Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Complete DHS Daily Report for December 27, 2011
Daily Report
Top Stories
• Federal regulators have approved a nuclear reactor that could power the first nuclear plants built from scratch in the United States in more than three decades. – Associated Press (See item 4)
4. December 22, Associated Press – (National) NRC approves new nuclear reactor design. Federal regulators have approved a nuclear reactor designed by Westinghouse Electric Co. that could power the first nuclear plants built from scratch in the United States in more than three decades. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) unanimously approved the AP1000 reactor December 22. The certification, to take effect within 2 weeks, will be valid for 15 years. The NRC chairman said the newly approved design would ensure safety through simplified, passive security functions and other features. He said plants using the design could withstand damage from an airplane crash without significant release of radioactive materials — an issue that gained attention after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Approval of the design is a major step forward for utility companies in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas that have billions of dollars riding on plans to build AP1000 reactors in the Southeast. Without NRC approval, the utilities could not have received a license to build their plants. Federal officials approved an earlier version of the AP1000 reactor in 2006, but it was never built in the United States. The $14 billion effort is the pilot project for the new reactor and a major test of whether the industry can build nuclear plants without the endemic delays and cost overruns that plagued earlier rounds of building years ago. The U.S. Presidential administration offered the project $8 billion in federal loan guarantees as part of its pledge to expand nuclear power. Source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/12/22/nrc-approves-new-nuclear-reactor-design/
• Half of San Francisco’s on-duty firefighting force battled a wind-fueled, five-alarm fire December 22 that tore through four buildings in the Western Addition neighborhood and displaced about 60 people. – San Francisco Chronicle (See item 33)
33. December 23, San Francisco Chronicle – (California) 5-alarm S.F. fire engulfs apartments, injures two. Half of San Francisco’s on-duty firefighting force battled a wind-fueled, five-alarm fire December 22 that tore through two residential buildings in the Western Addition neighborhood and displaced about 60 people. Two other buildings, including a school, were damaged in the fire, which at its height was fought by 150 firefighters and support personnel. At one point, firefighters had to retreat from both buildings, fearing they would collapse. The fire started shortly in the back of a Victorian three-story condominium building, said the fire chief. The flames jumped quickly to an adjacent four-story apartment building. The chief described a fire that was so hot and intense that firefighters were unable to search the top floor of the Golden Gate condos for trapped residents. The nearby Creative Arts Charter School, which is closed for winter break, suffered water damage from sprinklers and blown-out windows. Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/22/BAPP1MG051.DTL&tsp=1
Details
Banking and Finance Sector
7. December 23, BankInfoSecurity – (Connecticut; International) 14 indicted in phishing scheme. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut have indicted 14 Romanians for their involvement in an identity-theft scheme that relied on phishing attacks to target unwitting consumers. According to a statement issued by the Department of Justice, the 14 suspects been charged with conspiracy, fraud and identity theft. The indictment claims that in June 2005, one or more of the accused sent an e-mail to consumers, including a resident of Madison, Connecticut, that appeared to come from Connecticut-based People’s Bank. The generic e-mail said recipients’ online banking accounts had been locked; in order to remedy the issue, the recipients were instructed to click on links and enter specific bank account details and personal information. In addition to People’s Bank, Citibank, Capital One, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Comerica Bank, Regions Bank, LaSalle Bank, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, eBay and PayPal also were targeted. According to court documents, the Web page to which the Connecticut e-mail recipient was directed appeared to originate from People’s Bank’; in actuality, the site was hosted on a compromised computer. In all of the cases of all of the fraudulent e-mails sent, once recipients entered personal or financial information, their entered information was routed to one or more of the defendants, or to a so-called collector account, an e-mail account used to receive and collect the stolen information. Several collector accounts containing thousands of e-mails with credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, CVV codes, PINs and other personal information, such as names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers, were discovered during the FBI’s investigation. The co-conspirators used the information to access bank accounts and lines of credit, as well as withdraw funds from ATMs, which most often were in Romania. On December 12, following the extradition from Romania of three of the 14 suspects, a magistrate judge in Bridgeport unsealed the indictment. Each of the 14 defendants could face up to 35 years in prison. So far, two defendants have pleaded not guilty and are expected to go to trial in March. Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=4358
8. December 23, Bloomberg – (Florida; National) Rothstein says TD Bank played ‘critical’ role in ponzi scheme. The Florida lawyer convicted in a $1.2 billion investment fraud said Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD Bank) played a “critical” role in his Ponzi scheme, according to a transcript of a sworn deposition made public December 22. “They were assisting me in putting fake balance statements into the hands of my investors,” he said. The Florida lawyer plead guilty in January 2010 to five counts of racketeering, money laundering, and wire fraud after admitting he sold investors interests in bogus settlements of sexual-harassment and whistle-blower lawsuits. He also said that the size of TD Bank was important to the scheme because some investors worried about the solvency of a smaller bank he had been using. The bankruptcy trustee liquidating the law firm sued TD Bank in July, alleging that the institution let the Florida lawyer use its name, facilities, and accounts to deceive investors. The trustee accused the bank of ignoring “red flags” and letting the lawyer open accounts and transfer “huge sums” of money among them. Eight people have been charged in the probe by the U.S. Of those, six have been convicted. Two of the men who pleaded guilty worked as technology assistants at the law firm and set up a fake TD Bank Web site showing the Florida lawyer had $1.1 billion in a trust account, according to prosecutors. Investors who relied on that information ended up investing more than $35 million, an assistant U.S. attorney said in June in federal court in Fort Lauderdale. The lawyer testified in the deposition that he often brought investors to TD Bank branches so they could see bank employees handing him envelopes with a cover letter a bank employee wrote at his behest and a fake balance statement his office produced. He described how these “shows” would work at the bank and how bank employees allowed him to use conference rooms. He also testified that he employed an associate to pose as a banker; that man has also pleaded guilty in connection with the scam. TD Bank denies these claims. Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-23/rothstein-says-td-bank-played-critical-role-in-ponzi-scheme.html
9. December 22, KHOU 11 Houston – (Texas) Police: Man threatens bank tellers with fake bomb wrapped as Christmas gift. A man presented a propane bottle with red wires wrapped up in Christmas wrapping paper to a Citibank in Humble, Texas, December 22, according to Humble police. The man carried the present into the bank and tilted the present toward the teller. He told the teller it was a bomb and demanded money. After receiving two rounds of cash from the teller, the robber left the propane bottle and walked out of the bank. The bomb squad came in, and area businesses had to be evacuated. The police were surprised after they learned the device was a fake. “This time of the year it’s not uncommon to see someone walking in the bank with a present, so no one really suspected anything, at that time,” a spokesperson for the Humble Police Department said. Source: http://www.kens5.com/news/Police-Man-threatens-bank-tellers-with-fake-bomb-wrapped-as-Christmas-gift-136110568.html
10. December 22, Los Angeles Times – (California) FBI searches costume store in ‘Geezer Bandit’ investigation. Authorities probing the case of the Geezer Bandit have served a search warrant at a costume store in the San Luis Obispo, California area, demanding a list of all customers who bought a mask known as The Elder. Based on surveillance video and witness interviews at the site of the bandit’s latest heist, the FBI is now working on the theory that the prolific bank robber is not an elderly man but a younger man wearing an elaborate mask. “The robber was described as someone who appeared to be an elderly white male, but may have been wearing a synthetic-like mask and gloves to conceal his true physical characteristics,” the FBI said in a statement December 21. Unlike in the 15 previous bank robberies, a quick-thinking teller slipped an exploding dye pack into the plastic bag that the robber used to carry off the loot. A few steps outside the bank, the pack exploded, spewing red dye all over the robber, the money and possibly his mask and gloves. A surveillance camera shows that the robber “sprinted away across the bank parking lot.” He may have escaped in a white BMW, according to the FBI. In previous robberies, there did not appear to be any good clues about the Geezer Bandit’s mode of escape. Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/fbi-searches-costume-store-in-geezer-bandit-investigation.html
Information Technology
27. December 23, Softpedia – (International) Phishing has two sisters: vishing and smishing. While most Internet users are familiar with the term phishing and its dangerous effects, security researchers are recording a considerable increase in two related malicious schemes, vishing and smishing. Vishing is a variant of phishing, its name portmanteau of the words voice and phishing, reports the Windows Club. Vishing attacks involve an unsuspecting user called via phone by someone who pretends to represent an important organization such as a bank or a utility company. In these situations, the crooks request large amounts of personal information allegedly needed for certain operations, financial or otherwise. An alternative to this method implies an e-mail which urges the recipient to call a certain phone number. Usually these e-mails come with threats and they are more advantageous for the cybercriminals since they do not have to pay for the calls they make. Smishing involves SMSs. In these types of schemes, the victim receives an SMS that warns of the fact that he/she has been automatically enrolled in a paid service. In order to terminate the subscription, the recipient has to visit a URL and select a click a certain button, which instead of canceling the phony subscription, downloads a piece of malware infecting the phone. From here on, keyloggers or premium-SMS-sending trojans are free to do as they like. Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Phishing-Has-Two-Sisters-Vishing-and-Smishing-242767.shtml
28. December 23, H Security – (International) Microsoft confirms Windows vulnerability. Microsoft posted on its German-language Chief Security Advisor Blog about the Windows vulnerability reported December 20. The post states the company was able to reproduce a situation in which a specially crafted HTML page could cause a blue screen when opened with Safari on a 64-bit system. However, “at this time, our colleagues in the US do not believe that the vulnerability is capable of infecting Windows systems with malware”, so the company will “most likely not publish a security advisory for this vulnerability.” Security firm Secunia rated the vulnerability as “highly critical.” There is no exploit yet and the Microsoft posting states the company considers any wide-ranging exploitation of this vulnerability to be unlikely. Source: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Microsoft-confirms-Windows-vulnerability-1400353.html
29. December 23, ITProPortal – (International) Rift developer Trion Worlds hacked. Trion Worlds, the developer behind the massive multiplayer online game Rift, had its servers hacked, losing information that includes user names, passwords, e-mail addresses, billing addresses, and credit card information. The announcement was made on the official Trion Web site and through an e-mail sent to subscribers and anyone who previously held an account with the firm. It describes that almost every piece of stored information about the company’s users was taken, including: “user names, encrypted passwords, dates of birth, email addresses, billing addresses, and the first and last four digits and expiration dates of customer credit cards.” Trion was quick to point out “There is no evidence, and we have no reason to believe, that full credit card information was accessed or compromised in any way.” The e-mail describes the hack as “recent” but not providing a time frame of when it might have occurred or how long Trion has known about it. Source: http://www.itproportal.com/2011/12/23/rift-developer-trion-worlds-hacked/
30. December 22, Computerworld – (International) Mozilla re-releases Firefox 9, backs out fix causing crashes. Mozilla issued another update December 21 — Firefox 9.0.1 — after backing out a bug fix that was causing some Mac, Linux, and Windows browsers to crash. Although Mozilla did not specify in 9.0.1’s release notes why it needed to re-release the browser, developers said the update was prompted by crash reports, primarily from Mac users, although the Linux and Windows versions were also affected. To fix the problem — which caused crashes when users ran certain add-on toolbars — Mozilla’s developers removed a patch that was applied earlier. Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222972/Mozilla_re_releases_Firefox_9_backs_out_fix_causing_crashes?taxonomyId=17
31. December 22, Infosecurity – (International) Holiday season is fertile ground for most malware infections. Data released by SpywareRemove.com shows the holiday season, beginning with the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States through Christmas, is the most active time for malware infections. Research data compiled by the site over the last year (late 2010 — present) showed December 27, 2010 to have the largest spike in malware infections it tracked, with a 56 percent increase over the previous day. The company believes the December 27 date was prolific among cybercriminals due to the after Christmas rush of gift exchange and post-holiday deals by retailers. The Web site compiled its list of the top five malware infection dates according to its tracking data: December 27, 2010; February 27, 2011 (malware and phishing attacks attributed to the New Zealand earthquake); March 28, 2011 (breaking news of the Arab Spring protests); April 4, 2011 (the Monday after April Fool’s day); and November 28, 2011 (Cyber Monday). The top five malware infection dates indicate malware writers use a two-pronged strategy to deliver their malicious payloads to computers by taking advantage of one-time major events, as well as fixed dates on the calendar during the holiday season. Source: http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/22839/
For another story, see item 7 above in the Banking and Finance Sector
Communications Sector
Nothing to report
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