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Daily Report Wednesday, December 27, 2006Daily HighlightsUSA TODAY reports annual incidents of trafficking and mishandling of nuclear and other radioactive material have more than doubled since the early 1990s, according to Vayl Oxford, director of domestic nuclear detection at the Department of Homeland Security. (See item 3)
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The Des Moines Register reports that Iowa lawmakers are considering emergency plans for reassembling the Legislature should a terrorist attack or natural disaster make it impossible to meet at the state Capitol. (See item 28)
Information Technology and Telecommunications Sector
34. December 26, eWeek — Prediction: Spammers must find new attack techniques in 2007. One of the most unlikely predictions for 2007 comes from SecureWorks malware researcher Joe Stewart: spammers will have to evolve and find new attack techniques if they intend to maintain their level of profitability. Roughly translated, Stewart believes the massive surge in spam e.mail will taper off in 2007, unless spammers find new tricks to bypass a hardened Windows Vista and improvements to existing anti.spam technology and techniques. In an entry on the SecureWorks blog, Stewart argued that Vista will force spammers to deliver payloads through social engineering attacks and even that might become more difficult in the future, with Microsoft venturing into the anti.virus and trusted computing arenas. "Another factor which will have a huge impact is the release of the SpamHaus PBL blocklist, scheduled for release in December 2006," Stewart added. Stewart explained that spammers depend on these dial.up and DHCP.based broadband connections and, with the extensive reach of SpamHaus' blocklists, widespread adoption of the PBL, or Policy Block List, "will be very detrimental to spammers, as entire IP blocks where their zombie spam bots live will be unable to send mail to a large part of the Internet."
SecureWorks blog: