Conflict & Security archives: May-June 2004

• 30 June 2004
  

  "The U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) is warning Web surfers to stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. On the heels of last week's sophisticated malware attack that targeted a known IE flaw, US-CERT updated an earlier advisory to recommend the use of alternative browsers because of "significant vulnerabilities" in technologies embedded in IE. The latest US-CERT position comes at a crucial time for Microsoft , which has invested heavily to add secure browsing technologies in the coming Windows XP Service Pack 2." Computer experts and the U.S. government are warning users about how vulnerable Microsoft's internet browser has become. Learn more about the warnings against this software "monoculture" in the InternetNews.com.

• 29 June 2004
  

  "Sporting long sideburns, a goatee and black baseball cap, instructor Ralph Echemendia has a class of 15 buttoned-down corporate, academic and military leaders spellbound. The lesson: hacking. The students huddled over laptops at a Los Angeles-area college have paid nearly $4,000 to attend 'Hacker College,' a computer boot camp designed to show how people will try to break into network systems -- and how they will succeed... Hackers are believed to cost global businesses billions of dollars every year, and the costs to defend against them are soaring. One study by Good Harbor Consulting showed that security now accounts for up to 12 percent of corporate technology budgets, up from 3 percent five years ago." In an effort to keep up with growing security threats, schools are teaching students how to hack. Learn more in Yahoo News.

• 28 June 2004
  

  "Terrorists are increasingly using the Internet to spread shocking images and state their demands. In the past month, video and photos of the beheadings of American Paul Johnson Jr. and South Korean Kim Sun Il were posted on Web sites sympathetic to Islamic terrorists. Last week, a Saudi Web site posted a statement from alleged terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claiming responsibility for attacks across Iraq. The sites are often shut down by the governments of the countries in which they're based, but new ones quickly appear. USA TODAY's Mark Memmott talked with an expert on terrorists' use of the Internet, Gabriel Weimann, a senior fellow at the federally funded U.S. Institute of Peace." This fascinating interview addresses the ways that terrorist organizations are utilizing the internet and why investigators have such trouble tracking them. Read the interview in USA Today.

• 25 June 2004
  

  "A quarter of the world’s entire maritime trade, including about half of all seaborne oil shipments, passes through the Malacca strait in South-East Asia, which at one point narrows to as little as one and a half nautical miles. The strait and the seas around it are infested with well-organised, armed and ruthless pirates who hijack ships and kill or maroon their crews before repainting the vessels at sea and sailing into port under a new, 'phantom' identity. If pirates can do this so easily, why not terrorists? As leaders of the NATO military alliance head for a summit at which new measures against shipborne terrorism will be on the agenda, there are worries that world trade may be disrupted by new anti-terror rules for ports and ships that are about to come into force." Learn more about this complex issue in the Economist.

• 24 June 2004
  

  "Giving the public too many details about significant network service outages could present cyberterrorists with a 'virtual road map' to targeting critical infrastructures, according to the US Department of Homeland Security, which this month urged regulators to keep such information secret. At issue is an FCC proposal that would require telecom companies to report significant outages of high-speed data lines or wireless networks to the commission. The plan would rewrite regulations that currently require phone companies to file a publicly-accessible service disruption report whenever they experience an outage that effects at least 30,000 telephone customers for 30 minutes or more...To the Department of Homeland Security, that's a recipe for disaster." Learn why some U.S. agencies worry that telecom companies might unwittingly aid cyberterrorists, in the Register.

• 23 June 2004
  

  "Four large Internet service providers agreed yesterday to a partial truce in their battle with one another over potential technology to stop junk e-mail in hopes that they can devote their united energy to fighting spam. More than a year ago the four providers - America Online, Yahoo, EarthLink and Microsoft - said that they would work together to create technical standards that could verify the identity of the sender of an e-mail message. Most spam, and nearly all of the messages in the rapidly growing identity-theft fraud known as phishing, is done with a fake return address." In a rare show of unity, four of the largest internet service providers are teaming up to fight spam by implementing a system that will verify a sender's identity. Learn more in the New York Times.

• 22 June 2004
  

  "U.S. Army, riding the success of its action video game America's Army, has set up a video-game studio with industry veterans to write other kinds of software to simulate training for a variety of armed forces and government projects. The Army got into the game business when it released America's Army in July 2002, essentially as an interactive Army recruitment ad. The game is available for download free, and 3.4 million gamers have registered to play it. To build on that success, the America's Army Government Applications office was quietly opened in January in Cary, North Carolina, with a team of 15 video-game creators, simulation specialists and ex-Army personnel." The U.S. military is developing video games for training and recruiting. Learn more in Wired News.

• 21 June 2004
  

  "When it comes to beating back hackers, too many companies are still asleep at the wheel. Set up to guard against old-style black hats, their defenses have ignored a newer class of sophisticated attackers who take advantage of Internet back alleys and technology loopholes to penetrate corporate networks. Old-style hacking attacks were direct brute-force affairs: I found some information about your network. Then I went poking around and effectively jiggled the doorknobs of various systems to find an entry point and something worth stealing...Modern hacks aren't quite so obvious. Remember the old 'Three Stooges' skits when the boys would knock out some guards, dress up in their uniforms and then skip freely past a watchman? That's kind of how it works." Experts believe the many companies are failing to adapt to new hacking techniques. Learn more at CNET.com.

• 18 June 2004
  

  "The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday lashed out at Internet telephony, saying the fast-growing technology could foster 'drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism.' Laura Parsky, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department, told a Senate panel that law enforcement bodies are deeply worried about their ability to wiretap conversations that use voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. 'I am here to underscore how very important it is that this type of telephone service not become a haven for criminals, terrorists and spies,' Parsky said.'" Law enforcement agencies worry that voice over Internet Protocol could easily be utilized by criminals and terrorists if it is not regulated properly. Learn more at ZDNet.

• 17 June 2004
  

  "Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe. At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances. But human rights groups are appalled by the fact that no independent safety tests have been carried out, and by their potential for indiscriminate use." A new generation of electronic stun guns is almost ready for commercial sale. Yet, some worry that the non-lethal weapons have not been sufficiently tested and pose a threat to human rights. Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 16 June 2004
  

  "The U.S. Senate on Tuesday backed the Bush administration's plan to study a new generation of low-yield and earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, rejecting concerns that the research could spur an arms race. Voting 55-42, the Senate defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to slash $36.6 million to study so-called bunker-busting nuclear weapons...as well as smaller nuclear arms with half the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The administration has said it has no plans to build such weapons, but wants to keep the door open to their development to deal with emerging threats." Despite strong opposition, the Senate is backing a plan to fund research on low-yield nuclear weapons. Learn more in Wired News.

• 15 June 2004
  

  "Papago Farms, Arizona -- A rusty barbed wire fence is all that separates the United States from Mexico in this stark, dusty area of the southern Arizona desert. It's been mangled in places, cut in others, providing little deterrent to the thousands of illegal immigrants who slip through the border daily in countless places like this...As the busiest illegal crossing point on the U.S.-Mexico divide, this stretch of frontier was a natural for the nation's first homeland security use of unmanned aerial vehicles. Two Israeli-made Hermes drones leased by the Border Patrol are due to take to the air this summer to help agents spot, track, seize -- and sometimes rescue -- illegal crossers." U.S. officials are working to utilize unmanned drones to monitor the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Learn more in CNN.com.

• 14 June 2004
  

  "Biotechnology research used to find new cures for disease could instead be harnessed for use as a weapon of terror, a prominent European think tank warned. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in its annual yearbook, said that biotechnology, including advancements in mapping the human genome, could result in new biological weapons that could cause harm to a specific ethnic group or a large swath of a country's population. 'The free access to genetic sequence data for the human genome... could pose a significant threat if misused,' said the report, which was unveiled in Stockholm Wednesday." Learn why experts are worried about a new generation of biological weapons in Yahoo News.

• 10 June 2004
  

  "The Swedish Navy is testing out a new ship which is believed to be the most 'invisible' yet. The Royal Navy and the US Navy both have plans of their own for similarly futuristic 'stealth' ships. Ever since radar was invented by the British during World War II, military boffins have been trying to think of ways to beat it. The US Air Force invented the first 'stealth' aircraft, the U-2 spy plane, in 1954, and 10 years later they unveiled the Lockheed Blackbird. Both planes were designed in such a way as to keep their radar 'signatures' to an absolute minimum. Now naval architects have come up with a similar way of beating the radar." Researchers believe that they are on the verge of creating virtually undetectable "stealth" ships--a development that could profoundly affect naval warfare. Read more at BBC.com.

• 9 June 2004
  

  "Laptops containing sensitive financial details and all manner of corporate secrets can be snapped up at auctions for a pittance, a security firm revealed Wednesday. Stockholm-based Pointsec Mobile Technologies said it bought 100 laptop computers from a host of Internet and public auctions over the past two months. The exercise intended to demonstrate that the scores of lost or stolen laptops that wind up at auction every day have hard drives with little or no security...What it did not expect to find was a cache of corporate laptops too that were as easy to crack as grandma's PC." A recent study indicates that most people are disposing of computers that still contain valuable personal and corporate information. Learn more in Yahoo News.

• 8 June 2004
  

  "Texters beware. Like e-mail and Internet instant messages, text messages tend to be saved on servers. 'One of the false assumptions that people make is that when they hit the delete button, messages are gone forever, but nothing can be further from the truth,' said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst in Atlanta. The [Kobe] Bryant case appears to be the first high-profile U.S. criminal case in which cell phone text messages could be entered into the docket. In Europe and Asia, where texting is hugely popular, some criminal cases have hinged on them." Although people don't give it much thought when they write a causal e-mail or text-message, these written messages exist long after they are written and received. Moreover, more and more text-messages are being examined in criminal cases like that of Kobe Bryant. Learn more at CNN.com.

• 7 June 2004
  

  "If U.S. military weapons planners have learned anything from the varied conflicts of the past quarter century, it is that the challenges are not getting any more predictable. With the nature and capabilities of U.S. opponents changing on practically an engagement-by-engagement basis, deciding which new weapon technologies will best serve soldiers in the battle theaters of the future remains a high-stakes guessing game. The enemy is no longer necessarily a nation; it can be a terrorist cell. The enemy may not possess high-tech weaponry yet still pose a threat." In order to maintain defenses flexible enough to respond to varied threats, the U.S. military is experimenting with high-tech weapons systems like laser beams and kinetic energy missiles. Learn more in Popular Science.

• 4 June 2004
  

  "'Imagine if you could convince a bunch of robots to act like ants, and further convince them that they really like land mines,' observes James McLurkin. 'That would be a boon to society.' Military brainstormers think that scores or hundreds or even a few thousand cheap robots working in concert may play an important role in future operations such as land-mine disposal or taking over buildings held by bad guys. Hence the financial support for figuring out the software for coordinating and controlling such swarms." Learn more about the ways that researchers like McLurkin hope to utilize cheap insect-like robotic swarms for military projects and civil defense purposes in Fortune.com.

• 3 June 2004
  

  "The risk of somebody somewhere triggering a radioactive "dirty bomb" is growing, evidence gathered by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency suggests. The IAEA's records, which it has released to New Scientist, show a dramatic rise in the level of smuggling of radiological materials, defined as radioactive sources that could be used in dirty bombs but not nuclear bombs. In 1996 there were just eight of these incidents but last year there were 51. Most cases are believed to have occurred in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. Smugglers target the radioactive materials used in factories, hospitals and research laboratories, which are not guarded as securely as those used by the nuclear industry." Startling new evidence suggests that the risk of somebody building a dirty bomb is at an all-time high. Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 2 June 2004
  

  "Amid new warnings about a possible summer of terror, the U.S. government is preparing to spend billions to coax pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs to fend off a biological or chemical attack. But experts say the infusion of cash may be little more than a good start. The entire proposed allocation for manufacturing and stockpiling bioterrorism drugs is $5.6 billion over a decade. By contrast, a single cholesterol drug -- Lipitor -- rakes in $9 billion in revenue each year." The U.S. government is poised to offer drug companies incentives to create products that could fend off biological attacks. Yet, some wonder whether the proposed incentives will effectively encourage pharmaceutical manufacturers. Learn more in Wired News.

• 1 June 2004
  

  "South Korea's top military intelligence chief says North Korea is operating an elite military unit specialising in hacking into South Korean computer networks. Song Young-Keun, commanding general of the counter-intelligence Defence Security Command (DSC), told a conference that North Korea was building up its 'cyber-terror' capability on orders from its leader, Kim Jong-Il. 'Following orders from Chairman Kim Jong-Il, North Korea has been operating a crack unit specialising in computer hacking and strengthening its cyber-terror ability,' he said." Read about the possible "cyber war" that could start between North and South Korea in a fascinating article in Australian IT.

• 31 May 2004
  

  "Some of the Navy's top minds sailed into New York on Thursday, and brought with them a literal boatload of gadgets: spray-on armor, remote-control rifles, drones that can swim for months at a time and camera phones that can read Arabic and Farsi. The Office of Naval Research, or ONR, docks its Afloat Lab on Manhattan's West Side each May as part of the annual Fleet Week celebration here. This year, the 108-foot-long patrol craft is showing off nearly two dozen technology projects -- many of which are bound for Iraq, or have just returned from the Middle East." The United State's Navy is showcasing some of its new high-tech tools. Their demonstrations suggest that the U.S. military could soon deploy high-tech gadgets like robotic mine-detectors. Learn more in Wired News.

• 28 May 2004
  

  "A year ago, the Homeland Security Dept., the FBI, and other agencies conducted five-day drills near Seattle and Chicago. As part of this first-ever, national counterterrorism exercise, 8,500 people from some 100 organizations responded to simulated car bombs and biological attacks. Hundreds of 'patients'--mostly drama students--showed up at the local hospitals faking flu-like symptoms or cuts and burns. All told, the exercise was a success, but it cost upwards of $16 million and stole precious time from doctors who could have been treating real patients. Wouldn't it be nice to accomplish the same thing with less cost and less lost time? New simulation and modeling software just might do the trick." U.S. government agencies are working to use complex computer simulations in an effort to predict and prevent terrorist attacks. Learn more in Business Week.

• 27 May 2004
  

  "Nine months after Congress shut down a controversial Pentagon computer-surveillance program, the U.S. government continues to comb private records to sniff out suspicious activity, according to a congressional report obtained by Reuters. Privacy concerns prompted Congress to kill the Pentagon's $54 million Total Information Awareness program last September, but government computers are still scanning a vast array of databases for clues about criminal or terrorist activity, the General Accounting Office found." Despite promises to shut down the Orwellian Total Information Awareness program, the U.S. government still appears to be engaged in aggressive "data mining." Learn more in Yahoo News.

• 26 May 2004
  

  "The rapid proliferation of digital cameras, phonecams and wireless gadgets among soldiers and military contractors is giving senior military officials concern, in the wake of images that showed abuse in an Iraqi prison and snapshots that showed rows of coffins of American soldiers. The Defense Department said it hasn't banned the devices and doesn't plan to... But the Pentagon is telling commanders in the field to strictly monitor the use of consumer wireless technology through Directive 8100.2 -- Use of Commercial Wireless Devices, Services and Technologies in the Department of Defense Global Information Grid." Citing security concerns, the Dept. of Defense is warning commanders to be wary of how people use wireless digital devices. Yet, some are questioning the Pentagon's motives. Learn more in Wired News.

• 25 May 2004
  

  "Ever since they tangled with the Red Coats, American generals have been giving their grunts more and more and more gear to lug -- from rations to radios, body armor to batteries. Now, for the first time, the Army has decided to junk the old uniforms and start from scratch. 'We're stripping the soldier down to his skin, and building out from there,' said Jean-Louis 'Dutch' DeGay, an equipment specialist at the Army's Natick Soldier Systems Center, which is supervising the seven-year, $250 million overhaul, dubbed Future Force Warrior, or FFW." Learn how researchers are hoping to develop more effective uniforms for American soldiers in Wired News.

• 24 May 2004
  

  "The Department of Homeland Security is on the verge of awarding the biggest contract in its young history for an elaborate system that could cost as much as $15 billion and employ a network of databases to track visitors to the United States long before they arrive. The contract, which will probably be awarded in coming days to one of three final bidders, is already generating considerable interest as federal officials try to improve significantly their ability to monitor those who enter at more than 300 border-crossing checkpoints by land, sea and air, where they are going and whether they pose a terrorist threat. But with that interest have come questions — both logistical and philosophical — from Congressional investigators and outside experts." Learn more about the system that is being proposed to track foreign visitors to the U.S. in today's New York Times.

• 21 May 2004
  

  "Before helping to start the criminal information project known as Matrix, a database contractor gave United States and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists, resulting in some investigations and arrests. The 'high terrorism factor' scoring system also became a critical selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the project. Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system was ultimately kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns. But new details about Seisint's development of the 'terrorism quotient,' including the revelation that the authorities apparently acted on the list of 120,000, are raising questions about Matrix's potential power." Learn more about the Matrix and the questionable ways in which some potential terrorists were identified, in today's New York Times.

• 20 May 2004
  

  "A novel biometric identification system could counter many of the objections to ID card schemes such as the one being proposed by the UK government. The system can unequivocally link a person to a particular ID card without having to match their biometric characteristics to data stored either on the card or on a central database. A biometric is a unique measure of some facet of a person's body - such as a fingerprint or an iris scan. By 2005, the International Civil Aviation Organisation wants such data incorporated in newly issued passports." A researcher believes that he has developed a system that might alleviate many of the concerns that people have about the ways that biometric IDs could affect their privacy. Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 19 May 2004
  

  "The police could face a crisis unless action is taken now to improve the way they handle digital crime, says a report. An e-crime study by the IPPR think-tank says there is a huge backlog of so-called e-crimes and a serious shortage of skills to deal with them. If police skills are not improved, the report warns that victims of e-crime could take action into their own hands...If police skills are not improved the study warns of increased 'vigilantism' as the public sector and individuals take the law into their own hands." A British study was recently released warning that police are unequipped to handle the mounting volume of electronic crime. Moreover, the report warns that vigilante justice could soon be the result. Read more in the BBC.com.

• 18 May 2004
  

  "Just about every method of detecting land mines has a drawback. Metal detectors cannot tell a mine from a tenpenny nail. Armored bulldozers work well only on level ground. Mine-sniffing dogs get bored, and if they make mistakes, they get blown up. The Gambian giant pouched rat has a drawback, too: It has trouble getting down to work on Monday mornings. Other than that, it may be as good a mine detector as man or nature has yet devised. Just after sunup on one dewy morning, on a football field-sized patch of earth in the Mozambican countryside, Frank Weetjens and his squad of 16 giant pouched rats are proving it." The most effective land mine detection tool is not some high-tech contraption. Instead, a giant rat is on the verge of being employed to detect land mines. Learn more in the New York Times.

• 17 May 2004
  

  "Border-control officials, highway patrol officers and airline screeners all now have access to a centralized terrorist watchlist of 120,000 names. But the public knows little about how the list is compiled and used, or how individuals can remove their names if they're wrongfully targeted. The database, known as the Terrorist Screening Center, or TSC, is fed by foreign intelligence compiled by the CIA-run Terrorist Threat Information Center and by domestic intelligence from the FBI." In an effort to track suspected terrorists American law-enforcement agencies have compiled a long list of potential terrorists. Yet, little is known about this list, how it was created, and how a person is removed if they are exonerated. Learn more in Wired News.

• 14 May 2004
  

  "A network of underwater robots beaming up a near real-time environmental profile of lakes, rivers and reservoirs could soon be on the prowl helping safeguard the nation's drinking water from sabotage. The robots would replace researchers who painstakingly collect water samples in bottles and take them back to the laboratory for analysis, an expensive, time-consuming and sometimes dangerous practice...The water-detection system is one of several projects under way by researchers and companies to hone sensitive detection equipment for use in homeland security." Scientists believe that it will soon be feasible to use robots to monitor our drinking water for poisons, pollutants, and possible sabotage. Learn more at CNN.com.

• 13 May 2004
  

  "The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists' group said on Thursday. The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency rejected the report. 'It will provide a defense against incoming missiles for the first time in this country's history,' said Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman. The Pentagon's initial deployment involves 10 interceptor missiles in silos in Alaska and California. It is designed to protect all 50 U.S. states against a limited strike from North Korean missiles that could be tipped with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads." A controversial report suggests that the missile defense shield being put into place in the U.S. might not be as effective as many have hoped. Learn more in Yahoo News.

• 12 May 2004
  

  "European researchers at a security conference in Switzerland last week demonstrated computer-based techniques that can identify blacked-out words and phrases in confidential documents. The researchers showed their software at the conference, the Eurocrypt, by analyzing a presidential briefing memorandum released in April to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. After analyzing the document, they said they had high confidence the word 'Egyptian' had been blacked out in a passage describing the source of an intelligence report stating that Osama Bin Ladin was planning an attack in the United States." Researchers have learned to "read" blacked-out material in classified documents by scanning the size and font of blacked-out words. Learn more in the New York Times.

• 11 May 2004
  

  "You should never put any personal information on the Internet that you wouldn't want to see in the newspapers. That's the government's job. With hardly any fuss, federal, state, and local governments routinely publish on the Internet a variety of sensitive information about us. File for bankruptcy lately? It's probably on there. Did you contribute money to John Kerry's campaign? That's online too. Here's hoping you paid up your property taxes and haven't fallen behind on child support; otherwise there may be an Internet page with your name on it." Amid the tremendous concern about the threats that hackers and cyber-criminals pose to our privacy, many people overlook the fact that the government publishes a great deal of ordinary citizens' personal information on the internet. Learn more in the Boston Globe.

• 10 May 2004
  

  "The technology to screen for security risks without the knots that bedevil and delay today's business travel is already on line at some of the world's airports, but its widespread use hinges on cost and other issues. The issue is of more than passing interest since airport delays are costing businesses millions of dollars annually. 'The technology is there today,' says Evan Scott, president of ESGI, a Philadelphia-based consulting company specializing in homeland security technologies... Scott estimates it will be another five years before passenger identification technology becomes more commonplace, unless there is another incident like the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, creating a need for reassessment. He predicts a much wider use of fingerprint technology, with electronic scanners checking all 10 fingers when passengers place their palms down at a checkpoint. Those who have put their prints on file beforehand can be verified as to their true identity." Whether authorities utilize biometric IDs or high-tech fingerprinting technologies, many specialists believe that we are only a few years away from implementing technology that will help eliminate security risks. Learn more at CNN.com.

• 7 May 2004
  

  "For 25 years, Ross Hoffman has had a vision: to use tiny changes in the environment to alter the paths of hurricanes, slow down snow storms and turn dark days bright. For most of those years, Hoffman kept his ideas largely to himself. His adviser at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told him weather control was too outlandish for his Ph.D. thesis. The chances of a buttoned-down foundation or government agency funding such research were so slim, Hoffman didn't even bother to ask. But, in 2001, all that changed. Hoffman stumbled upon a tiny, obscure cranny of the American space program -- the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or NIAC. Shape-shifting space suits? Step right up. Antimatter-powered probes to Alpha Centauri? No problem. Robotic armada to destroy incoming asteroids? Pal, just sign on the dotted line. Weather control seemed downright down to earth in comparison." While most of NASA's work often seems like something out of science fiction, a small branch of the agency receives funding to work on projects that are far-fetched by even NASA's standards. Learn more about the NIAC in Wired News.

• 6 May 2004
  

  "The Sasser Windows worm that struck earlier this week is on the wane. Since its first appearance on 1 May the virus has disrupted work in many organisations and infected hundreds of thousands of Windows PCs. But as firms patch vulnerable PCs and get back to working normally security experts warn that the worm will be around for a long time to come. Some fear that future versions of the worm will be much harder to defend against...Although the worst of the Sasser outbreak is over, anti-virus experts say that it will never entirely disappear. Richard Archdeacon, technical services director from security firm Symantec, said that many malicious programs follow a cyclical pattern of outbreak and clean-up for a long time after they first appear." While the initial outbreak of the Sasser worm appears to be over, many experts worry that potent new variations of the worm will soon emerge. Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 5 May 2004
  

  "Potential deaths and decontamination costs tied to "dirty bombs" — conventional explosives laced with radioactive materials — have been underestimated, a prominent researcher says. Peter Zimmerman of London's King College, the former chief scientist for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, discussed the threat at the American Physical Society meeting here Monday. Public fears about terrorists armed with such devices increased in 2002 with the arrest of suspected al-Qaeda associate Jose Padilla. Padilla was said by law enforcement officials to be involved in a plot to trigger a dirty bomb in the USA. At the time of Padilla's arrest, Attorney General John Ashcroft suggested that such a device could 'cause mass death and injury.' However, radiation experts later testified that deaths from a dirty bomb probably would be few and would come from the explosion, not radiation. 'The truth is somewhere in the middle,' Zimmerman says." Despite assurances that the fallout from a "dirty bomb" would be minimal, some specialists argue that the threat is being underestimated. Learn more in USA Today.

• 4 May 2004
  

  "As early as this summer, rockets hidden in silos near this wind-swept town will give the nation its first operating defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles since the 1970's. Although the system is not a secret, it has been revived with so little fanfare that few Americans seem to realize it exists. Among warfare experts, it is reviving the type of bitter debate that began in the cold war, culminating in an antiballistic missile treaty. And it is inspiring the same sort of passion that arose during the national fixation with President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars effort, officially the Strategic Defense Initiative. Unlike Star Wars, which faded into the realm of misbegotten high-tech dreams, the new system relies on agile but fairly ordinary rockets to smash incoming warheads rather than nuclear-powered lasers in space." Although it is not receiving much publicity, the U.S. is on the verge of implementing the first components of a controversial national missile defense system. Learn more in today's New York Times.

• 3 May 2004
  

  "When a bomb disposal robot destroys a suspicious package, crucial evidence that could trap the would-be bombers can be lost forever. But a device that lets the robot take fingerprints before blowing the package up would give police a much better chance of catching the culprits. Fingerprints are comprised of secretions of amino acids, fatty acids and proteins, and are normally made visible in one of two ways. At a crime scene where the prints are fresh and still moist, they can be revealed with a dusting powder. But if prints are old and have largely dried out, they can be disclosed by 'fuming' suspect artefacts in a sealed cabinet with a vapour of cyanoacrylate - better known as superglue. At a high enough concentration, the superglue vapour reacts with the organic fingerprint deposits to form a conspicuous white polymer that is easily photographed - even when the prints are faint." Researchers believe that a superglue "gun" might help them catch bomb suspects. Learn more in the New Scientist.
  

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