CNet columnist on the FUD war brings.

Last I checked, it was physical terrorists who suicide-bombed the World Trade Center. Wily-fingered hackers had nothing to do with it.

And check out this rip on Richard Clarke:

Clarke was a professional paranoiac, a modern-day Chicken Little blinkered by a career spent in the cloistered intelligence community. It didn't help that Clarke's résumé featured such harrowing tasks as planning for the "continuity of government" after a nuclear strike on Washington--a job where no precaution is too extreme. Soon after President Clinton appointed him to a "national coordinator" post in 1998, Clarke became infamous for darkling warnings about the specter of a "digital Pearl Harbor" that would snarl computers and roil the world's economy.

Ouch!
posted by mt at 15:46

Wired reports:

Male. Obsessed with computers. Lacking a girlfriend. Aged 14 to 34. Capable of sowing chaos worldwide.

That is the profile of the average computer-virus writer, an anti-virus expert said on Tuesday.

About 1,000 viruses are created every month by virus writers increasingly intent on targeting new operating systems, said Jan Hruska, the chief executive of Sophos, the world's fourth-largest anti-virus solutions provider. "So far, we've seen no indication of decreased interest in virus writing," Hruska told Reuters in an interview.

posted by mt at 10:12

Wired reports:

Riley Hassell was mortified this week when details from a confidential bug report he had written mysteriously showed up on a popular security mailing list.

Hassell, a security researcher for eEye Digital Security, had explained in writing a flaw he discovered in widely used Internet software from Sun Microsystems. The problem was so severe that Hassell had agreed to keep his advisory secret for several weeks until Sun and other vendors could create fixes for the affected applications.

But an anonymous person using the e-mail account Hack4life@hushmail.com apparently thought the information shouldn't be kept under wraps.

posted by mt at 09:40

Now, a new federal rule designed to crack down on unauthorized disclosures of personal medical information is set to take effect. Beginning April 14, such a leak would be a violation of federal law, punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and 10 years in jail under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

The rule requires doctors, hospitals, health plans and others to take steps to protect medical information, and gives patients new rights to manage their own records.

posted by mt at 08:52

New.com reports on a service that can tap wireless data.

Several police agencies are now testing the NetDiscovery service and getting a first glimpse into whether criminals are among the approximately 10 million people using advanced wireless data services such as photo-sharing or high-speed wireless Internet access, which all five wireless carriers now offer.

posted by mt at 12:46

Full Discloure post from Jason Combs that warns of versions of M$ security scanning tools that retreive outdated patch information:

Only admins who downloaded the updated HFNetChk (version 3.86) directly from Shavlik Technologies had a tool that automatically relied on Shavlik's XML file and could therefore detect the vulnerable ssnetlib.dll file and warn that it needed a hotfix during calendar year 2002.

posted by js at 10:27