Friday, December 22, 2000

Re: Spam as a denial of service attack? (Bellovin, RISKS-21.15) Interestingly, Verizon has failed to come up, at least in public, with any evidence that this was in fact an attack. Given the company's dubious service record, a lot of folks suspect this may be a pretty lame attempt to blame a popular bogeyman for an inability to handle traffic. Sometimes, I feel that I personally get millions of spam messages a day, but our system generally handles it. An attack would almost certainly have involved a large number of messages from a small number of sources and at least the mail relays that the messages were sent through would have ben identifiable, if not the ultimate source. Steve Wildstrom, Technology & You Editor, *Business Week*, 1200 G St. NW #1100 Washington DC 20005 1-202-383-2203 steve_wildstrom@businessweek.com [Steve Wildstrom via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 17] 0:00 # G!

Re: Seattle Hospital Hacked (Wallack, RISKS-21.16) *The Washington Post*, and a local TV station, obtained the "proof" from me, after the medical center sought to dismiss the incident as a rumor. Though I should hardly have to say it, I confirmed every aspect of this story before breaking it. (Even we "Internet reporters" do that sort of thing.) The hacker took command of large portions of the medical center's internal network. The University of Washington Medical Center later reluctantly acknowledged the accuracy of my report. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46320-2000Dec8.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/08/technology/08HACK.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/499856.asp http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001208/us/med_center_hacker_3.html http://www.komotv.com/news/qtmovie.asp?ID=8157 Kevin L. Poulsen, Editorial Director, SecurityFocus.com, Washington D.C. (202)232-5200 ["Kevin L. Poulsen" via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 16] 0:00 # G!