Specifications

SAFER – Vol. 3, Issue 6 5 © 2000 The Relay Group
EXECUTIVE NEWS
What follows is the author’s selection of rumors and noises of concern to the security community. We
welcome your comments and opinions.
General News
- A computer virus dubbed the "Love Bug" caused havoc with computer systems worldwide,
shutting down email servers at major companies and penetrating the Pentagon and Britain's
parliament. Companies across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia are said to have been
hit by the virus, raising fears of a repeat of the Melissa virus which caused chaos in the United
States last year. The world's biggest wireless telecom firm, Vodafone AirTouch Plc (VOD), shut
down its email system because of the "Love Bug" and London's House of Commons also
succumbed and closed its email system for about two hours while it eradicated it. "We've got the 'I
Love You' virus," a Vodafone spokesman told Reuters in London. "It's very widespread and I
believe many of the major corporations are affected." The new virus originates in an email entitled
"I love you" and reading: "kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me." Once the
attachment is launched, the virus sends copies of the same email to everybody in the user's
address book. It targets Microsoft (MSFT) Corp's Outlook software and works on the same
principle as the Melissa virus, which infected about a million computers, clogging whole networks
in the United States and causing $80 million in damage in early 1999. Of course, everybody fails
to mention that it is user who clicks on the attachment that activates the virus.
- Governments are moving too slowly to tackle the rising tide of cyber crime, according to
lobby groups and industry bodies at the G8 conference on computer criminals. High-tech
companies say governments will need their help to beat fraudsters, virus writers, malicious
hackers and perpetrators of other cyber crimes. But the firms are resisting attempts to turn them
into surrogate police forces and say governments need to do more by themselves. The Council of
Europe is drafting an international convention to fight hackers, virus writers and Internet
fraudsters. But the convention, which is also getting input from non-EU members Japan, United
States, Canada and South Africa, will not be ready for signing before September 2001.
Europe – Middle-East
- A few weeks back, Russia's secret service agency raised privacy watchdogs' hackles when it
admitted it could intercept and monitor all Russian Internet traffic. On Sunday the British
government acknowledged that it was building a system that could do the same thing in Great
Britain, ostensibly to help catch money launderers, terrorists, pedophiles, and other criminals who
do business online. It also could help usher in an era of Orwellian surveillance, privacy advocates
fear. "They've taken a lead from the KGB," said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters, an online
privacy advocacy group. The British system, called the Government Technical Assistance Centre,
will have its hub in the headquarters of the MI5, the British secret service agency. All of Britain's
Internet Service Providers will be connected to the GTAC through dedicated lines (which they will
have to pay for themselves). After its scheduled completion by the end of the year, the system will
allow British police and secret service agents to intercept every bit of the country's Internet traffic.
That could include email, credit card transactions, banking data -- any information exchanged
between computers on the Web. Why are all privacy attacks by governments justified by “catching
terrorists” phrase, and yet we have failed to see any government catching terrorists just by looking
at Internet traffic.
- The number of computer-related crimes continues to rise in Russia, with more than 200
cases of hacking reported in the first three months of the year, a news agency quoted a top police
official. More computer crimes were recorded in the period from January through March than in all
of 1999, said Vitaly Degterev, first deputy chief of the Interior Ministry's department on high-tech
crimes.