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Joint dinner meeting, NCMS
Channel Islands Chapter & ASIS Santa Barbara Chapter, November 16,
2005 at the Hungry Hunter Restaurant, Ventura, CA. For details, Click
Here
FBI agents in Los Angeles arrested four ethnic Chinese who allegedly
stole U.S. military technology and attempted to smuggle it to China on
encrypted CDs.
46-year old accused spy Leandro Aragoncillo worked in the vice president's
office under both Al Gore and Dick Cheney from 1999 to 2001. He allegedly
stole sensitive documents about Filipino leaders and sent them to current
and former officials of that nation.
A former design engineer has been arrested on charges of espionage for
selling top-secret information related to the B-2 stealth bomber.
A computer hacker from Venezuela known as "RaFa" has been sentenced
to the seven months he already has spent behind bars for breaking into
a U.S. Air Force training computer in 2001.
The Navy has begun enforcing policies set forth in its Information Technology
User Acknowledgement Form by blocking access to Web-based commercial e-mail
sites (webmail) from Department of the Navy-funded networks.
The members of the Sept. 11 commission will sharply criticize the Bush
administration and Congress this week in a new, privately financed report
expected to single out the F.B.I. as having failed to act on many of the
panel's recommendations to protect the nation from terrorist attack, members
of the bipartisan panel and its staff said.
Delays in getting security clearances to satisfy critical staffing
needs stilll frustrate many agency officials and federal contractors.
The United States government has reportedly offered a plea bargain to
Michael Ray Aquino, a former police officer, and Leandro Aragoncillo, an
analyst at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who are both facing charges
of espionage.
A Defense Department analyst has pleaded guilty to passing government
secrets to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group and revealed for
the first time that he also gave classified information directly to an
Israeli government official in Washington.
Enterprises with workers that can access corporate data from mobile
devices should be less concerned about mobile viruses and more focused
on setting and enforcing rules for securing the data, said speakers at
Symbian's Smartphone Show in London.
Al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate
from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts
and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought
to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities
they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the Internet.
Cyberattacks on computer systems escalated in the first half of 2005
and government agencies were targeted more than any other business sector,
according to a new report. Attacks on the government, financial services,
manufacturing and health care industries have risen 50 percent since the
beginning of the year,.
Most businesses still do not report cyber attacks to law enforcement
authorities, fearing the disclosure would harm their image and benefit
rivals, according to FBI Director Robert Mueller. This reluctance
has become especially important at a time when identity theft is growing
rapidly and terrorists are increasingly using the Internet.
Microsoft has unveiled details of its Strider HoneyMonkey research,
a project that sniffs out sites hosting malicious code, and hands the information
to other parts of the company for patching or legal action.
The practice of leaking information to the media has become "almost
second nature" in the U.S. capital, and when it is classified, severe damage
to U.S. intelligence capabilities can occur, a Michigan congressman says.
American Muslim leaders have issued a fatwah condemning terrorism.
Here is a link to the "Intelligence Threat Handbook" by IOSS.
Security guru Bruce Schneier is urging users to write down their passwords.
"People can no longer remember passwords good enough to reliably defend
against dictionary attacks, and are much more secure if they choose a password
too complicated to remember and then write it down."
The US intellilgence community is coming under fire for spending too
little time and money analyzing open sources of information in the war
on terror.
Here is an excellent collection of security briefings and aids.
The ability to carry vast amounts of data in small but easily misplaced
items such as computer memory sticks and mobile e-mail devices has transformed
the way Americans work, but it has also increased the risk that a forgotten
BlackBerry or lost cell phone could amount to a major security breach.
Properly trained staff, not technology, is the best protection against
social engineering attacks on sensitive information, according to security
consultant and celebrity hacker Kevin Mitnick.
Hackers continue to prey on unguarded wireless links. With the
fall in equipment and service costs, they have more opportunities.
What can you do to keep your PC, of which you have become rather fond,
from becoming someone else's spyware nest and phishing pond? CBS
News Tech Guru Larry Magid has some useful tips at a price you can
afford.
There has been a lot of coverage about China and the threat it poses to the USA. Here are several articles that have come out over the last few weeks: China is stealing US technology to boost the power of its weaponry.
Cyberspace is becoming a new battleground for the United States and
China, amid growing concerns about Chinese industrial espionage through
various types of computer worms.
China is increasing its military spending to deter third party (i.e.,
USA) intervention should it have a conflict with Taiwan.
America's understandable preoccupation with terrorism and Iraq may have
obscured the gathering threat of China as a formidable adversary.
A book by two senior Chinese colonels lays out a plan to defeat the
USA, not just with military might but also with economic power, computer
attacks, etc. The full text of Unrestricted Warfare
can be downloaded from
Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard lost another round in his long-shot effort
to overturn his life sentence for selling military secrets to Israel while
working as an intelligence analyst for the Navy.
Two Chinese diplomats, Chen Yonglin and Hao Fengjun, who are trying
to obtain political asylum in Australia, have provided details of China’s
international espionage effort.
A massive run-up in the number of Trojan horses and Trojan horse downloaders,
as well as a corresponding jump in the number of malicious sites, over
the last three weeks means that a new, large-scale, coordinated phishing
campaign is being waged by criminals.
The defection of a senior Chinese diplomat in Australia who claims he
helped oversee a vast spy network has cast a spotlight on China's espionage
activities at a time of increased global trade tensions and concern over
Beijing's military spending.
The federal government has asked the National Academy of Sciences not
to publish a research paper that feds describe as a "road map for terrorists"
on how to contaminate the nation's milk supply.
The cost of individual cyber attacks actually fell in the US last
year but unauthorised access and the theft of proprietary information remain
top security concerns.
The Discovery Channel will air a re-creation of the terrorist hijacking
of Flight 93 on the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. The program will be called "The Flight That Fought Back"
and will include about 45 minutes of re-created scenes depicting what happened
before the plane crashed.
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Acknowledgements: Thanks to the following for submitting URLs on interesting articles Sheila Haugh formerly of ITT Systems Division, now of InDyne Corp., VAFB, CA William Knowles of InfoSec News, isn@c4i.org Lonnie Buckels (now deceased) of NCMS So. California Chapter Sue Freer of Northrop - Grumman, VAFB, CA Michael Epstein of the National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology Center, El Segundo, CA Lew Law of bd Systems, VAFB, CA Diane McMillan formerly of ITT Systems Division, now of InDyne Corp., VAFB, CA Cheryl Pelton of Sonatech Inc., Santa Barbara, CA. Gideon T. Rasmussen of Security Awarenss Group at Yahoo.com! |
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