Apr 21
For the first time in history, the FBI has added a domestic terrorist to its list of “Most Wanted” terror suspects.
Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 31-year-old computer specialist from Berkeley, is wanted for the 2003 bombings of two corporate offices in California. San Diego is an animal rights activist who graduated to bombing for his cause.
The explosions caused minor damages and no injuries. A group calling itself “Revolutionary Cells” took responsibility for the blasts, saying they targeted the companies because they performed drug and chemical experiments on animals. There is a $250,000 reward for information leading to his capture.
San Diego is the 24th person on the list, and the only domestic terror suspect. It seems a bit silly that this man who has caused no deaths is on the same terror list as 9/11 mass-murderer Osama bin Laden. More likely, this is a politically-motivated move to balance things by adding a left-wing terrorist to the list just days after the Obama administration was criticized for reports suggesting that military veterans could be susceptible to right-wing extremism. Perhaps the real message is: extremism is bad on all sides.
Story at Mercury News
Jan 14
Experts from more than 30 U.S. and international cyber-security organizations jointly released a consensus list of the 25 most dangerous programming errors that lead to security bugs and cyber-crime.
The impact of these programming errors is significant. Just two of these errors resulted in more than 1.5 million website security breaches during 2008. These breaches allowed malicious software to take control of the computers that visited those web sites, turning their computers into zombies that committed further cyber-crimes.
Shockingly, most programmers do not understand or look for these errors. Colleges rarely teach programming students how to avoid these errors. And most software companies don’t explicitly test for these errors before releasing their products.
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Jul 16
A disgruntled computer engineer working for the City of San Francisco apparently seized control of a new multimillion-dollar computer system. Police arrested Terry Childs, 43, on four charges of computer tampering. Authorities say Childs hacked the city’s new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), which stores official emails, payroll records, confidential law enforcement documents, and jail bookings. Childs locked the entire system and created a password that gives him exclusive access.
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