I'm not sure how people could still be suffering from 'Slammer'. All you have to do is reboot and patch, maybe block a couple of ports. That's a pretty simple response plan. But according to this piece, several sites and networks are STILL DOWN! Also in the article are some snippets referencing one of the more intriguing aspects of this entire incident - the downed Bank of America ATM network. That shouldn't have happened - but evidently there's some overlap between the private financial networks and the Internet.

American Express Co. confirmed that customers couldn't reach its Web site to check credit statements and account balances during parts of the weekend. Perhaps most surprising, the attack prevented many customers of Bank of America Corp., one of the largest U.S. banks, and some large Canadian banks from withdrawing money from automatic teller machines Saturday.

President Bush's No. 2 cyber-security adviser, Howard Schmidt, acknowledged Monday that what he called "collateral damage" stunned even experts who have warned about uncertain effects on the nation's most important electronic systems from mass-scale Internet disruptions.

"One would not have expected a request for bandwidth would have affected the ATM network," Schmidt said. "This is one of the things we've been talking about for a long time, getting a handle on interdependencies and cascading effects."

The White House and Canadian defense officials confirmed they were investigating how the attack, which started about 12:30 a.m. EST Saturday, could have affected ATM banking and other important networks that should remain immune from traditional Internet outages.

Schmidt said early reports suggested private ATM networks overlapped with parts of the public Internet. Such design decisions were criticized as "totally brain-dead" by Alex Yuriev of AOY LLC, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm for banks and telecommunications companies.

posted by mt at 09:52

Interesting read from the NYTimes on the growth of white-collar computer crime. Several good examples toward the end of the article.

Thieves are not just diverting cash from company bank accounts, these experts say. They are pilfering valuable information like business development strategies, new product specifications or contract bidding plans and selling the data to competitors.

"Criminal activity on the Internet is growing — not steadily, but exponentially, both in frequency and complexity," said Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, an information management group and consultancy. "Criminals are getting smarter and figuring out ways to beat the system."

posted by mt at 14:57