Computer Security Weekly, January 24, 2000

Articles in this Topic Discussions in this Topic

Jan 24, 2000

There is great rejoicing over the US government's new relaxation of crypto regulations. At least in commercial circles. Basically, any commercial encryption software, with keys of any length, will be subject to a one time review, and then will be exportable to any except an identified few "terrorist" nations. However, the position of encryption research and study is still not clear.

http://www.pcweek.com/a/pcwt0001193/2423...

The spy satellite outage was actually a bit worse than the Pentagon originally admitted. It also seems to have been the result of a patch that was supposed to prevent problems. Although the actual outage was only for a few hours, data was only a small trickle of normal volume for a few days.

According to some published reports, crackers have obtained the "source code" for the Visa card system, and have demanded a ransom of ten million pounds for it. What part of the system they have code for is unclear, and there is no indication of what kind of security problem this represents.

Berlin's Fire Department had a Y2K glitch in the dispatch system. Alarm's "given" to a particular station seemed to be dispatched, but the station never received the information or alert. Engines were also showed as being dispatched when they were, in fact, still in the station.

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/2000/0... http://www.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/2000/0... http://www.tagesspiegel.de/archiv/1999/0...

Sidekick 98 also seems to have a Y2K bug, even though the company had announced it was OK. A Patch is available.

Another Outlook bug. If a line starts with the word "begin" followed by two spaces, the remainder of the message is interpretted as an attachment. The attachment is said to be of an unknown file type, and cannot be read.

The Usenet Death Penalty against @Home has been lifted after company officials finally responded to complaints about spamming.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-152...

There is a new Word macro/Outlook virus called W97M/Venus-mm. This is fairly closely related to Melissa, and would not rate a mention except for the twist in the message carrying the virus: it is being released as a virus warning.

http://www.datafellows.com/v-descs/venus...

A patch is available for the Microsoft RTF overflow bug noted here earlier.

http://www.microsoft.com/security/bullet... http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downl... http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downl... http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Relea... http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Relea... http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/...

mailto:rslade@vcn.bc.ca
mailto:rslade@sprint.ca
mailto:robertslade@usa.net
mailto:p1@canada.com

http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm

http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade/rms.htm

http://www97.pair.com/robslade/

Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses, 0-387-94663-2, (800-SPRINGER)

Go To Page: 1

The copyright of the article Computer Security Weekly, January 24, 2000 in Computer Security is owned by Robert Slade. Permission to republish Computer Security Weekly, January 24, 2000 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.