Hezbollah Hacked Israeli Military Radio

Newsday is reporting that Hezbollah was able to monitor secure Israeli military communications, perhaps using technology supplied by Iran, during the recent Lebanon war. A former Israeli general, speaking anonymously, called the results ‘disastrous’ for Israel. The story reports that an anonymous Lebanese source said that Hezbollah might have taken advantage of Israeli soldiers’ mistakes in following secure radio procedures. The radio gear uses frequency hopping and encryption.

Site – http://it.slashdot.org

The new breed of cyber-terrorist

According to cyber-security experts, the terror attacks of 11 September and 7 July could be seen as mere staging posts compared to the havoc and devastation that might be unleashed if terrorists turn their focus from the physical to the digital world. Scott Borg, the director and chief economist of the US Cyber Consequences Unit (CCU), a Department of Homeland Security advisory group, believes that attacks on computer networks are poised to escalate to full-scale disasters that could bring down companies and kill people. He warns that intelligence “chatter” increasingly points to possible criminal or terrorist plans to destroy physical infrastructure, such as power grids. Al-Qa’ida, he stresses, is becoming capable of carrying out such attacks.

Site – http://news.independent.co.uk

‘Big Brother’ Watching E-mail, Computer Data: US Report

Fast-evolving Internet and communications technology is outpacing privacy laws and leaving a treasure trove of personal data prey to government surveillance, a new report warned.

Site -  http://www.physorg.com

US Plans Massive Data Sweep

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. The Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. The system would then store it as “entities” — linked data about people, places, things, organizations, and events.

“We don’t realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we’re leaving traces everywhere,” says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots – analyzing and aggregating them – in a way that we haven’t thought about. It’s one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with.”

Site – http://www.csmonitor.com

Operation Cyber Storm

The Homeland Security Department is scheduled to test federal and private-sector readiness for cyberattacks next week, an industry executive said.  Cyber Storm is a federally mandated and funded exercise to “see how cyberattacks against critical infrastructure might play out and how people react to them,� Algeier said.  Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom will join 20 companies and two U.S. government agencies, said a senior industry official who requested anonymity because of the information’s sensitive nature.

Site – http://www.fcw.com

Computer Virus Fells Russian Stock Exchange

As the world waited for one computer virus to strike on Friday, another wriggled its way into the Russian stock exchange and knocked it offline. Computer experts had warned that 3 February could bring gloom for many as a computer virus called Nyxem was scheduled to start deleting files on machines it had infected. Nyxem is programmed to randomly delete Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents as well as pdf files, zip files and several other file types. The virus was released several weeks ago and has spread by forwarding itself to email addresses found on the computers it infects.

Site – http://www.newscientist.com