Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Daily Report
Source: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080505006571&newsLang=en
36. May 6, IDG News Service – (National) Yahoo uses McAfee SiteAdvisor to filter evil Web sites. Starting Tuesday, there will be a few less Web sites popping up in Yahoo searches. That is because Yahoo plans to start filtering out malicious Web sites using McAfee’s SiteAdvisor software, which warns Web surfers if they are about to visit a Web site that has been linked to spam, phishing, or malicious software. SiteAdvisor can be downloaded as a plug-in to Firefox or Internet explorer, but Yahoo has been working since late last year to integrate McAfee’s Web site rating technology into their search engine servers, according to a Yahoo director of product management. Web sites associated with malware will be dropped from search results altogether and Yahoo searchers will now see red warning labels warning them of sites that SiteAdvisor has linked with things like dangerous downloads or unsolicited e-mail. Yahoo calls its version of the service SearchScan, and plans to turn it on by default for all users in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The company will eventually roll SearchScan out in all of the countries it serves, with Asian and Latin American launches coming next, the Yahoo developer said. He estimated that the dropped Web sites were getting as many as one million clicks from Yahoo searchers per day, adding: “A lot of users were getting exposed to this without any knowledge.”
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/06/Yahoo-uses-McAfee-SiteAdvisor_1.html
37. May 5, Wired Blogs – (National) Pentagon wants cyberwar range to ‘replicate human behavior and frailties’. The Pentagon’s researchers do not just want to build an Internet simulator, to test out cyberwar tactics. They want the range’s operators to “realistically replicate human behavior and frailties,” too. Congress has ordered the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to put together a National Cyber Range, as part of a massive $30 billion, government-wide effort better prep for battle online. The project is now considered a top priority for the Agency. To make sure the facility is as true-to-life as possible, Darpa wants the contractors running the Range to be able to “replicate realistic human behavior on nodes,” a request for proposals, released today, reveals. Several examples of the specifics the Agency wants to have from its contractors include: provide robust technologies to emulate human behavior on all nodes of the range for testing all aspects of range behavior; replicants will produce realistic chain of events between many users without explicit scripting behavior; replicants must be capable of implementing multiple user roles similar to roles found on operational networks; replicants will interact with authenticate systems, including but not limited to DoD authentication systems (common access cards – CAC), identity tokens. These mock people have to be able to “demonstrate human-level behavior on 80 percent of all events,” the Agency adds. And mimicking humans is only one of a wide array of tasks Darpa wants to see operators of the National Cyber Range pull off. The facility should also feature a “realistic, sophisticated, nation-state quality offensive and defensive opposition forces” that can fight military info-warriors in mock combat. Source: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/the-pentagons-w.html
Communications Sector
Nothing to Report.