Weekly Threat Report August 01 2005
The Cisco IOS Incident at Black Hat
The Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) issue presented at Black Hat by security researcher Michael Lynn in Las Vegas on July 27 dominated the news this past week.
According to
Computerworld.com, Lynn "detailed a way to shut down a Cisco router by taking advantage of a known and already patched flaw in the vendor's Internetworking Operating System software." Details on this specific vulnerability (ID# 417835) are covered in the Trends section of this threat report.
The public relations aspect of the incident - which saw Cisco filing a federal injunction against Lynn and having more than thirty pages of Black Hat handouts ripped out of the conference proceedings - completely overshadowed the actual vulnerability itself. A Cisco spokesman said "we believe that Lynn's presentation contained proprietary information that he illegally obtained."
In a settlement Lynn
reportedly later agreed not to further disseminate the information related to the vulnerability.
The Scots Hacker
The case of the so-called "Scots Hacker" has been adjourned until October 18, 2005. Gary McKinnon (aka "Solo"), who was on trial in London for allegedly hacking into numerous US government networks in 2001
- two weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - is now free on bail. For now, McKinnon is barred from accessing the Internet.
McKinnon reportedly deleted various system files on nine computers at two military bases in February 2002. According to a spokesman, "Deletion of these files shut down the entire U.S. Army's Military District of Washington network of over 2,000 computers for 24 hours."
For a full copy of this week's report, click here
