Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Daily Report
Top Stories
• The FBI was brought in to help investigate a
cache of explosives — grenades, blasting caps and fuse igniters — that was
found in a backpack under a bridge in Placentia, California, July 9. – Los
Angeles Times
14.
July 9, Los Angeles Times –
(California) FBI joins probe of explosives found under O.C. bridge. The
FBI was brought in to help investigate a cache of explosives — grenades,
blasting caps and fuse igniters — that was found in a backpack under a bridge
in Placentia, California, July 9. Orange County bomb squad officials were
brought in after the backpack was discovered by people working in a drainage
ditch, said an Orange County sheriff’s spokesman. After cordoning off the area,
bomb technicians detonated the contents of the backpack, including six
grenades, blasting caps, fuse igniters, and blasting powder. For several hours,
Lakeview Avenue between Orangethorpe Avenue and Eisenhower Circle was closed to
traffic. “It was a dangerous situation,” the spokesman said. “It could have
caused major structural damage to the bridge.” Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/officials-detonate-explosives-in-anaheim-.html
• The
deterioration of corn and soybean crops expanded in the United States, dropping
for a fifth straight week as unseasonably dry weather and record-high
temperatures withered yield potential, the government said. – Bloomberg
20. July 9,
Bloomberg – (National) Crop conditions worsening in U.S. as drought
withers fields. The deterioration of the corn and soybean crops expanded in
the United States, dropping for a fifth straight week as unseasonably dry
weather and record-high temperatures withered yield potential, the government
said, according to Bloomberg July 9. About 40 percent of the corn crop was in
good or excellent condition as of July 8, down from 48 percent a week earlier
and the lowest for this time of year since a drought in 1988, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture said. An estimated 40 percent of soybeans got the top ratings,
down from 45 percent and also the lowest in 24 years for that date. As of July
8, more than 91 percent of the production of corn and soybeans in the U.S., the
world’s largest producer and exporter for both crops, was dry at the topsoil
level and 59 percent was at high risk of intense stress and lower yields,
T-Storm Weather said. About 53 percent of the Midwest had moderate to extreme
drought conditions as of July 3, the highest since the government-funded U.S.
Drought Monitor began tracking the data in 2000. Soil moisture in Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, and Kentucky was so low that it ranks in the 10th
percentile among all other years since 1895. Hot, dry weather also eroded the
condition of spring wheat, a high-protein variety of the grain that is used to
make bread and pasta, grown in the northern Great Plains. About 44 percent of
the cotton crop was rated good or excellent, compared with 47 percent a week
earlier and 26 percent a year earlier. An estimated 69 percent of the rice crop
was rated good or excellent, compared with 72 percent a week earlier and 61
percent a year earlier. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/crop-conditions-worsening-in-us-as-drought-withers-fields/2012/07/09/gJQApaZYZW_story.html
• A
stubborn and deadly outbreak of tuberculosis that has affected hundreds in
Jacksonville, Florida, led the State to team up with the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention to battle the disease. – WTSP 10 St. Petersburg
26. July 9,
WTSP 10 St. Petersburg – (Florida) Thousands feared exposed to
Florida tuberculosis outbreak. A stubborn and deadly outbreak of
tuberculosis (TB) in Jacksonville, Florida, is prompting Florida to team up
with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to battle the
disease, but State health officials insist the situation is under control. The
TB outbreak is linked to 13 deaths and nearly 100 illnesses since 2004, mainly
among homeless people. It is estimated about 3,000 people have been exposed to
the contagious disease but that information was never released to the media.
Now State and federal health workers are trying to track down as many of those
people as possible to check for symptoms of TB, including cough, fever, sweats
and weight loss. Florida asked the CDC for help with the TB cluster in February
but not because the situation was out of control, according to a doctor with
the State Department of Health. He called it business as usual. He said the
cluster of TB cases did not warrant a public warning because it was not a
public health hazard, and said Florida has the resources to reach out to those
potentially exposed to tuberculosis with federal, State, and local governments
contributing to the effort. The ongoing outbreak has coincided with the
shutdown of Florida’s only TB hospital — A.G. Holley in Lantana. The hospital
closed the week of July 2 after State lawmakers passed and the Florida governor
signed legislation eliminating funding for the facility. Source: http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/263133/12/Thousands-feared-exposed-to-Florida-tuberculosis-outbreak
• Tens of thousands of smart-phone
applications, downloaded 80 million times, are running ads from rogue
advertising networks that change device settings and take contact information
without permission, according to a new study. – CNNMoney See item 41 below in the Information Technology Sector
Details
Banking and Finance Sector
12. July 9, Chicago Tribune – (Illinois) FBI:
Bandit strikes for 3rd time, robs Elmhurst bank. A bank robber who was
believed to be responsible for two previous bank hold ups struck a third time
July 9 at an Inland Bank and Trust branch in Elmhurst, Illinois, officials
said. The robber, who officials believe robbed the bank previously June 11 and
a Chase Bank branch in Bensenville April 2, approached a teller with a demand
note. The note implied he had a weapon, but it was not brandished during the
robbery, the FBI said. The man fled the bank with an undisclosed amount of
cash. Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-07-09/news/chi-fbi-bandit-strikes-for-third-time-at-elmhurst-bank-20120709_1_elmhurst-bank-bandit-strikes-chase-bank-branch
For more stories, see
items 40 below in the Information Technology Sector
and 49 in the Communications Sector
Information Technology Sector
37. July 10,
Network World – (International) Salesforce.com hit with second major outage
in two weeks. Salesforce.com suffered a significant service outage July 10,
less than 2 weeks after another serious set of problems. The cloud-based
customer relationship management vendor’s systems are divided into many
instances around the world, each serving customers in different geographic
regions. Seven instances went down at some time July 10 in North America, said
a notice posted on Salesforce.com’s system status page. Shortly thereafter,
several regions, which are part of a set of “sandbox” instance that
Salesforce.com customers can use for development, testing, and new feature
previewing, were also affected, according to the site. Salesforce.com’s
Application Store also went down because it shares infrastructure with one
instance, the site said in another update. A number of instances had yet to be
restored and the search infrastructure for the instances experienced
performance issues, according to an update. It was not immediately clear what
caused the problems. Salesforce.com said “power problems” were detected and
fixed, but the outages persisted. Source: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/071012-salesforcecom-hit-with-second-major-260785.html
38. July 10,
Softpedia – (International) ICS-CERT warns of malware that spreads via
USB drives. The U.S. Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team
(ICS-CERT) warned organizations to be cautious when handling removable media
flash drives since there are many malicious elements that use them to spread.
They cite an incident that took place in April 2012. Workers in an energy
company identified a piece of malware on a USB stick left by mistake in the USB
port of a human-machine interface (HMI) computer by another staffer. The Hamweq
virus was not able to perform its tasks because it depended on the operating
system’s auto-run function, which was disabled on all devices. If the auto-run
feature was enabled, the threat could have injected malicious code and created
a backdoor that may have been leveraged by the attackers to steal sensitive
data. According to ICS-CERT, in order to avoid similar incidents, organizations
should always properly mark removable media. They should also disable auto-run
functions when possible. Other recommendations include the use of dedicated
media for the same type of systems, and the separation of malfunctioning or
potentially infected drives from ones cataloged as acceptable. The workers that
operate industrial control systems should never connect removable media drives
with an unknown origin to a system without properly checking first. They should
also avoid using personally owned devices for work-related tasks. Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/ICS-CERT-Warns-of-Malware-that-Spreads-Via-USB-Drives-280442.shtml
39. July 10,
Dark Reading – (International) Best Buy says some customer accounts have
been hacked. Electronics retail chain Best Buy e-mailed customers the week
of July 9 to inform them their accounts may have been hacked. According to news
reports, Best Buy is disabling some customers’ e-mail accounts until the
passwords are changed. “We are currently investigating increased attempts by
hackers around the world to access accounts on BestBuy.com and other online
retailers’ e-commerce sites,” says the retailer’s e-mail, sent July 6. “These
hackers did not take username/password combinations from any Best Buy system; they
appear to be using combinations taken elsewhere in an attempt to gain access to
BestBuy.com accounts. The e-mail does not say how many Best Buy customers were
affected, nor does it say exactly how the data might have been acquired.
Source: http://www.darkreading.com/identity-and-access-management/167901114/security/privacy/240003426/
40. July 10,
SecurityWeek – (International) Malware now targeting banking applications on
Android, says Trusteer. Researchers at Trusteer discovered a type of attack
targeting Android users via their desktops, with the aim of controlling both
endpoint devices. So far, the malware itself is limited to Spain, Germany, the
Netherlands, and Portugal. Trusteer’s discovery offers additional insight into
the development of SpyEye and Tatanga, the families of malware making headlines
recently. This time, Tatanga is combined with elements form SpyEye and used in
a scheme to entice users to install an alleged security application. Based on
what Trusteer published, it appears that this latest set of attacks is an
upgrade and not a new infection point. Once an infected system visits a
specialized or pre-determined domain (often banking related), Tatanga will use
Web injects to entice the user to install the security application. Source: http://www.securityweek.com/malware-now-targeting-banking-applications-android-says-trusteer
41. July 10,
CNNMoney – (International) Mobile ads can hijack your phone and steal
your contacts. Tens of thousands of smart-phone applications are running
ads from rogue advertising networks that change smart-phone settings and take
contact information without permission, according to a new study released July
9. Aggressive ad networks can disguise ads as text message notifications or app
icons, and sometimes change browser settings and bookmarks. Often, the ads will
upload your contacts list to the ad network’s servers — information the ad
network can then sell to marketers. As many as 5 percent of free mobile apps
use an “aggressive” ad network to make money, according to Lookout, a San
Francisco-based mobile security company. With millions of mobile apps in
stores, that small percentage adds up to a big number. The study found that
19,200 of the 384,000 apps it tested used malicious ad networks. Those apps
were downloaded 80 million times. Source: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/07/10/mobile-ads-can-hijack-your-phone-and-steal-your-contacts/
42. July 10,
H Security – (International) HP warns of critical holes in its server
monitoring software. HP warned its customers about two security
vulnerabilities in its Operations Agent server monitoring software. According
to the company, unspecified errors in the enterprise software for AIX, HP-UX,
Linux, Solaris, and Windows can be exploited by a remote attacker to compromise
a vulnerable system and execute arbitrary code. Both of these errors have a
Common Vulnerability Scoring System base score of 10.0, the highest possible
severity rating. Versions prior to 11.03.12 on all supported platforms are
affected; upgrading to 11.03.12 corrects the problems. The vulnerabilities were
reported to HP by a researcher via TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative. A full
list of affected versions and patch download information can be found in the
HP’s security advisory. The company advises all administrators to install the
patches as soon as possible. Source: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/HP-warns-of-critical-holes-in-its-server-monitoring-software-1635925.html
43. July 9,
Threatpost – (International) Deep packet inspection firm Cyberoam issues
fix following private key leak. Network security firm Cyberoam issued an
over the air update for all of its deep packet inspection devices July 9 after
a decrypted version of the company’s universal private key was leaked online
the weekend of July 7. The New Jersey-based company pushed the hotfix after an
anonymous commenter posted what was apparently a master privacy key for all of
its devices on a blog belonging to anonymity network Tor July 8. After the
update, each Cyberoam product will have had a new, unique key generated.
Claiming it understands the “critical nature” of the issue at hand, Cyberoam
said it is being singled out by Tor, and that there are other companies who
also use a universal certificate authority. These firms, much like Cyberoam
before its update, only put its devices at risk “when providing a HTTPS deep
scan.” Source: http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/deep-packet-inspection-firm-cyberoam-issues-fix-following-private-key-leak-070912
44. July 9, TechWeekEurope UK – (International) Back-up
supplier Acronis apologises for data leak. Back-up vendor Acronis admitted
some of its customers’ data leaked onto the Web, as it opens an investigation
into what went wrong. Acronis said certain information from its knowledge base
was opened up to everyone after the access control settings were reset to
default. The back-up supplier said most of the content was not “sensitive or
confidential.” “However, it did contain an older spreadsheet listing just the
email addresses of customers who had been entitled to a free product upgrade
and their upgrade license key. In compliance with our customer information
security policies, no other identifying information was contained in this
spreadsheet,” explained the chief customer officer at Acronis. Source: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/acronis-data-breach-85451
45. July 9, The Register – (International) ISPs step in
to supply DNSChanger safety net. The DNSChanger Working Group’s replacement
DNS servers were taken offline as scheduled July 9. However, rather than
leaving an estimated 300,000 machines without Internet services, many ISPs
configured their own substitute DNS servers, so some infected machines still
have a safety net. This means that the “infection count continues to decrease
without a major crisis in support calls,” according to net security firm
F-Secure. The security firm fielded three DNSChanger support queries of its own
July 9. DNSChanger manipulated the domain name system settings of infected
machines, redirecting users to dodgy Web sites as part of a long-running
cybercrime. The FBI dismantled the botnet’s command-and-control infrastructure
in November 2011, as part of Operation GhostClick. Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/09/dnschanger_plug_pulled/
For more stories, see item 49 below in the Communications Sector
Communications Sector
46. July 9,
Abilene Reporter-News – (Texas) Lightning knocks KACU-FM off the
air. A lightning strike during a July 8 thunderstorm in Texas knocked KACU
89.7 FM Abilene off the air, and the station was unlikely unable to broadcast
over the airwaves again until July 10. The broadcast engineer for Abilene
PubÂlic Radio said he went to the studio July 8 after the station’s audio fell
silent, and he found the equipment that sends a signal to a transmitter damaged
by a lightning strike. The parts have to be shipped to Abilene from California.
The broadcast engineer said he hoped to have them installed by July 10. Source:
http://www.reporternews.com/news/2012/jul/09/lightning-knocks-kacu-fm-air/
47. July 9, WTRF 7 Wheeling – (West Virginia) Generators
stolen from Frontier Communications. According to a news release, thieves
stole six generators from the Frontier Communications facilities in New
Martinsville, West Virginia, WTRF 7 Wheeling reported July 9. The Wetzel County
company relied on generators and batteries since a June 29 windstorm.
Frontier’s general manager asked anyone with information to call their tip line
at 1-800-590-6605. He said the thefts are significantly hindering local
recovery efforts. Source: http://www.wtrf.com/story/18985760/generators-stolen-from-frontier-communications
48. July 9,
CBS News – (National) Sun storms: solar activity at fiery high. The
first week of July was an intense period of solar flares, and it showed no
signs of stopping, CBS News reported July 9. The week of July 2 saw several
huge solar flares, the biggest of which occurred July 6. Labeled an X1.1 class
solar flare — the strongest classification used by the U.S. Space Weather
Prediction Center — the sun storm caused radio blackouts on Earth as particles
ejected from the sun crashed into the planet’s atmosphere. It was the fifth
X-class solar flare of 2012. Earlier the week of July 2, several other powerful
solar flares erupted from the sun. Most of them appear to be coming from the
same area, a giant sunspot called AR1515. Technically a group of sunspots,
AR1515 is an enormous plain of volatile activity. Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57468785/sun-storms-solar-activity-at-fiery-high/
49. July 9, New York Times – (National) AT&T to start
blocking stolen cellphones this week. AT&T said it expects to start a
program the week of July 9 that will keep track of devices reported stolen,
making it more difficult for thieves to sell the devices on the black market.
The company said its database would initially prevent reactivation of stolen
devices on its own network. Later in 2012, it plans to expand the database to
work with other carriers. In April, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
said it was working with police departments and wireless carriers to create a
database to combat cellphone theft nationwide. Over the last year, one out of
three robberies in the United States was related to the theft of a cellphone,
the FCC said. Verizon Wireless, the number one carrier in the United States,
said that unlike AT&T, it has had its own database for disabling stolen cellphones
on its network for years. Verizon will also be participating in the nationwide
database when it becomes available later in 2012, said a Verizon spokeswoman.
Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/att-cellphone-theft/
For another story, see item 41 above in the Information Technology Sector
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