into battle with lighter loads, enhanced body protection, better chow, and more portable electrical power. Technologies like nanotechnology and photovoltaics – evolving methods that are responsible for much of the improvements – were part of a recent forum on 'Equipping the Soldier for the 21st Century' at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting...Using nanotechnology, scientists and engineers envision the Soldier of the future in a battle uniform that can stop or slow bullets and other projectiles, repel water, monitor health and automatically deliver medicines to treat injuries." Learn more from the Army News Service.

• 3 November 2004
  

  "In less than two years, CoolWebSearch has become the bane of the computing industry. Its programmers have managed to reset Web browsers so that searches get rerouted to the CoolWeb search engine. And any time anti-spyware engineers find a way to stop the hijacking, a new variant pops up, sneakier than its predecessor. There are now dozens. CoolWebSearch and its ilk are what's most troublesome because they are so stealthy. Investigators are apparently stymied. In its anti-spyware efforts, the Federal Trade Commission has so far managed to file only one lawsuit." Although the threat of spyware is widely acknolwedged, finding the source is proving difficult. Learn more in CNN.com.

• 2 November 2004
  

  "The U.S. Air Force quietly has put into service a new weapon designed to jam enemy satellite communications, a significant step toward U.S. control of space. The so-called Counter Communications System was declared operational late last month at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, the Air Force Space Command said on Friday in e-mailed replies to questions from Reuters. The ground-based jammer uses electromagnetic radio frequency energy to knock out transmissions on a temporary and reversible basis, without frying components, the command said." Learn more about this satellite jamming device in Reuters News.

• 1 November 2004
  

  "The people who call Dell Inc.'s customer service line often have no idea why their computers are running so slow. The ones who call America Online Inc. can't necessarily explain why Internet connections keep dropping. And those who file error reports with Microsoft Corp. don't always know why their computers inexplicably crash. Sometimes, the company that gets the complaint is rightly to blame. But with alarming frequency, officials at these and other technology companies say they are tracing customer problems back to one culprit: spyware." Software and computer companies worry that they are getting unfairly blamed for spyware related problems. Learn more in Yahoo News.

  
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