Sunday, June 25, 2006

Delicious Information Warfare - 13/24 June

Brief summaries of key events for the last week and a half, catch up with previous ones as well. I intend to continue sharing my daily reads while emphasizing on the big picture, and emerging trends. Great quote courtesy of the The Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences : “The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It’s run by little ones and zeros, little bits of data. It’s all just electrons. . . . There’s a war out there . . . and it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think, it’s all about information.

01. Eyeballing North Korean Missile Launch Furor - "Latest satellite photo coverage and description of the launch site facilities." to Military Satellite Reconnaissance GEOINT ... on 25 June

02. VoIP wiretapping could lead to more problems - "Requiring Internet service providers to respond in real time to requests for them to record VoIP calls would open up the Internet to new vulnerabilities, Whitfield Diffie added." to Intelligence Terrorism Wiretapping CALEA VoIP on 25 June

03. Police arrest two in Japan data theft case - "Blackmailers attempted to extort almost $90,000 from one of Japan's largest phone companies by threatening to reveal a leak of private data belonging to four million customers before a major shareholder meeting." to Espionage Insider Investing on 25 June

04. Kevin Mitnick, the great pretender - "ZDNet UK caught up with the ex-cracker to discuss developments in social engineering, new U.S. laws monitoring telephone systems and alleged "NASA hacker" Gary McKinnon's impending extradition to the United States." to Security Interview on 25 June

05. Data-Theft Worm Targets Google's Orkut - "Now, however, the infection will pop up a message telling you your data is being mailed off someplace, before sending you to the Orkut site." to Malware Web on 25 June

06. French Microsoft Web site hacked - "Hackers on Sunday broke into a part of Microsoft's French Web site, replacing the front page with online graffiti." to Hacktivism Microsoft Defacement on 25 June

07. SCADA industry debates flaw disclosure - "The guys who are setting up these systems are not security professionals. And many of the systems that are running SCADA applications were not designed to be secure--it's a hacker's playground."
to Security SCADA Cyberterrorism Vulnerabilities on 25 June

08. Details emerge on second potential NSA facility - "The room had a sophisticated set of double security doors, known as a "mantrap," and any engineer who worked inside required extensive security clearances." to Intelligence NSA Terrorism Surveillance Wiretapping on 25 June

09. Next-Gen Bank Trojans Are Upon Us - "The 3G Banking Trojan can steal your info and then siphon your account of its cash. The 3G Banking Trojan began with the "Win32.Grams" piece of malware, which first appeared in 2004."to Malware on 25 June

10. Malware authors eyeing Web-based applications - "As Web-based services grow increasingly popular, industry experts say users should brace for more of these threats." to Malware Web on 25 June

11. Stratcom leads DOD cyberdefense efforts - “Unfortunately for us, cyberterrorism is cheap, and it’s fast,” Kehler said. “Today’s terrorist moves at the speed of information.” to Defense InformationWarfare Cyberterrorism on 25 June

12. Text Messaging Used as Malware Lure - "Botnet herders have found a crafty new way to lure computer users to maliciously rigged Web sites—via text messaging on cell phones." to Malware Mobile on 25 June

13. Two China Search Sites Shut - "Censorship or maintenance? That’s the question after two Chinese search engines shut down temporarily." to China Censorship FreeSpeech on 25 June

14. Web services increasingly under attack - "As larger audiences flock to Web sites that run on ever more powerful programming scripts, malware writers are them fertile ground." to Security Malware Web on 25 June

15. What's the Endpoint of Endpoint Security? - "Finally, there’s a more manipulative progenitor of new jargon: the analyst community. White papers, market reports and mystical squares can get crowded, and the big vendors often dominate them."
to Security Investing Advertising Leadership on 25 June

16. Expatriates in Canada pressured to spy - "Despite strong warnings from the government of Canada, certain countries continue to use their intelligence services to manipulate and exploit expatriate communities in Canada," CSIS said." to Intelligence OSINT Espionage on 25 June

17. Review: Terror On The Internet - "Terror on the Internet" usefully outlines the basic contours of his subject, giving a taste of Al Qaeda's Internet rhetoric and strategies, along with those of less well-known militant groups from Colombia to the Basque country to Chechnya." to InformationWarfare Cyberterrorism Terrorism PSYOPS on 25 June

18. Web of terror - "The suspects reportedly became radicalized through militant Web sites and received online advice from Younis Tsouli, the Britain-based Webmaster for Islamic extremist sites who called himself "Terrorist 007," before he was arrested late last year." to InformationWarfare Cyberterrorism Terrorism PSYOPS Web on 25 June