Daily Report Wednesday, February 28 , 2007

Daily Highlights

The Department of Transportation's Inspector General will review two recent cases of airlines leaving passengers stranded on board aircraft for hours, and then provide specific recommendations for what airlines, airports, and the government can do to prevent future similar events. (See item 10)
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The Associated Press reports nearly two−dozen people were being decontaminated Tuesday, February 27, after a white, powdery substance was found on an international student who claimed to have a bomb and threatened "terrorist−type" actions at the University of Missouri−Rolla. (See item 26)
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Information Technology and Telecommunications Sector

31.
February 27, CNET News.com — Storm Worm variant targets blogs, bulletin boards. A variant of the Trojan horse attacks known as Storm Worm emerged Monday, February 26, targeting people who post blogs and notices to bulletin boards. Storm Worm emerged in January and raged across the globe in the form of e−mails with attachments that, when opened, loaded malicious software onto victims' PCs, commandeering the machines so they could be used for further attacks. The new Storm Worm variant attacks the machines of unsuspecting users when they open an e−mail attachment, click on a malicious e−mail link or visit a malicious site, said Dmitri Alperovitch, principal research scientist at Secure Computing. But the twist comes when these people later post blogs or bulletin board notices. The software will insert into each of their postings a link to a malicious Website, said Alperovitch, who rates the threat as "high." The danger in this most recent case, he added, is that the user is actually posting a legitimate blog or bulletin board notice, unaware that a malicious link has been slipped into the text of the posting.
Source: http://news.com.com/Storm+Worm+variant+targets+blogs%2C+bulletin+boards/2100−7349_3−6162623.html?tag=cd.lede

32. February 26, Federal Computer Week — Security, consolidation top CIOs’ agendas. Despite progress on information technology security, agency chief information officers’ top priorities and concerns are still meeting statutory and regulatory requirements, ensuring data is secure while also available to meet mission needs, and facilitating overall network defense. A survey of 47 CIOs at 33 organizations in the executive, legislative and judiciary branches issued today by the IT Association of America (ITAA) found cybersecurity policies, management and training have improved in the past year, but the execution of cybersecurity remains a major challenge. ITAA found that many CIOs focus on accomplishing what they have started and not on new projects. Besides IT security and information sharing, CIOs continue to work on the consolidation of back−office and mission−critical systems, enterprise IT management, and the Office of Management and Budget’s line of business initiatives. Those are among the CIOs’ top challenges, the survey found.
Survey: http://www.itaa.org/newsroom/release.cfm?ID=2424
Source: http://fcw.com/article97779−02−26−07−Web