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Alleged Ponzi Scheme Likely to Top $1 Billion, FBI Says
Wall Street Journal (11/13/09) P. B3; Esterl, Mike
The FBI said Nov. 12 that the Ponzi scheme Fort Lauderdale, Fla., attorney Scott W. Rothstein allegedly ran from 2005 until October likely topped $1 billion, making it one of the largest Ponzi schemes discovered in the last several years. As part of that scheme, Rothstein--the founder of the high-profile Fort Lauderdale law firm Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler P.A.--allegedly promised double-digit returns to clients who invested in what they believed were settlements related to sexual harassment and other labor-related claims. However, the stakes of the settlements Rothstein sold were actually fictitious. Rothstein also allegedly told investors that they could purchase the settlements at a discounted price and be repaid the full amount at a later time. Authorities say that Rothstein then used the funds he collected from new investors to pay off existing investors. Criminal charges are not expected to be filed in the case for the next several weeks.
More Job Seekers Scramble To Erase Their Criminal Past
Wall Street Journal (11/12/09) Belkin, Douglas
Due to increased corporate background checks and the continually tight job market, many job hunters are looking to legally clear their criminal records. Michigan state police report that they will set aside 46 percent more convictions in 2009 than in 2008 while Oregon expects to set aside 33 percent more. In addition, Florida says it sealed and expunged 43 percent more convictions. Attorneys report that past offenses are increasingly being discovered, and hindering employment rates, for both blue-collar and middle-class applicants with solid work histories. Background checks have become more commonplace since Sept. 11. More than 80 percent of companies performed checks in 2006, compared to fewer than 50 percent in 1998, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. Employers defend these background checks, saying that liability from workplace theft and on-the-job violence are both major concerns, particularly in the current economic climate. In addition to rising background checks, the number of Americans who have been arrested has increased significantly in the past 50 years. In 1967, 50 percent of American men had been arrested. Since that time arrests made largely in connection to domestic violence and illegal drugs have pushed that percentage to 60 percent.
Mexican Businessmen Ask for UN Peacekeepers to Police Drugs War
Telegraph.co.uk (11/12/09) Leonard, Tom
A group of businesses from the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez have submitted a request to the Mexican government and the Intern-American Commission on Human Rights to ask the UN to send peacekeepers to quell violence in the town. The city is the epicenter of Mexican drug cartel violence, but because of its close proximity to El Paso, Texas, it is also a prime destination for multinational corporations. In an effort to quell the violence there, 8,500 Mexican troops have been deployed as well as a number of new local police recruits. While the operation initially appeared to be successful, the violence has returned, with nearly 2,000 people killed so far in 2009. Many of the city's criminals have also turned their focus on local businesses, sending extortion and kidnapping figures skyrocketing and threatening the safety of both locals and expatriates, including Americans and Britons. In response to the request, a UN spokesman stressed that the Mexican government would need to approach the UN Security Council before any peacekeeping troops could be deployed.
Eight Charged in Elaborate Theft of Debit Card Data
USA Today (11/11/09) Acohido, Byron
Eight foreigners were indicted by a U.S. grand jury on Nov. 10 of carrying out a massive computer fraud attack entailing the theft of debit card data from RBS WorldPay that was used to take millions of dollars from ATMs worldwide. Three of the eight cybercriminals allegedly broke into RBS WorldPay's computer network last November and cracked the encryption codes shielding account numbers and PINs for 44 prepaid payroll accounts. Acting U.S. attorney Sally Quillian Yates says the crooks boosted the payroll account limits, then arranged to have the stolen account numbers incorporated into the magnetic stripes of blank payment cards. A network of "cashers" proceeded to withdrew more than $9 million from more than 2,100 ATMs in the United States, Canada, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Italy, Japan, and Hong Kong in just 12 hours. "The level of coordination was staggering," says RSA analyst Uri Rivner. He says the rapidity of the fraud attacks allowed an immense amount of theft to be perpetrated in a short time. Analysts say the attack is an example of how sophisticated cybercriminals have become at stealing data on a global scale. "I'm willing to bet there are larger operations out there than this one," says VeriSign iDefense analyst Adam Bumgarner.
Orlando Shooting Comes as Trend in Workplace Violence Drops
Christian Science Monitor (11/07/09) Trumbull, Mark
A former employee of the Orlando engineering firm Reynolds Smith & Hills walked into the company's offices on Friday and opened fire, killing one person and leaving five other injured. The alleged shooter, Jason Rodriguez, was found later at his mother's home. It remains unclear exactly why Rodriguez went on a shooting rampage in the offices of his former employer. However, Ken Jacobson, a top manager and legal counsel at Reynolds Smith & Hills, said Rodriguez had been hired from his job in mid-2007 after he failed to take steps to improve his performance at work. Despite Friday's shooting, workplace homicides are not on the rise. Statistics released by the Labor Department show that there were 517 workplace homicides in 2008, a number that was half of what it was in the early 1990s. Most of these killings are incidents such as convenience store robberies that turn violent, said Steve Kaufer, the co-founder of the Palm Springs, Calif.-based Workplace Violence Research Institute. Nevertheless, employers are taking steps to prevent workplace violence, including training employees to look for signs that colleagues may commit violent acts, installing security systems such as badge-swipe access controls, and implementing threat-response policies.
Obama Orders Review of Possible Fort Hood Signs
Associated Press (11/13/09) Brown, Angela K.; Baldor, Lolita C.
President Barack Obama has ordered a review into the government's handling of intelligence related to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with shooting and killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5. As part of that review, which will be overseen by Jon Brennan, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, all intelligence related to Hasan will be preserved and analyzed to determine whether signs of contact between him and a radical Muslim cleric were mishandled. The first results of the review are expected to be completed by the end of November. Meanwhile, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, is also calling for an investigation into what federal agencies knew about Hasan's contact with the imam, which consisted of between 10 and 20 e-mails, and what they did with that information. In addition, the Senate is planning to hold a hearing on the shooting next week. The investigations into what intelligence agencies knew about Hasan in the months before the shooting comes as a military official said that some in the Army questioned whether the Army psychiatrist's allegiances were with Muslims fighting U.S. troops. However, the official said that military officials saw no signs that Hasan would engage in violent behavior, and that there were indications that Hasan could actually thrive in the military.
Fort Hood Highlights a Threat of Homegrown Jihad
Time (11/11/09) Thompson, Mark
The shooting at Fort Hood that was allegedly perpetrated by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan has increased fears that U.S. operations in the Middle East have angered Muslims worldwide and inspired many in the West to take violent action. Connected via the Internet to foreign terrorist organizations and global jihadists, self-made terrorists may have become the greatest threat on U.S. soil. According to Marc Sageman, terrorism scholar and former CIA case officer in Pakistan, nearly 80 percent of the terrorist plots in the past five years have been homegrown groups that had "no physical links to any transnational terrorists group." Past threats had developed from structured groups of al-Qaida members, with organized commands and a large number of resources. This has changed, Sageman said, into a number of informal, local groups that attempt to create and carry out operations from the bottom up. There has been a terrorism-related event in the United States every month this year, whether the plan was thwarted or actually carried out.
Vt. Lawmakers Demand Blackwater Investigation
Bennington Banner (11/11/09) Goswami, Neal P.
Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) has written a letter asking the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to launch an investigation into allegations that the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide bribed Iraqi officials in 2007. According to a report published Wednesday in the New York Times, four former top executives at Blackwater--which is now known as Xe Services--approved payments of roughly $1 million to Iraqi officials in December 2007. Those payments were approved amid growing criticism of Blackwater for its involvement in a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi citizens dead. The officials were hoping that the payments would prevent them from be denied the permits they needed to retain contracts with the U.S. State Department and other private clients, the New York Times noted. However, the payments may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Welch wrote in his letter. He also noted that the company may have interfered with a grand jury investigation. Welch's proposed Blackwater probe has the support of several other lawmakers, including Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is proposing ending the use of private security forces like Xe in war zones.
U.S. Knew of Ties To Extremist
Dallas Morning News (TX) (11/10/09) Egerton, Brooks; Landers, Jim
Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sent multiple e-mails to Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric known for his extremist views. Hasan, who is recovering from gunshot wounds incurred after he shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, may have met al-Awlaki as early as 2001. U.S. counterterrorism agents then began intercepting e-mails between Hasan and al-Awlaki in 2008. In total, they tracked between 10 and 20 e-mails. The imam, who has been living in Yemen since 2002, reportedly responded to Hasan twice, but his e-mails were deemed "innocent." The FBI confirmed that Hasan had come to the attention of the FBI in December 2008 as part of an unrelated investigation. The communications monitored between Hasan and the unidentified subject of that communication were found to be "consistent with research being conducted by Maj. Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist." Counterintelligence officials were not, however, alerted to a criminal background check made on Hasan when he purchased the handgun used in the Fort Hood attack in August 2009, because federal law prevents such information sharing. The FBI has now ordered a review to determine whether the agency overlooked signs that Hasan was a threat to his fellow soldiers and the Homeland Security Committee Chairman has announced it will investigate the shooting as part of a larger trend towards homegrown terrorism.
Homeland Security Readies Tracking Plan
Washington Post (11/09/09) Hsu, Spencer S.
The Department of Homeland Security is working on completing a proposal for a system that would track foreign visitors who overstay their visas. Under the proposal, which would take effect in two years, those who travel to the U.S. from foreign countries will either undergo eye scans or be fingerprinted at airport security checkpoints, departure gates or terminal kiosks before they leave the country. Travelers who cross the Canadian or Mexican border will not be fingerprinted. The program aims to comply with a 1996 congressional mandate to automatically track foreign visitors when they leave the country. A similar program was proposed last year by the Bush administration, though it was opposed by airlines who said that they should not have to bear most of the liability and expense associated with fingerprinting travelers. In response to those concerns, the Department of Homeland Security will likely drop plans to force airlines to pay for the majority of the program. The proposal is scheduled to be sent to the White House next month for review and inclusion in the administration's next budget.
Government IT Confronts Security Threats Daily
InformationWeek (11/12/09) Hoover, J. Nicholas
More than 30 percent of federal IT professionals see a cybersecurity incident in their agencies every day, according to a new CDW-G survey. The survey also found that the frequency of cybersecurity incidents such as external attacks and lost devices is at the same level or slightly higher than last year for most of the 300 federal IT pros who responded. In addition, the survey found that the severity of these incidents is about the same as it was in 2008. Respondents were also asked about the biggest issues they encountered in their jobs. A third said their top issue was malware, while a quarter cited inappropriate employee activity or network use and managing access for approved remote users. Another 60 percent of respondents said they were increasingly concerned about the security of remote and mobile computing. However, 63 percent of those who said they were growing more concerned about the security of mobile computing said they did not use wireless encryption. Finally, the survey found that respondents believed there is a greater need for cybersecurity technologies. The government is already taking a number of steps to meet this need, including creating a $1.5 billion cybersecurity data center.
Department of Interior's Cybersecurity Governance 'Inefficient' and 'Wasteful': Report
Dark Reading (11/10/09) Hoover, J. Nicholas
A scathing new report from the inspector general of the U.S. Department of the Interior sharply criticizes the performance of the agency's cybersecurity department, concluding that its initiatives fail to meet federal governance standards. The report addresses agency-wide issues such as a decentralized information technology (IT) infrastructure and "fragmented governance processes." It describes the agency's cybersecurity personnel as "substantially under-qualified" and says its IT leadership needs to take a more proactive role in cybersecurity. "Personnel responsible for management of the IT programs are not accountable for results, and existing investments are not leveraged to their full potential," the report states. Interior has allocated $182 million for cybersecurity in 2009 and has 677 employees and contractors working exclusively on information security, and an additional 3,531 with "significant" cybersecurity responsibilities.
Conficker Still Oozes Through PCs Despite Barriers
USA Today (11/09/09) P. 2B; Acohido, Byron
Both the Conficker worm and the newer, less-known Taterf worm are continuing to infect computers around the world. Microsoft says the number of computers infected with a copy of Conficker and Taterf increased 98.4 percent in the first half of 2009 compared with the last six months of 2008. However, that figure largely reflects the number of infections among home-use PCs. Infections are likely spreading even faster on corporate networks. This is troublesome because although the cybercriminals that control Conficker have not done much with the worm due to the high level of attention from law enforcement agencies, hackers could use Taterf to steal corporate data from infected machines on company networks. Companies are being urged to protect themselves from both worms by keeping their antivirus programs and their security patches updated, and by turning off the autorun feature in Windows, which automatically executes code from USB devices.
Rutgers Computer Scientists Work to Strengthen Online Security
Rutgers University (11/09/09) Blesch, Carl
Rutgers University computer scientists are developing an alternative to online security questions that is designed to be easier for legitimate users and more secure. "We call them activity-based personal questions," says Rutgers professor Danfeng Yao. "Sites could ask you, 'When was the last time you sent an email?' Or, 'What did you do yesterday at noon?' " Initial studies suggest that questions about recent activities are easy for legitimate users to answer but harder for attackers to guess or learn. "We want the question to be dynamic," Yao says. "The questions you get today will be different from the ones you would get tomorrow." Initial results from the system will be presented at ACM's Conference on Computer and Communications Security, which takes place Nov. 9-13 in Chicago, Ill. Rutgers researchers found that questions related to time were more robust than other questions. Yao says online service providers can create security questions using data from a user's email, calendar, or transactions, though computers would need to use natural language processing tools to synthesize understandable questions and analyze answers for accuracy. Yao has proposed additional studies to determine the practicality of the new approach and how it could best be implemented.
Web Security Tool Copies Apps' Moves
Technology Review (11/09/09) Mims, Christopher
Microsoft researchers have developed Ripley, a way to secure Web applications by cloning the user's browser and running the application remotely. Ripley, announced at ACM's Computer and Communications Security Conference, which takes place Nov. 9-13 in Chicago, prevents a remote hacker or malicious user from changing the behavior of code running inside a Web browser by creating an exact copy of the computational environment and running that copy on the server. Ripley also relays all of the user's actions, including mouse clicks, keystrokes, and other inputs, from the client to the server as a compressed event stream. The behavior of the clone code is compared to the behavior of the application running on the user's browser. If any discrepancies occur, Ripley disconnects the client. "You cannot trust anything that happens in the client," says Ripley lead developer Ben Livshits. "It's basically the devil in the browser from the developer's point of view." Livshits says Ripley is completely invisible to the end user and will not affect the normal function of a Web application. Ripley can even enhance the performance of Web applications, because the clone program is written in .Net, which is 10 to 100 times faster than the JavaScript used on the client side. University of California, Berkeley researcher Adam Barth says Ripley is part of a larger trend to protect the integrity of client-side programs. "The work suggests that security would benefit if we validated more than we're validating today," Barth says.
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