Irish Call Center Hackers Spark Terror Probe; Corporate Security Funding Up Slightly; Factory Killer Had History of Anger and Racial Taunts; Bomb Kills Security Officer in Central Moscow

Irish Call Center Hackers Spark Terror Probe

According to a story in The Irish Exainer today, anti-terrorism officers are investigating a hacking operation at an Irish call center which saw 700 calls made to several Islamic countries, including Afghanistan. They are concerned why anyone would engage in such a complex computer hacking operation for the sake of saving several thousand euro. Its uncertain how many of the calls were voice calls or data transfers, the Examiner says. The probe was launched after a US -owned company, Cascade Designs, based in Midleton, County Cork, reported its call center was hacked by outside sources last weekend. Officials were alerted after the companys telephone service-provider, WorldCom, noticed a vastly different pattern in the calls emanating from its European headquarters. Cascade Designs general manager Joe McSweeney told the Examiner since last weekends incident they had installed new security systems to prevent a reoccurrence. Corporate Security Funding Up Slightly reports today that corporate spending on security measures has increased only slightly in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a new study released yesterday by ASIS International, an organization representing company security managers. The report cited the nation’s economic downturn as a primary reason security spending has not been higher. The study also found that the spending increase was greater in the Northeast, and that workplace violence leads the list of security threats in Fortune 1000 companies.

The Washington Post

Factory Killer Had History of Anger and Racial TauntsNew York Times, Doug Williams, 48, had told his father the day before that he was angry that he would have to attend an ethics and sensitivity training course. A few minutes after it began onTuesday morning, Williams left the room, apparently went to his pickup truck and returned to the room with guns and began blasting away at close range at people who had known him for years. Co-workers said Williams’s racial prejudice, along with his short temper, were well known inside the plant. Last night the president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Dain Hancock, provided what few details were held in Williams’s personnel file, dating to his hiring in 1984. From those details and interviews with the authorities and co-workers, a picture emerged of a hard-working but troublesome, troubled employee who had already come to the attention of officials at the company’s headquarters in Fort Worth, Tex. The Times story describes the grim details of the event, and outlines the incidents leading up to it.

On Tuesday, a worker at a Lockheed Martin aircraft parts plant in Mississippi, went on a shooting rampage that killed five and wounded nine people. According to a story in todays

Bomb Kills Security Officer in Central MoscowReuters report. Moscow has been on terror alert since Saturday when two women, said to be Chechens, blew themselves up at an open-air rock festival, killing 14 people and themselves. Police said security officers failed to dispose of the device by remote control and it exploded as the security officerwho helped disarm one bomb at Saturday’s rock festivalwas trying to defuse it by hand just outside the restaurant. The latest blast fueled fears conflict between Russian forces and Chechen rebels was once again spilling onto the streets of the capital.

A Russian security officer was killed today trying to defuse a bomb left near a restaurant on Moscow’s main shopping street by a suspected Chechen separatist, according to a