U.S. Still 21 Percent Poorer

American households saw their wealth increase at the end of last year, mainly because the healing economy boosted stock portfolios.

The Federal Reserve says household net worth rose 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter to $54.2 trillion. It marked the third straight quarter of gains. Net worth had risen 4.5 percent in the second quarter of 2009 and an even stronger 5.5 percent in the third quarter.

Net worth is the value of assets such as homes, checking accounts and investments minus debts like mortgages and credit cards.

Even with the gain, Americans’ net worth would have to rise an additional 21 percent to get back to its pre-recession peak of $65.9 trillion. That shows the vast loss of wealth people have suffered from the worst downturn since the 1930s.

TSA Data Analyst Planned Cyber Attack

A former Transportation Security Administration contractor is being charged in Colorado for allegedly injecting malicious code into a government network used for screening airport security workers and others.

The malicious code, a logic bomb installed last October, was designed to cause damage and disrupt data on servers on an undisclosed date but was caught by other workers before it delivered its payload.

denver airport security

Douglas James Duchak, 46, had worked as a data analyst at the TSA’s Colorado Springs Operations Center, or CSOC, since 2004. The CSOC is used to vet people who have “access to sensitive information and secure areas of the nation’s transportation network,” according to the indictment. A source involved in the case said this involved screening of both passengers and workers at airports and other transportation facilities.

He pleaded not guilty in a Denver federal court on Wednesday and was released on a $25,000 unsecured bond. The indictment did not say whether the malware was crafted to erase or alter data, or simply disable servers.

The CSOC network stores updated information from the government’s terrorist watchlist as well as criminal histories from the U.S. Marshal’s Service Warrant Information Network.

Duchak’s job was to update the CSOC database as new information arrived from these two sources. But on Oct. 15, he was given two weeks’ notice that his job would be terminated.

About a week later, on Oct. 22, Duchak allegedly transmitted the malicious code onto a CSOC server that stored data from the U.S. Marshal’s Service, according to the indictment (.pdf). The next day, he allegedly loaded malicious code to a server containing the Terrorist Screening Database. The source involved in the case said the servers “are part of the system that contains the no-fly list” and added that the code, if it had gone undetected, could have traveled to a facility in another state that uses a similar computer system.

Duchak has been charged in the U.S. District of Colorado with two counts of attempting to cause damage to a protected computer. If convicted, he faces a possible prison sentence of 10 years and a $250,000 fine for each count.

Duchak’s attorney, David Lindsey, disputes the government’s charges and says that the system Duchak worked on was a beta system used for testing statistical analyses.

“It wasn’t connected to anything that had to do with security,” Lindsey said. “Before anything he had his hands on left, it went to another system before it got into any live system that did screening. As I understand it, it is a system that does statistical analyses on the systems that are up and running. And when the tests are run, those are done at one level and then [go to] a second level and then at a final level before the analyses are verified and passed onto anything you would call a live system.”

Lindsey said the CSOC servers that were allegedly targeted for sabotage were used for screening workers primarily and were only “remotely, remotely” related to passenger screening, though he could not elaborate.

“The government has been very misleading in the indictment and press release as to any potential harm [this might have caused] to the public,” he said, adding that the alleged malware was not a virus and will ultimately be shown to have been “nothing.”

Lindsey said that his client was not given a clear answer about why he was let go from his job.

Dwarf Star Endangering Solar System

(Editors Note: For some really interesting analysis on this topic, check out The-Rabbits-Hole.com)

British Airways Employee Charged in Terror Plot

A British Airways computer expert who allegedly offered to cover for cabin crew in the event of a strike appeared in court today charged with plotting suicide bombings.

Rajib Karim, who was born in Bangladesh but now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, faced three charges under counter-terrorism legislation.

The 30-year-old is accused of planning his own martyrdom. One of the charges involves the UK and another alleges that he conspired with contacts in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Yemen.

The prosecutor, Colin Gibbs, told City of Westminster magistrates court that the charge sheet alleged Karim shared information about his work – including security measures – and offered to take advantage of planned strikes by BA staff to join the airline’s cabin crew.

It is claimed that he deliberately stayed in Britain, obtaining a passport and getting a job at the airline in order to further the conspiracy.

The software expert also faced a third charge, alleging that he collected money and transferred it through intermediaries and wire services to terrorist associates overseas.

The three offences are alleged to have taken place over a four-year period between April 2006 and February this year.

Karim was arrested by officers from Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command and local detectives in the north-east of England on 25 February.

They targeted the Newcastle office complex where he worked as an IT developer and searched his home in the city. Hundreds of computer files seized from the workplace and home are being examined.

Karim spoke only to confirm his name and date of birth during the 15-minute hearing.

District Judge Timothy Workman remanded him in custody and adjourned the case until 26 March at the Old Bailey.

Scotland Yard arrested three men in Slough, Berkshire, during the inquiry. They were released without charge on Tuesday.

Biggest Threat to an Open Internet: U.S. Intelligence Community

The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence.

McConnell

McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know.

When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they could start making firewalls and building malware into military equipment.

And now McConnell is back in civilian life as a vice president at the secretive defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton. He’s out in front of Congress and the media, peddling the same Cybaremaggedon! gloom.

And now he says we need to re-engineer the internet.

We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options — and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment — who did it, from where, why and what was the result — more manageable. The technologies are already available from public and private sources and can be further developed if we have the will to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same.

Re-read that sentence. He’s talking about changing the internet to make everything anyone does on the net traceable and geo-located so the National Security Agency can pinpoint users and their computers for retaliation if the U.S. government doesn’t like what’s written in an e-mail, what search terms were used, what movies were downloaded. Or the tech could be useful if a computer got hijacked without your knowledge and used as part of a botnet.

The Washington Post gave McConnell free space to declare that we are losing some sort of cyberwar. He argues that the country needs to get a Cold War strategy, one complete with the online equivalent of ICBMs and Eisenhower-era, secret-codenamed projects. Google’s allegation that Chinese hackers infiltrated its Gmail servers and targeted Chinese dissidents proves the United States is “losing” the cyberwar, according to McConnell.

But that’s not warfare. That’s espionage.

McConnell’s op-ed then pointed to breathless stories in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal about thousands of malware infections from the well-known Zeus virus. He intimated that the nation’s citizens and corporations were under unstoppable attack by this so-called new breed of hacker malware. … Continue Reading