contributed by Space Rogue
I take a couple of days off and the person I leave in charge blows a huge story!. Oh well. Network Associates (NAI) has gone way overboard on the sensationalism of a new 'virus'. What they claim to be "the first legitimate incident of cyber-terrorism" that they have seen. Actually it more closely resembles a worm and may even be a trojan. It breeds on NT and can travel across a network. It waits for a domain admin to login and then reacts assuming the admin has more privs than a regular user. Rebooting the effected machine seems to stop the 'virus' from continuing to operate. There have been doubts raised about the encryption capabilities reported by NAI and the current theory is that it will do remote compression of files. There have even been reports that this is a 'helpful' program. The infestation seems to have been contained within MCI WorldCom.

There are a lot of questions that still haven't been answered. Conflicting reports from various locations seem to indicate that whatever this thing is, virus, trojan, worm, it is not anywhere near as bad as NAI has claimed it to be.

Microsoft
CERT Advisory
Network Associates
C|net - A good article that details the chain of events

contributed by evenprime
Norwegian supreme court differentiates between port scanning and penetration, declaring the former to be a legal form of network exploration. This is a good sign, hopefully we can get legal definitions like that done here in the US.

Wired

contributed by demoniz
Recently a web site run by Slamp Coach International, makers of buses, trolleys and coaches, was cracked. It now appears that 100% Pure Bikkel an HNN Affiliate is being blamed for the crack. This blame appears to be totally based on the fact that the crack was reported on the 100% Pure Bikkel web site. Interesting that HNN also reported this crack but we have recieved no contact from anyone involved.

Hopefully this is not a case of "He says he is a hacker so he must be guilty"

100% Pure Bikkel
Slamp Coach International

contributed by Space Rogue
Machines with IP Stacks derived from BSD may be vulnerable to a new Denial of Service attack, CERT warned recently.

CERT Advisory
InternetNews

contributed by evenprime
The US government standard for encryption has been deemed to week by RSA and they intend to prove it. RSA has issued DES Challenge III. RSA is offering $10,000 for cracking DES in 24 hours and $5,000 for cracking it in 48 hours.

Wired
RSA

contributed by Space Rogue
ODS Networks has announced that the US Government has approved it request to export strong cryptography without key recovery. Yippeee, you say? Not so fast. Although there is no controvesial key recovery system in this product it does contain what the company calls "Stream Recovery". Basically this allows the government a 'backdoor' into your encrypted data.

ODS Networks

contributed by evenprime
Another story on the Chaos Communication Congress and their upcoming convention. They are planning on releasing a statement about the police investigation of the death of Tron (Boris Floricic). Tron was found hanging from a tree in a park in Berlin. The Police have called his death a suicide. The CCC feel that it may in fact be homicide.

Wired

contributed by I0StrEAM
AntiOnline Cracked?
HNN received this in our email yesterday "My b0iiz and mahself took down www.antionline.com today with a multitude of DoS attacks and pretty much Pearl Harbor of JP's homefront. Tack the name Chaosklan to it's removal." We are unable to confirm the above statements but it is interesting that www.antionline.com has been unreachable for at least the last 12 hours.

Late Update
AntiOnline has accused HNN of poor reporting by bringing you the previous story. We stand by what was posted.
We where unable to contact AntiOnline for confirmation. I don't have John Vranesevich's email readily available and since his site was down we had no way of getting in touch with him.
Because we where unable to confirm the email posted above we listed it here in the "Rumors from the Underground" section. We even mention that we were not able to confirm the allegation.
We are glad that no harm has come to AntiOnlines servers and wish them all the best during this joyous holiday season.

High taxes in Mexico
RaZa-MeXiCaNa Hackers Team have cracked a large number of sites sites to protest the 15% telephony tax in Mexico. This tax makes it very difficult for people to get on the internet.

RaZa-MeXiCaNa

Some of the cracked sites are:
http://www.cabolinda.com
http://www.apibajasur.com.mx
http://www.doring.com
http://www.villamex.com.mx
http://www.cabo-architects.com
http://www.finisterra.com

contributed by Kalypz0 and Syntax
HcV on the rampage
HcV has also been extremely busy. The following is a partial list of the many sites that where cracked.
http://www.candycamera.com
http://www.coastexplorer.com
http://www.clarkscomputers.com
http://www.repro-fabikan.com
http://www.chicherie.com
http://www.mp3site.com
http://www.thegalleryno1.com
http://www.webking.com/

HcV