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by CSO Contributor

Mundane Issues Outperform Terror Stocks Since 9/11; Silicon Valley Suddenly Likes Big Government; New Linux Worm Slaps Apache Servers

News
Sep 16, 20022 mins
CSO and CISOData and Information Security

Mundane Issues Outperform Terror Stocks Since 9/11

Right after Sept. 11, 2001, D.C. area investors flocked to stocks that might benefit from what was to become the war on terrorism. Surprisingly, according to todays Washington Post, these terror stocks have not been the best local performers in the year since 9/11. Only two of the top 20 stocks over the past 12 months are those of defense contractors

Allied Research Corp., an Arlington, Va.-based maker of artillery shells gained 157 percent, and CACI International Inc., the Pentagon’s favorite computer contractor, gained 77 percent. Lockheed Martin Corp. is close behind with a gain of 72 percent. By and large the big winners since 9/11 are smaller companies, mostly in technology, that managed to turn around their businesses and resuscitate stock prices when stocks generally have fallen and tech shares have been hit particularly hard.Silicon Valley Suddenly Likes Big GovernmentMercury News. The News reports that the security windfall may be much less than was hoped for.

Silicon Valley tech companies were never big on government demands, until the government started talking about spending money on cybersecurity, according to an article in today’s

New Linux Worm Slaps Apache ServersThe Register today reports that security clearing house CERT warned this weekend of a virulent Linux worm creating an attack network on the Internet. The Slapper worm was first seen on Friday the 13th. Since then it has infected thousands of web servers around the world and continues to spread. According to The Register, Slapper exploits a previously-disclosed OpenSSL vulnerability to create an attack platform for distributed denial-of-service attacks against other sites. During the infection process, the attacking host instructs the newly infected victim to initiate traffic on 2002/udp back to the attacker. Once this communications channel has been established, the infected system becomes part of the worm’s DDoS network. For this reason blocking port 2002/UDP at enterprise firewalls may be a good idea.