Free Republic

Navy battle software unsafe <"Peter G. Neumann" <Redacted for his sake...GS>> Tue, 12 Oct 2004 09:02:47 -0400 [Source: Article by Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor, *Sunday Herald* (Scotland), 10 Oct 2004] The Royal Navy's new, state-of-the-art destroyer has been fitted with combat management software that can be hacked into, crashes easily and is vulnerable to viruses, according to one of the system's designers who was fired after raising his concerns. Gerald Wilson, who has 25 years' experience designing naval software, worked for Alenia Marconi Systems (AMS) in a joint venture with Bae Systems and the Italian company Finmeccanica on the combat...

When the Bush administration took over the Pentagon's beleaguered inspector general office in 2002, officials found something startling: The director's office, at some point, had been electronically bugged.     Sorting out why the listening device was inside the walls of the office, with a cord leading to another office, is just one issue that had to be addressed by Joseph E. Schmitz, President Bush's pick three years ago to be the Defense Department's top cop.     A Naval Academy graduate and civil litigation lawyer, Mr. Schmitz was tapped to run the office responsible for investigating million-dollar fraud in the far-flung defense industry...

BOSTON - Popular Microsoft Corp. products may be vulnerable to a security vulnerability that is similar to one patched for the Mozilla Web browsers last week.

Koch: Moore's propaganda film cheapens debate, polarizes nation By Ed Koch SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM Monday, June 28, 2004 It is shocking to me that Americans in a time of war, and we literally are at war with Americans being deliberately killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere by Islamic terrorists, will attack their own country, sapping its strength and making its enemies stronger. I am not a supporter of the xenophobic slogan “My country right or wrong.” But I do believe, when seeking to make it right if it is wrong, that none of us should endanger the country, our...

Two new vulnerabilities have been discovered in Internet Explorer which allow a complete bypass of security and provide system access to a computer, including the installation of files on someone's hard disk without their knowledge, through a single click. Worse, the holes have been discovered from analysis of an existing link on the Internet and a fully functional demonstration of the exploit have been produced and been shown to affect even fully patched versions of Explorer. It has been rated "extremely critical" by security company Secunia, and the only advice is to disable Active Scripting support for all but trusted...

Microsoft warns of 3 "critical" flaws Tue 13 April, 2004 21:36 By Reed Stevenson SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft has warned that three "critical"-rated flaws in the Windows operating system and other programs could allow hackers to sneak into personal computers and snoop on sensitive data. The security warning was announced with another software vulnerability rated "important" as part of Microsoft's monthly security bulletin. The warning was issued with a software patch that fixes the problem on Windows operating systems dating back to Windows 98, as well as software that is part of Internet Explorer and the Outlook express e-mail program....

April 8 ? Sonny Ramaswamy is trying to walk a very fine line. He doesn't want to be seen as an alarmist, but he thinks people ought to know about the thought that keeps haunting him these days. Ramaswamy, who chairs the department of entomology at Kansas State University, is concerned that the tiny little insects he has spent a lifetime studying could become implements of international terrorism. It's possible, he says, that even a stable fly, or something as tiny as an aphid, could be used to distribute deadly pathogens over a wide geographical area in a surprisingly...

'This goes no further...'By Brian Wheeler BBC News Online Magazine Following revelations about bugging at the United Nations, is there any way of ensuring that your private conversations stay that way? News that Kofi Annan and other senior UN figures may have been routinely bugged by US or British security services has caused a huge political row around the world. But it will also have caused alarm among other people in the public eye who deal with sensitive information - or anyone, indeed, who values their privacy. If the secretary general of the United Nations cannot prevent his private conversations...

Colossians 2:8 Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit: according to the tradition of men according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ. Annibale Bugnini.Up until the turbulent 1960s, Catholic Liturgy and the mass we celebrated had been the result of centuries of divine inspiration, historic experience, wisdom, refinement, debate and the school of hard knocks. Those who developed our worship service, canon law and collective ethos throughout these centuries  (politely putting aside Jesus Himself for a moment) were church elders, wise-men and saints who had managed to build the greatest and...

When you point to a hyperlink in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook Express, or Microsoft Outlook, the address of the Web site typically appears in the Status bar at the bottom of the window. After you click a link that opens in Internet Explorer, the address of the Web site typically appears in the Internet Explorer Address bar, and the title of the Web page typically appears in the Title bar of the window. However, a malicious user could create a link to a deceptive (spoofed) Web site that displays the address, or URL, to a legitimate Web site in...

Tourists and immigrants 'behind US bed bug plague' By Charles Laurence in New York (Filed: 21/12/2003) Bed bugs have invaded the United States for the first time in 50 years, munching their way through sleeping victims in an infestation described by pest controllers as being "out of control". European travellers and Third World immigrants are being blamed for bringing the bugs back to the US, with 28 American states reporting recent infestations. To their shame and horror, wealthy home owners and guests staying at expensive hotels have woken up covered in red, itchy welts, as well as people living in...

Posted on Thu, Nov. 13, 2003 Two Phila. union chiefs subpoenaed The federal grand jury investigating corruption summoned a Street ally and his son, a source said. By Nancy Phillips and Emilie Lounsberry Inquirer Staff Writers A Philadelphia union leader who is a major supporter of Mayor Street has been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury that is investigating corruption in city government, according to a court-system source familiar with the labor official. Samuel Staten Sr., business manager of Local 332 of the Laborers' International Union of North America and a longtime Street ally, and his son, Samuel...

Posted on Fri, Oct. 24, 2003 Bug Didn't Incriminate Mayor By Mark Fazlollah, Joseph Tanfani, Emilie Lounsberry and Nathan Gorenstein Inquirer Staff Writers The bug planted in Mayor Street's City Hall office did not record any incriminating words from the mayor during its brief, two-week life, The Inquirer has learned. The discovery of the FBI listening device, found so soon after it was installed, set back the wide-ranging corruption investigation that is mainly focused on the awarding of city contracts in exchange for campaign contributions. It also ignited a public furor that has blotted out all other issues in the...

Posted on Thu, Oct. 23, 2003 U.S. officials: Bug not political By Joseph A. Slobodzian and Nancy Phillips Inquirer Staff Writers The extraordinary decision to bug Mayor Street's office was a necessary step in a continuing federal investigation and was not politically motivated, the region's top federal law enforcement officials said yesterday. U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan and FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Lampinski said federal authorities never intended for the bug to be discovered weeks before a close election. "Certainly nobody wanted to have any negative impact on the election," Meehan said in the lobby of the Sheraton Society Hill...

Second Thoughts By: William W. Lawrence 10/14/2003 Urgent message to Mayor Street: Call David Novak -- just in case. Novak is an ex-con who wrote Downtime: A Guide to Federal Incarceration. He now makes an honest living by tutoring white-collar wrongdoers on how to spend their time in the slammer. Some Novak tips: Inmate etiquette dictates that you don't rat, don't cut in line, don't reach, don't ask, don't touch, don't whine and flush often. He says pack light: The only personal property permitted is one soft-covered religious text, a religious medallion worth less than $50, a pair of eyeglasses,...

Thursday, Oct 09, 2003 Posted on Thu, Oct. 09, 2003 MAYOR NO TARGET BUT FEW KNOW OR WILL SAY WHAT'S UP WITH BUG By DAVE DAVIES & CHRIS BRENNAN daviesd@phillynews.com Yong Kim / Daily News Mayor Street's office in City Hall, where listening device was found Tuesday after police conducted routine sweep. MAYOR STREET said last night that he's been assured he is not the target of the FBI investigation that led to the installation of an electronic bug in his City Hall office. But that doesn't necessarily mean Street is in the clear. Neither Street nor federal prosecutors would...

FBI Steps Up ProbeBy Emilie Lounsberry, Mark Fazlollah and Clea BensonInquirer Staff Writers A wide-ranging federal investigation of alleged corruption in City Hall broke into the open yesterday, as FBI agents seized records from people with political ties to Mayor Street.In several searches across the city, federal agents rushed to preserve possible evidence the day after Philadelphia police found a listening device that the FBI had planted in the ceiling of Street's City Hall office.Yesterday morning, agents raided a small financial firm run by two Street supporters, including one of Philadelphia's most prominent Muslim leaders. Under Street's administration, the firm...

NBC News has confirmed that it was federal investigators who placed an electronic device in Philadelphia mayor's John Street office. NBC News correspondent Pete Williams said that several sources confirmed to him that the device was placed in the office by the U.S. government. However, a law enforcement official cautioned that the presence of the bug there does not necessarily mean that the mayor, himself, is under investigation. Officials confirmed to NBC News it was put in place by federal investigators, though they won't say specifically whether it was the work of the FBI or another agency. Williams said it...

Posted on Wed, Oct. 08, 2003 Mayor Street's office buggedBy Thomas J. Gibbons Jr., Leonard N. Fleming and Craig R. McCoyInquirer Staff Writers A sophisticated electronic listening device with multiple microphones was found yesterday morning hidden in the ceiling of Mayor Street's City Hall office.Within hours, the FBI said that the eavesdropping device was not related to the mayor's race, but declined to explain how it knew that so quickly.Pressed whether federal investigators themselves might have planted the bug, FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi said the agency "would not confirm or deny" whether that was the case.Street emerged from his...

Scientists have discovered the world's toughest life form. The single-celled microbe, called "strain 121" for the moment, can survive at a scorching 130C higher than the boiling point of water and nearly 20 degrees higher than the previous record holder. The discovery is announced today in the journal Science by Derek Lovley and Kazem Kashefi of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. It raises the possibility that life began on earth earlier than currently thought. "Our goal was not to break the temperature limit," said Prof Lovley. "As part of the general characterisation of any organism, you look at what...