Monday, December 22, 2008
Complete DHS Daily Report for December 22, 2008
Daily Report
Headlines
According to Reuters, a New York man pleaded guilty on Thursday to posting videos on YouTube in which he claimed he had arranged to poison millions of containers of Gerber baby food. (See item 15)
15. December 18, Reuters – (National) NY man pleads guilty to YouTube baby food threat. A New York man pleaded guilty on Thursday to posting videos on YouTube in which he claimed he had arranged to poison millions of containers of Gerber baby food with the intent to kill babies. The 43-year-old, who called himself ”Trashman,” pleaded guilty to one count of transmitting threats in interstate commerce and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, said an acting U.S. attorney. The defendant posted his first video — in which he wore a black mask — on April 20, 2008, and followed up with a further two videos, posted on July 24 and July 27. “In the video, entitled “gerbersbabyfoodalert,” the defendant stated that Gerber employees acting at his direction had poisoned millions of bottles of Gerber baby food, to kill babies who ate it,” the U.S. attorney said in a statement. “The defendant further stated that it was “too late” to do anything about the poisoned baby food because it had already been shipped to consumers,” he said. Gerber, which is owned by Switzerland-based Nestle, found no evidence that anyone had tampered with its baby food. Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKN1841371220081218
Bloomberg reports that Internet and telephone communications between the Middle East and Europe were disrupted by submarine cable failures between Italy and Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea. (See item 23)
See item 23 in Communications Sector below
Details
Banking and Finance Sector
7. December 19, DarkReading – (International) Researchers hone in on ‘dropzones’ for stolen credentials. Researchers at the University of Mannheim’s Laboratory for Dependable Distributed Systems in Germany have discovered more than 300 cybercrime servers full of stolen credentials on more than 170,000 people. The researchers were able to access nearly 100 so-called “dropzone” machines, and say the actual number of these servers is much more. “With our limited amount of machines, we found more than 300 dropzones, and we covered only two families of banking Trojans. In total, there are presumably many more,” said one of the researchers and a founder of the German Honeypot Project. The researchers were studying what they call “impersonation attacks,” where victims’ credentials are stolen so that the attacker can impersonate them. The researchers basically traced the steps of specific keyloggers and banking Trojans between April and October 2008, finding that one-third of the machines infected by this data-stealing malware are in Russia or the United States. Overall, the 170,000 victims whose data they discovered in the dropzones were from 175 different countries. Source: http://www.darkreading.com/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212501236
8. December 19, Associated Press – (National) Lawsuit filed against Countrywide over ID breach. A New Jersey couple is suing Countrywide Financial Corp. and two other people claiming the company allowed a security breach involving detailed financial information from more than two million customers. The couple of Mount Holly, New Jersey, want a judge to grant class-action status to claims that an employee of the mortgage giant stole detailed financial information from customers, sold it to another person, who then sold it to an unknown number of companies. The suit filed in federal court in Paducah, Kentucky, on Thursday is one of more than 30 filed nationally. All the suits have been transferred to Kentucky. Source: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/12/19/ap5843234.html
Information Technology
21. December 19, ComputerWeekly – (International) Firefox browser patched for critical security flaws. Mozilla has released critical security updates to its Firefox browser, its Thunderbird e-mail client, and its SeaMonkey application suite. The flaws addressed by the updates could expose users’ sensitive information to remote hackers. Users are being advised to update their Firefox browser to version 3.0.5, which was released last week. They are also advised to update to version 2.0.0.19 of Thunderbird and version 1.1.14 of SeaMonkey. The browser vulnerabilities were found in earlier versions of Firefox 3, as well as in versions of Firefox 2. Microsoft updated its own Internet Explorer browser with an “out of cycle” critical security patch earlier last week. Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/12/19/234004/firefox-browser-patched-for-critical-security-flaws.htm
22. December 19, Computerworld – (International) Hackers exploit IE bug with ‘insidious’ Word docs. Attackers are hiding malicious ActiveX controls that make it call out to the site that’s hosting the malware in Word documents. Attackers are exploiting the just-patched vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) by hiding malicious ActiveX controls in Microsoft Word documents, a security company said December 18. “Inside the document is an ActiveX control, and in that control is a line that makes it call out to the site that’s hosting the malware,” said the director of security research and communications for McAfee ‘s Avert Labs. “This is a pretty insidious way to attack people, because it’s invisible to the eye, the communication with the site.” The rogue documents can be delivered as attachments to spam e-mail or offered up by hacked sites. Attackers have been exploiting the IE bug since at least December 9, when reports first surfaced about malicious code found in the wild and on several Chinese hacker servers. McAfee was one of the first security companies to report the emerging exploit. Since then, Microsoft acknowledged the bug, and has offered up a series of advisories urging users to take protective steps until December 17, when the company released the patch. Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/12/19/Hackers_exploit_IE_bug_with_insidious_Word_docs_1.html
Communications Sector
23. December 19, Bloomberg – (International) Severed cables in Mediterranean disrupt communication. Internet and telephone communications between the Middle East and Europe were disrupted by submarine cable failures between Italy and Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea. The failures cut the flow of “data of various kinds” between Europe and the Middle East, and there is no timeframe for when communications will be restored, said the director of assurance at Mumbai-based Reliance Globalcom Ltd. Three submarine cable systems linking Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe are affected, according to Reliance and Melbourne-based Telstra Corp. The cables run from Alexandria in northern Egypt to southern Italy. In January, two cable systems were severed by an anchor 5.2 miles from Alexandria beach after bad weather conditions forced ships to moor off the coast. Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aFM6PQsd6i2Q&refer=europe
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