NEWS...: November 2008 Archives

The Nov 20, 2008 issue of BusinessWeek has an in-depth report concerning ongoing attacks from abroad on NASA computers and web sites.  READ MORE

The net's underground economy in stolen credit cards and phished bank-account logins remained healthy over the last year, despite continued high-profile takedowns of online criminal marketplaces, according to a report on the underground economy was recently released by Symantec security researchers. READ MORE

Symantec Report

Email voting for the Board of Directors for the SF Bay InfraGard chapter was completed on November 21, 2008.

We would like to thank those who decided to run for the Board positions and those who voted.  There was a relatively good turn out of voters in this our first contested election in several election cycles.

November 2008- November 2010 SF Bay InfraGard Board of Directors

Jeff Fenton
Richard Davies
Mathew Todd
John Landwehr
Jeff Klaben

Two engineers from China who pleaded guilty to the rare charge of economic espionage against the U.S. were finally sentenced on Nov. 21, 2008, in a case that highlights national security threats surrounding sensitive technologies.

Fei Ye, a U.S. citizen, and Ming Zhong, a permanent resident of the U.S., admitted in 2006 that they stole computer chip designs from their Silicon Valley employers and tried to smuggle the secrets to China to launch a government-backed startup there.

Their guilty pleas represented the first convictions for the most serious crime under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. Unlike garden-variety industrial espionage -- the theft of a trade secret -- economic espionage alleges that someone acted to benefit a foreign government. MORE

DOJ Press Release on the indicment

DOJ Press Release on the guilty plea / conviction

The Government Accountability Office has found that the Homeland Security Department has not fully dealt with all the legal, privacy and civil liberties issues associated with its program to create a clearinghouse for civilian agencies to get intelligence satellite imagery. READ MORE

GAO Report

The new administration must broaden the scope of its counterterrorism activities, including a focus on collection of domestic and open source intelligence as well as traditional foreign intelligence, the Defense Science Board said in a report outlining the key priorities for incoming leaders.  ARTICLE   DOWNLOAD REPORT(.pdf)

Google's chief executive officer has called for the federal government to invest in green technology and a national computer infrastructure to help create jobs and spur the next wave of American innovation.

The Google CEO repeatedly stressed government's critical role in creating the framework upon which technological innovations can flourish.  MORE

"This was one of the most sophisticated computer crimes our office has prosecuted," said Ben Field, Santa Clara's deputy district attorney. "There's computer intrusion in the first place, there's the introduction of spyware, there's the theft of proprietary data from a computer network, and sometimes the destruction of proprietary data from a computer network." READ MORE

A former Intel Corp. engineer has been charged with stealing trade secrets worth $1 billion from the chip maker while he worked for its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc..  MORE

The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) recently released the "Status Report - Long-Term Disaster Recovery Planning by Local Governments in the San Francisco Bay Area." Long-term recovery refers to the repair and rebuilding process that government departments, such as planning, finance, housing, public works/building, redevelopment, and emergency management, will need to carry out to start restoring their community after an earthquake or other catastrophic disaster. In advance before any disaster, jurisdictions need to be prepared to finance recovery, expedite long-term housing recovery, support recovery of downtown businesses and the local economy, and ensure that their own facilities and services recover smoothly.

The Survey's summary report documents the areas of recovery planning in which local governments are making significant progress, have mixed levels of progress, and where they need to make improvements. The report examines the collective sum of information and analyzes the status of recovery efforts throughout the Bay Area as a whole, rather than focusing exclusively on what individual jurisdictions have done. The reasoning is that a catastrophic disaster is not localized, but affects the whole region.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
REPORT

A recent study study by the University of Kansas analyzed 51 state emergency management agency Web sites, as well as the results of an online survey of state EMA public information officers. The 13 findings of the research and made six recommendations to the nation's emergency managers. Hopefully this report will spark serious discussions nationwide about the role of Internet communication before, during and following crisis situations.

The report concluded that Web designers, not emergency managers, typically have the most input as far as site content ... "designers are more into the whistles and bells, and not necessarily the content".  READ MORE

DOWNLOAD REPORT

A recent report by the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) concluded that the risk from merging and re-emerging infectious diseases could skyrocket during a worst case influenza pandemic or yet unknown disease outbreak, DOWNLOAD REPORT (.pdf). 

The report also concludes that the nation's defenses against emerging infectious diseases are insufficient, creating serious consequences for the US health system, economy, and national security. READ MORE