Friday, February 24, 2012
Complete DHS Daily Report for February 24, 2012
Daily Report
Top Stories
• Federal inspectors found “significant performance issues” at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant near Blair, Nebraska. The issues would have caused the plant to close had it not been shut down for refueling and flooding. – WOWT 6 Omaha (See item 9)
9. February 22, WOWT 6 Omaha – (Nebraska) ‘Significant performance issues’ at OPPD’s Fort Calhoun Plant. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), there were “significant performance issues” at the Omaha Public Power District’s (OPPD) Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant near Blair, Nebraska, WOWT 6 Omaha reported February 22. Although all involved stated the plant is safe, new issues surfaced as the OPPD worked to bring the plant back online. A 2011 flood shut down the plant, but did not compromise its operations. However, in the early days of the flooding, there was a fire in a breaker room. It brought the NRC in and inspectors discovered many performance issues, dating back long before the fire or the flood. Inspectors said that if Fort Calhoun had not already been offline, it would have been shut down based on what they found. One of the commissioners said it appears there is a problem with “safety culture” within the OPPD. The NRC’s regional public affairs spokesman said the OPPD is still evaluating the breadth of the performance problems, noting the plant could be subject to more oversight from the NRC. He also said Fort Calhoun will not be able to restart until that is complete. Source: http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/Significant_Performance_Issues_at_OPPDs_Fort_Calhoun_Plant_140056253.html
• Two military helicopters collided over the California desert during nighttime training exercises, killing seven U.S. Marines in the latest of several similar accidents in the area in the past year. – Associated Press (See item 33)
33. February 23, Associated Press – (California) 7 Marines killed in collision of 2 helicopters in Calif. desert during night training exercise. Two military helicopters collided over the California desert during nighttime training exercises, killing seven U.S. Marines in the latest of several similar accidents in the area. The service members with the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing were based at Camp Pendleton north of San Diego, a Lieutenant with Miramar Air Base in California said February 23. The crash happened February 22 and involved an AH-1W Cobra that carried two crew members and a UH-1 Huey utility helicopter carrying the other five. The aircraft collided in a remote portion of the Yuma Training Range Complex on the California side of the Chocolate Mountains close to the Arizona border, she said. The exact location had not been confirmed. The desert area is favored by the U.S. military and its allies for training because the hot, dusty conditions and craggy mountains replicate Afghanistan’s harsh environment, and the clear weather allows for constant flying. Several accidents have happened in the past year involving Marine training in Southern California. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2-military-helicopters-collide-while-training-in-southeast-california-casualties-unclear/2012/02/23/gIQA8J7FVR_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop
Details
Banking and Finance Sector
13. February 23, Newark Star-Ledger – (New Jersey) 8 people accused of bank fraud for alleged stolen check scheme. An alleged 26-month scheme that hinged on a U.S. letter carrier lifting boxes of blank checks from people’s mail and funneling them to eight accomplices who illegally converted the checks into hundreds of thousands of dollars appears to have come crashing down, prosecutors said February 22. Federal prosecutors charged six men and two women from Union, Newark, and Irvington, New Jersey, with conspiracy to commit bank fraud. According to authorities, the scheme was so successful the defendants deposited about $1.5 million in fraudulent checks stolen from 122 victims into 258 different bank accounts, between December 2009 and February 2012. The result, authorities allege, was $625,000 in losses. The defendants and co-conspirators “would endorse those checks for certain sums, usually under $5,000” and deposit them into legitimate accounts they opened at victims’ banks. The defendants would then withdraw the funds before the victims discovered their checks had been stolen and/or the banks discovered the checks were fraudulently endorsed, an attorney said. The banks involved included TD Bank, Bank of America, Capital One Bank, Garden State Community Bank, Hudson City Savings Bank, PNC Bank, and Valley National Bank. In all, 27 bank branches were involved, authorities said. Source: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/02/8_people_accused_of_bank_fraud.html
14. February 23, Charlotte Observer – (National) 4 more indicted in Black Diamond Ponzi scheme case. A grand jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, indicted four more men charged with operating the $40 million Black Diamond Ponzi scheme, the Charlotte Observer reported February 23. The indictment alleges the men falsely claimed they were operating a legitimate hedge fund called Black Diamond. According to the government, the group solicited money from investors, using false and fraudulent claims about Black Diamond and the hedge funds they purported to run. Black Diamond eventually collapsed without paying out any money, but the conspirators continued to bring in new investors to pay off old investors and to support their own lifestyles, according to the government. The men are all charged with four counts related to an investment fraud conspiracy. The indictment also says that, as Black Diamond began collapsing, the defendants and others created a new Ponzi scheme with a separate Ponzi account that one of them administered. The accused men then used money from new victims to make payments to people involved in the Black Diamond scheme and fund their lifestyles. Source: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/02/23/3038122/4-more-indicted-in-black-diamond.html
15. February 22, KTVZ 21 Bend – (Oregon) Desert Sun co-founder pleads guilty to $19 million scam. The co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of now-defunct Desert Sun Development, pleaded guilty to a variety of federal mortgage and loan fraud charges arising out of the collapse of his company, including conspiracy, bank fraud, and money laundering, prosecutors said February 22. He entered the pleas February 21 before a U.S. district judge in Oregon. From 2004 through 2008, the company built homes and commercial property in Oregon. According to the indictments, Desert Sun principals and other defendants caused financial institutions to lose more than $19 million. Court documents say the CEO and others knowingly submitted fraudulent documents, including false financial statements, to various banks to obtain financing to develop and construct many commercial projects. Once the loans were approved, the CEO and others submitted additional false documents, including fictitious contracts and invoices, to the banks to obtain loan proceeds for construction costs claimed to be associated with the fraudulent documents. Six defendants who are charged in related cases previously pleaded guilty and are pending sentencing. Five others are due to go on trial September 5. Source: http://www.ktvz.com/news/30518426/detail.html
Information Technology
36. February 22, Threatpost – (International) Waves of attacks target Adobe Reader bug from 2010. A recent string of attacks has been discovered targeting an Adobe vulnerability from 2010. The vulnerability is a flaw in Reader and Acrobat that can be exploited remotely. At the time of the first reports about the CVE-2010-0188 bug, there were active attacks against it and exploit code was circulating online. However, the situation did not involve widespread attacks. Also, the vulnerability has been patched for a long time now. Still, researchers at Symantec found there are attacks ongoing against the bug, which affects Reader and Acrobat on all of the major platforms. The attacks involve highly obfuscated JavaScript, and the end result is that once the resultant shell code is on the victim’s machine, it attempts to download a malicious executable from a remote server. The attacks against this bug have been coming in waves for the last month or so, and Symantec researchers said the company has seen more than 10,000 such attacks in just the last few weeks. Source: http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/waves-attacks-target-adobe-reader-bug-2010-022212
For another story, see item 37 below in the Communications Sector
Communications Sector
37. February 22, Computerworld – (International) Feds request DNS Changer extension to keep 400K users online. Officials with the U.S. government asked a New York judge to extend an impending deadline that could sever ties to the Internet for hundreds of thousands of users infected with the “DNS Changer” malware, Computerworld reported February 22. DNS Changer, which at its peak was installed on more than 4 million Windows PCs and Macs worldwide — a quarter of them in the United States — was the target of a major takedown November 2011 organized by the U.S. Department of Justice. As part of “Operation Ghost Click,” the FBI seized more than 100 servers hosted at U.S. data centers. To replace those servers — and allow infected computers to use the Internet — a federal judge approved a plan where substitute DNS servers were deployed by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), the non-profit group that maintains the popular BIND DNS open-source software. Without that move, DNS Changer-infected systems would have been immediately cut off from the Internet. The week of February 13, authorities filed a request with a federal court asking that the replacement servers operate until July 9. Previously, a judge said the ISC must pull the plug on the stand-in servers March 8, which was thought to leave sufficient time for consumers, enterprises, and Internet service providers to scrub systems of the malware and restore valid DNS settings. According to the extension request, the substitute DNS servers were keeping an average of 430,000 unique IP addresses connected to the Web in January 2012. The FBI also needs additional time to finish notifying victims in foreign countries, the filing said. Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224491/Feds_request_DNS_Changer_extension_to_keep_400K_users_online?taxonomyId=17
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