Nine Cisco Networking Vulnerabilities Found; Congress Moves to Criminalize P2P; Clarke Calls for 9/11 Disclosure; Taco Incident Marks State’s Terrorism Preparedness

Nine Cisco Networking Vulnerabilities Found

According to a story in The Register today, gray hat hackers have released proof of concept code to exploit a wide variety of previously-announced security vulnerabilities to Cisco Systems’ networking kit. The exploits highlight nine separate flaws involving its IOS software, routers and PIX firewall technology. This re-emphasises the need to patch vulnerable systems against DDoS risks. Cisco has released software upgrades and workarounds to defend against the flaws.Congress Moves to Criminalize P2PWired.com story, a draft bill recently circulated among members of the House judiciary committee that would make it much easier for the Justice Department to pursue criminal prosecutions against file sharers by lowering the burden of proof. The bill, obtained Thursday by Wired News, also would seek penalties of fines and prison time of up to ten years for file sharing. If the draft becomes law, anyone sharing 2,500 or more pieces of content, such as songs or movies, could be fined or thrown in jail. In addition, anyone who distributes content that hasn’t been released in wide distribution (for example, pre-release copies of an upcoming movie) also would face the penalties. Even a single file, determined by a judge to be worth more than $10,000, would land the file sharer in prison. In Wired.com reports, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) on Thursday introduced a bill that would allow the Justice Department to pursue civil cases against file sharers, again making it easier for law enforcement to punish people trading copyright music over peer-to-peer networks. They dubbed the bill “Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004,” or the Pirate Act.

According to a

Clarke Calls for 9/11 DisclosureTwinCities.com, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke on Sunday challenged the White House to declassify documents related to the Sept. 11 attacks, as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice came under increasing pressure to testify publicly about the administration’s efforts to thwart terrorism. Clarke, whose character has been under attack from the administration, also challenged the administration to release his communications with Rice when he was the top White House adviser on counterterrorism. Commission member John Lehman, a Republican and a former Navy secretary, called Rice’s refusal to testify in public “a political blunder of the first order” that has created the impression that White House officials have something to hide. According to The Boston Globes coverage of the story, during the past week, Clarke has alleged that Bush was not focused on fighting Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks and was overly concerned about going to war against Iraq, which Clarke has said diverted resources from the fight against terrorism.

According to a Knight-Ridder story on

Taco Incident Marks State’s Terrorism PreparednessConcord Monitor, the states post 9/11 plans designed to fight everything from bombings to smallpox attacks were put to the test recently, not by terrorists, but tacos. Local and state officials say the plans helped decision-makers learn quickly last month that a Taco Bell worker in Derry had hepatitis A, get the word out that hundreds of customers might have been exposed and set up inoculation clinics that treated 1,500. The response also included a video conference to train emergency and health officials about the illness. In November, the state and the N.H. Hospital Association joined to cut red tape and quickly get portable isolation units for every hospital in the state. The units can be used for many illnesses, but they are available for a biological attack. The state also has set up a Health Alert Network that allows hospitals and the state to communicate quickly and keep tabs on what illnesses patients are reporting. State Homeland Security Director Bruce Cheney said from the beginning, officials from his agency, state Public Health and the town met to assess the threat, how to respond to it and decide who would be responsible for what. Before the 2001, the job would have gotten done, officials say, but not as smoothly.

According to an AP story in New Hampshires