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Terrorist 007, Exposed By Rita Katz and Michael Kern   March 26, 2006  This could be the most interesting reading in this newsletter.  In addition to enlightenment as to the seriousness of the al-Qaeda cause we get an insight into how personal and business computers can be compromised and used for the al-Quaeda cause. For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause. Suddenly last fall, Irhabi 007 disappeared from the message boards. The postings ended after Scotland Yard arrested a 22-year-old West Londoner, Younis Tsouli, suspected of participating in an alleged bomb plot. In November, British authorities brought a range of charges against him related to that plot. Only later, according to our sources familiar with the British probe, was Tsouli's other suspected identity revealed. British investigators eventually confirmed to us that they believe he is Irhabi 007. The unwitting end of the hunt comes at a time when al-Qaeda sympathizers like Irhabi 007 are making explosive new use of the Internet. Countless Web sites and password-protected forums -- most of which have sprung up in the last several years -- now cater to would-be jihadists like Irhabi 007. The terrorists who congregate in those cybercommunities are rapidly becoming skilled in hacking, programming, executing online attacks and mastering digital and media design -- and Irhabi was a master of all those arts. But the manner of his arrest demonstrates how challenging it is to combat such online activities and to prevent others from following Irhabi's example: After pursuing an investigation into a European terrorism suspect, British investigators raided Tsouli's house, where they found stolen credit card information, according to an American source familiar with the probe. Looking further, they found that the cards were used to pay American Internet providers on whose servers he had posted jihadi propaganda. Only then did investigators come to believe that they had netted the infamous hacker. And that element of luck is a problem. The Internet has presented investigators with an extraordinary challenge. But our future security is going to depend increasingly on identifying and catching the shadowy figures who exist primarily in the elusive online world. The short career of Irhabi 007 offers a case study in the evolving nature of the threat that we at the SITE Institute track every day by monitoring and then joining the password-protected forums and communicating with the online jihadi community. Celebrated for his computer expertise, Irhabi 007 had propelled the jihadists into a 21st-century offensive through his ability to covertly and securely disseminate manuals of weaponry, videos of insurgent feats such as beheadings and other inflammatory material. It is by analyzing the trail of information left by such postings that we are able to distinguish the patterns of communication used by individual terrorists. Irhabi's success stemmed from a combination of skill and timing. In early 2004, he joined the password-protected message forum known as Muntada al-Ansar al-Islami (Islam Supporters Forum) and, soon after, al-Ekhlas (Sincerity) -- two of the password-protected forums with thousands of members that al-Qaeda had been using for military instructions, propaganda and recruitment. (These two forums have since been taken down.) This was around the time that Zarqawi began using the Internet as his primary means of disseminating propaganda for his insurgency in Iraq. Zarqawi needed computer-savvy associates, and Irhabi proved to be a standout among the volunteers, many of whom were based in Europe. Irhabi's central role became apparent to outsiders in April of that year, when Zarqawi's group, later renamed al-Qaeda in Iraq, began releasing its communiqués through its official spokesman, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, on the Ansar forum. In his first posting, al-Iraqi wrote in Arabic about "the good news" that "a group of proud and brave men" intended to "strike the economic interests of the countries of blasphemy and atheism, that came to raise the banner of the Cross in the country of the Muslims." At the time, some doubted that posting's authenticity, but Irhabi, who was the first to post a response, offered words of support. Before long, al-Iraqi answered in like fashion, establishing their relationship -- and Irhabi's central role. Over the following year and a half, Irhabi established himself as the top jihadi expert on all things Internet-related. He became a very active member of many jihadi forums in Arabic and English. He worked on both defeating and enhancing online security, linking to multimedia and providing online seminars on the use of the Internet. He seemed to be online night and day, ready to answer questions about how to post a video, for example -- and often willing to take over and do the posting himself. Irhabi focused on hacking into Web sites as well as educating Internet surfers in the secrets to anonymous browsing. In one instance, Irhabi posted a 20-page message titled "Seminar on Hacking Websites," to the Ekhlas forum. It provided detailed information on the art of hacking, listing dozens of vulnerable Web sites to which one could upload shared media. Irhabi used this strategy himself, uploading data to a Web site run by the state of Arkansas, and then to another run by George Washington University. This stunt led many experts to believe -- erroneously -- that Irhabi was based in the United States. Irhabi used countless other Web sites as free hosts for material that the jihadists needed to upload and share. In addition to these sites, Irhabi provided techniques for discovering server vulnerabilities, in the event that his suggested sites became secure. In this way, jihadists could use third-party hosts to disseminate propaganda so that they did not have to risk using their own web space and, more importantly, their own money. As he provided seemingly limitless space captured from vulnerable servers throughout the Internet, Irhabi was celebrated by his online followers. A mark of that appreciation was the following memorandum of praise offered by a member of Ansar in August 2004: More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032500020_2.html

 
 
 

Celebrating three decades of Apple  By Ina Fried  Staff Writer, CNET News  March 28, 2006  The original Apple logo featuring Isaac Newton under the fabled apple tree. The rainbow Apple logo, used from late 1976 to early 1998. Current Apple logo. On products, a simple gray version of the Apple is used, without embellishing it as has been done to computerized images. In the 1970s, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were going door-to-door at the UC Berkeley dorms selling "blue boxes"--electronic devices that tricked the telephone network into allowing free long-distance phone calls. Luckily for the technology world, the duo cleaned up its act and started making computers. Now, 30 years after its founding, Apple Computer has grown from a tiny start-up to a household name and cultural icon known as much for its iPod digital music players as its computers. Reader gallery "The technology industry is fundamentally about change and no company can survive for long without reinventing itself," said Rick Rashid, head of Microsoft Research and developer of the Mach kernel, which serves as the open-source core of Mac OS X. "Companies that can survive for 30 years are the exception rather than the rule, and something to celebrate." Apple has a brand name as recognizable as Coca-Cola and Federal Express and last year had a record $13.93 billion in annual sales and a $1.34 billion net profit. Given the company's current success, it's easy to forget how it fell from the top of the tech heap in the 1990s and scuffled along as Microsoft grew into the largest software company in the world and PC makers such as Compaq Computer and IBM came to dominate the industry Jobs and Wozniak helped create. But glossing over those years would make it difficult to describe just how remarkable Apple's current renaissance is. While Compaq now only exists as a brand name sold by Hewlett-Packard, and IBM no longer makes PCs, Apple is enjoying perhaps its finest hour. The iPod is a pop-culture phenomenon. And, incredible to some, Apple is having an easier time updating its flagship Macintosh operating system than Microsoft is having with Windows. Some say there are no second acts in business, but Jobs & Co. are making mincemeat of that old chestnut. Apple didn't invent the computer. But with the Apple II, which went on sale in April 1977, the company introduced a machine people actually wanted to use.  Read more:  http://news.com.com/2009-1041-6053869.html Apple Timeline  http://news.com.com/2009-1041-6054524.html

 
 
 

Brian Krebs on Computer Security Attacks on Unpatched IE Flaw Escalate More than 200 Web sites -- many of them belonging to legitimate businesses -- have been hacked and seeded with code that tries to take advantage of a unpatched security hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser to install hostile code on Windows computers when users merely visit the sites. In an update to its Security Response Web log, Microsoft security program manager Stephen Toulouse said the attacks Redmond is seeing against the IE flaw "are limited in scope for now and are being carried out by malicious Web sites." I have to call Microsoft out on both counts, and I think some of what I've uncovered so far about these attacks should make it clear that the situation is serious and getting worse by the hour. According to a list obtained by Security Fix, hackers have infected at least 200 sites, many of which you would not normally expect to associate with such attacks (i.e., porn and pirated-software vendors). Among the victims are a regional business council in Connecticut, a couple of vacation resorts in Florida, a travel-reservation site, an online business consultancy, an insurance company, and a site featuring things to do at various cities across the country. On Friday, hackers broke into the Web site of shipping company DLPromotionFreight.com and planted code that attempted to use the flaw to steal user names and passwords stored by IE. Yaniv Zahavi, chief technology officer for Intermakers Inc., the Plantation, Fla., company that manages the site, said it appears that only a handful of customers browsed the site during the few hours the attack code was present. Security Fix learned the location of one Web site being used as a virtual drop box for user name and password data stolen from people who'd visited the network of hacked sites (the SANS Internet Storm Center has a great post detailing exactly what one of these data-dump reports looks like). One of those victims was Abdel Marriez, a truck driver from Astoria, N.Y. The malicious program stole credit card information and credentials he used to access his e-mail online. Marriez said he couldn't understand how the code could have landed on his computer, since he said he is fastidious about ensuring his Norton anti-virus program has the latest updates from Symantec. After this experience, he said, he plans to change browsers. "IE and me are through, that's it," Marriez said. That same password-stealing program landed on the Windows PC belonging to Reaz Chowdhury, a programmer for Oracle Corp. who works out of his home in Orlando, Fla. Chowdhury said he's not sure which site he browsed in the past 24 hours that hijacked his browser, but he confirmed that the attackers had logged the user name and password for his company's virtual private network (VPN). Chowdhury also uses Norton anti-virus, which did not pick up any signs of infection. He said he won't rely on his anti-virus program to clean things up. "It's really not worth the risk," Chowdhury said. "I'm going to reinstall [the operating system] just to be sure." Both of these situations illustrate the dangers of relying on only anti-virus software. That is not to say anti-virus software is useless. It is a necessary element of protection for any Windows PC, and for better or worse will remain so for the foreseeable future. But there is a window of time between the creation of a new virus or worm and the availability of new anti-virus "definitions" that identify the intruder as malicious. Microsoft says Windows users should "take care not to visit unfamiliar or untrusted Web sites that could potentially host the malicious code" and that people who want to use IE should either disable "active scripting" or download the IE7 beta2 preview. Instructions for disabling active scripting are under the "workarounds" section of this Microsoft advisory (which incidentally is three clicks away from Microsoft.com homepage). Microsoft warns, however, that this may cause problems loading some Web sites. Indeed, I tested this solution as Microsoft recommends and found I could no longer access my Web mail. Turns out I also needed to add it to my list of "trusted sites," though Microsoft's advisory doesn't really make that clear. See this non-Microsoft site for a decent tutorial on how to set up your trusted-sites list. Rather than download a "beta" (read: potentially unstable) version of IE or wait around for Microsoft to issue a fix, a far better idea would be to ditch IE altogether (or only use it only when absolutely necessary). I use Mozilla's Firefox for everyday browsing, but your mileage may vary. There are other options, of course, such as Opera and Netscape, to name a couple. What amazes me is how many Windows users seem to blindly equate Internet Explorer with access to the Internet -- in much the same way that many America Online users are unsure whether they can use someone else's browser once they've signed on to their account. Even after you tell people that they may have just been whacked with a virus due to a flaw in IE, they still use it. Case in point: One guy I contacted to tell him his site was serving up this exploit code went to check his home page and then told me his browser just crashed on him. I had to ask: "Don't tell me you just visited the site in IE?" He had. I could only shake my head and sigh.   Security company Secure Elements rated the severity of the vulnerability at its highest level, 10, because it can be remotely exploited and an exploit has been released.

 

    Disabling Active Scripting

How To Disable Active Scripting in Internet Explorer from Tony Bradley, CISSP, MCSE2k, MCSA, A+ Many worms and viruses take advantage of flaws in Internet Explorer Active Scripting to execute malicious code on your computer. Some sites require active scripting to function and you may want it on for some. Those sites should be added to your Trusted Sites zone. Follow these steps to disable Active Scripting for untrusted sites. Difficulty: Average Time Required: 10 Minutes Here's How: 1.   Click on Tools on the menu bar at the top of Internet Explorer 2.   Click on Internet Options from the Tools drop-down menu 3.   When Internet Options opens up, click on the Security tab 4.   Select the Security Zone you wish to disable Active Scripting for- Internet, Local Intranet or Restricted. 5.   Selecting the default level High will automatically disable Active Scripting but may be too restrictive. Sponsored Links Vulnerability ScannerHow vulnerable are your networks? Find out with the SAINT Scanner.www.saintcorporation.com Spyware Remover DownloadPC Magazine Editor's Choice Winner Best Anti-Spyware. Secure Your PC!www.pctools.com Ethical Hacking TrainingLearn how to hack your own systems Expert penetration testing classeswww.liveammo.com 6.   You may opt to use Medium as a baseline and customize it. Select the Custom Level button. 7.   Set Reset Custom Settings to Medium and click the Reset button. 8.   Set the options under ActiveX Controls and Plug-ins to Disable. 9.   If you encounter sites that require Active Scripting to function you can add them to the Trusted Sites zone. 10.   If you encounter sites that contain malicious code you can add them to the Restricted Sites zone. Tips:    1. Restricted Sites security zone should be set to High    2. Trusted Sites security zone can be set to Medium or Low    3. Local Intranet security zone includes only those sites from your own Intranet so should be safe on Medium or Low    4. Internet security zone should be set to High or Medium with Active Scripting turned off   How To Configure Internet Explorer Security from Tony Bradley, CISSP, MCSE2k, MCSA, A+ Internet Explorer offers four different zones to help you classify security level depending on how well you know or trust the site: Trusted, Restricted, Internet and Intranet or Local. [p] Classifying the sites you visit and configuring your Internet Explorer security settings for each zone can help to ensure you can safely surf the Web without fear of malicious ActiveX or Java applets. Difficulty: Average Time Required: 10 Minutes Here's How: 1.   Click on Tools on the menu bar at the top of Internet Explorer 2.   Click on Internet Options from the Tools drop-down menu 3.   When Internet Options opens up, click on the Security tab 4.   Internet Explorer begins by categorizing sites into either Internet, Local Intranet, Trusted Site or Restricted Site zones. You can specify the security settings for each zone. Select the zone you wish to configure. 5.   You can use the Default Level button to select from the pre-defined security settings Microsoft set up in Internet Explorer. See Tips for details of each setting. Sponsored Links Spyware Remover DownloadPC Magazine EDITOR'S CHOICE Winner Top-Rated Spyware & Adware Remover!www.pctools.com Free Microsoft WebcastRegister now! Security360 Webcast Mike Nash: Browser Securitywww.microsoft.com/security360 Ethical Hacking TrainingLearn how to hack your own systems Expert penetration testing classeswww.liveammo.com 6.   MEDIUM is most appropriate for the majority of Internet surfing. It has safeguards against malicious code, but is not so restrictive as to prohibit you from viewing most web sites. 7.   You can also click on the Custom Level button and alter individual settings, starting with one of the Default levels as a baseline and then changing specific settings. Tips:    1. LOW -Minimal safeguards and warning prompts are provided -Most content is downloadable and run without prompts -All active content can run -Appropriate for sites that you absolutely trust    2. MEDIUM-LOW -Same as Medium without prompts -Most content will be run without prompts -Unsigned ActiveX controls will not be downloaded -Appropriate for sites on your local network (Intranet)    3. MEDIUM -Safe browsing and still functional -Prompts before downloading potentially unsafe content -Unsigned ActiveX controls will not be downloaded -Appropriate for most Internet sites    4. HIGH -The safest way to browse, but also the least functional -Less secure features are disabled -Appropriate for sites that might have harmful content.

 

VIRUS AND OTHER STINKY STUFF:

                   Coming Our Way!

Trojan horses steal bank details, passwords   By Dawn Kawamoto, CNET News  Published on ZDNet News: March 24, 2006 Viruses and worms Two Trojan horses with distinctive traits have been flagged by security researchers: one that hijacks one-time-use passwords, and another that hides behind a rootkit. The unrelated malicious programs, reported this week by security companies, represent new twists thought up by hackers in their development of Trojan horses, which are harmful programs disguised to look like innocent software. Banks in the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain have been targeted by MetaFisher, otherwise known as Spy-Agent and PWS. After infecting a computer, the Trojan horse waits until the user visits a legitimate bank Web site, then injects malicious HTML into certain fields there. The program then hijacks one-time-use PINs and transaction numbers as the person enters them into the fields. As a result, those one-time PINs and transaction numbers are never logged onto the Web site and they remain valid, said Ramses Martinez, a director at security firm iDefense. The intruders likely store the data either for their own use or sell them on to others, he added. The attackers attempt to place the Trojan on a computer using an exploit for the Windows Meta File flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, according to a Symantec advisory. The potential victim must visit a malicious Web site to infect their system, and attackers may use e-mails to direct them there. A keylogger, which surreptitiously records the user's keystrokes, is installed on the computer alongside the Trojan. Sana Labs discovered the other Trojan, which is distributed alongside a rootkit that hides it. The malicious software spreads via the Alcra worm, which directs infected Microsoft Windows PCs to Web sites where the programs are downloaded, Sana said. The Trojan is able to unearth passwords and usernames used previously on a machine and does not have to track keystrokes, according to Sana. The security company said it has discovered 37,000 usernames and passwords, the majority for social networking Web sites, on log files in 7,000 locations. Once the malicious software is loaded onto a PC, it communicates with a Russian Web server, which stores the usernames and passwords gleaned by the Trojan. Sana said the Trojan is well hidden by the kernel-level rootkit and that because of this, some antivirus programs may have difficulty detecting it. The company said that as of Monday, only five security applications--UNA, VBA32, Sophos, NOD32 version 2 and eTrust-Vet--were able to detect the threat.

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The  Cook's Thesaurus is a cooking encyclopedia that covers thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools.  Entries include pictures, descriptions, synonyms, pronunciations, and suggested substitutions.  You can find Bintje potato or cotechino.  Looks and sounds good eventhough I never heard of 'em. http://www.foodsubs.com/

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