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From the L.A. Daily News

New cyberweapon attacks Iranian computers

by Ralph Satter and Amy Teibel

LONDON - A massive, data-slurping cyberweapon is circulating in the Middle East, and computers in Iran appear to have been particularly affected, according to a Russian Internet security firm.

Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab ZAO said the "Flame" virus was unprecedented both in terms of its size and complexity, possessing the ability to turn infected computers into all-purpose spying machines that can even suck information out of nearby cell phones.

"This is on a completely different level," Kaspersky researcher Roel Schouwenberg said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "It can be used to spy on everything that a user is doing."

The announcement sent a ripple of excitement across the computer security sector. Flame is the third major cyberweapon discovered in the past two years, and Kaspersky's conclusion that it was crafted at the behest of a national government fueled speculation that the virus could be part of an Israeli-backed campaign of electronic sabotage aimed at archrival Iran.

Although their coding is different, Schouwenberg said there was some evidence to suggest that the people behind Flame also helped craft Stuxnet, a notorious virus that disrupted controls of some nuclear centrifuges in Iran in 2010.

"Whoever was behind Flame had access to the same exploits and same vulnerabilities as the Stuxnet guys," he said, speculating that two teams may have been working in parallel to write both programs.

Stuxnet revolutionized the cybersecurity field because it targeted physical infrastructure rather than data, one of the first demonstrations of how savvy hackers can take control of industrial systems to wreak real-world havoc.

So far, Flame appears focused on espionage. The virus can activate a computer's audio systems to eavesdrop on Skype calls or office chatter, for example. It can also take screenshots, log keystrokes, and - in one of its more novel functions- steal data from Bluetooth-enabled cell phones.

Tehran has not said whether it lost any data to the virus, but a unit of the Iranian communications and information technology ministry said it had produced an anti-virus capable of identifying and removing Flame from its computers.

Speaking Tuesday, Israel's vice premier did little to deflect suspicion about the Jewish state's possible involvement in the latest attack.

"Whoever sees the Iranian threat as a significant threat is likely to take various steps, including these, to hobble it," Israeli Vice Premier Moshe Yaalon told Army Radio when asked about Flame. "Israel is blessed with high technology, and we boast tools that open all sorts of opportunities for us."

Flame is unusually large.

Malicious programs collected by U.K. security firm Sophos averaged about 340 kilobytes in 2010, the same year that Kaspersky believes Flame first started spreading. Flame weighs in at 20 megabytes - nearly 60 times that figure.

Alan Woodward, a professor of computing at the University of Surrey in southern England, said the virus was modular - meaning that functions could be added or subtracted to it as needed. He compared it to a smartphone, saying that, depending on what kind of espionage you want to carry out, "you just add apps."

He was particularly struck by Flame's ability to attack Bluetooth-enabled devices left near an infected computer.

Bluetooth is a short-range wireless communications protocol generally used for wireless headsets, in-car audio systems or file-swapping between mobile phones. Woodward said that Flame can turn an infected computer into a kind of "industrial vacuum cleaner," copying data from vulnerable cell phones or other devices left near it.

"I don't believe I've seen it before," he said.

Udi Mokady, chief executive of Cyber-Ark, an Israeli developer of information security, said he thought four countries, in no particular order, had the technological know-how to develop so sophisticated an electronic offensive: Israel, the U.S., China and Russia.

"It was 20 times more sophisticated than Stuxnet," with thousands of lines of code that took a large team, ample funding and months, if not years, to develop, he said. "It's a live program that communicates back to its master. It asks, `Where should I go? What should I do now?' It's really almost like a science fiction movie," he said.

It's not clear what exactly the virus was targeting. Kaspersky said it had detected the program in hundreds of computers, mainly in Iran but also in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The company has declined to go into detail about the nature of the victims, saying only that they "range from individuals to certain state-related organizations or educational institutions."

Schouwenberg, the Kaspersky researcher, said stolen data was being sent to some 80 different servers, something which would give the virus's controllers time to readjust their tactics if they were discovered. He added that some of Flame's functions still weren't clear.

"Maybe it's just espionage," he said. "Maybe it's also sabotage."

Kaspersky said it first detected the virus after the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union asked it for help in finding a piece of malware that was deleting sensitive information across the Middle East. The company stumbled across Flame when searching for that other code, it said.

Spokespeople for the Geneva-based Telecommunication Union didn't return emails seeking comment.

The discovery of the Flame virus comes just days after nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers in Baghdad failed to persuade Tehran to freeze uranium enrichment. A new round of talks is expected to take place in Moscow next month.

Yaalon, the Israeli vice premier, told Army Radio on Tuesday that the talks in Iraq "yielded no significant achievement" except to let Iran buy time. He appeared to take a swipe at President Barack Obama by saying it might "even be in the interest of some players in the West to play for time."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_20733817/new-cyberweapon-attacks-iranian-computers

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From the Washington Times

War crimes judges sentence Charles Taylor to 50 years

by Associated Press

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Judges at an international war crimes court have sentenced former Liberian President Charles Taylor to 50 years in prison following his landmark conviction for supporting rebels in Sierra Leone who murdered and mutilated thousands during their country's brutal civil war in return for blood diamonds.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone found Taylor guilty last month on 11 charges of aiding and abetting the rebels who went on a bloody rampage during the decade-long war that ended in 2002 with more than 50,000 dead.

Presiding Judge Richard Lussick says the crimes Taylor was convicted of were of the “utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality.”

The 64-year-old warlord-turned-president is the first former head of state convicted by an international war crimes court since World War II.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/30/judges-sentence-charles-taylor-50-years/

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Supreme Court won't review police use of stun guns

by Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has decided that it will not review the appropriateness of stun guns used by police on suspects.

The high court on Tuesday refused to hear appeals from police in Hawaii and Washington state or from people who got stun-gunned by officers.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said officers could not be sued in federal court, but judges also said officers used excessive force by using stun guns.

Malaika Brooks was driving her son to school in 2004 when she was stopped for speeding. Officers used a Taser three times when the woman, who was seven months pregnant, refused to get out of her car.

Jayzel Mattos was stun-gunned in 2006 in her house by police who said she had interfered with the arrest of her husband, Troy.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/29/supreme-court-wont-review-police-use-stun-guns/

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Sticks, stones and dangerous words

Opinion

by Wesley Pruden

The scholars and wordsmiths at the Department of Homeland Security leave everyone who aspires to good citizenship speechless.

Some of the wordsmiths put together a manual for agents who track the Internet, looking for evildoers and those who aspire to evildoing. Those agents are assigned to pick up suspicious words for further investigation. Some of the worst of the evildoers have been caught after their schemes, plots and intrigues were detected in emails intercepted by Homeland Security agents.

Long lists of words the innocent should never use were acquired by the Electronic Privacy Information Center , a privacy watchdog group that obtained the lists through a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act. It's clear that federal agents who conduct Internet searches for offending words can succeed only if they have a lot of time on their hands.

Some of the words, such as “attack” or “terrorism” or “dirty bomb,” are so obvious that a caveman could detect them. Others, such as the words cops, police, riot, emergency landing, powder (white), swine, pork and flu, do not seem so obviously dangerous. Your Aunt Evelyn in West Gondola, scribbling an affectionate note at the bottom of a birthday card, could invite federal scrutiny without intending to harm anyone.

Other words suspicious to the feds include airplane, subway, Port Authority, grid, power, electric, port, dock, bridge, delays, cocaine, marijuana, border, Mexico, kidnap, bust, Iraq , Iran , nuclear, tornado, tsunami, storm, forest fire, ice, snow, sleet, Cain, Abel, China, worm, anthrax, cloud, North Korea and “lightening,” presumably meaning lightning.

The suspicious words are included in something called the Analyst's Desktop Binder, used by agents at the National Operations Center to identify “media reports that reflect adversely on [the Department of Homeland Security] and response activities.”

The existence of the verboten list emerged from the bowels of bureaucracy only after a hearing before a House subcommittee looking into how analysts monitor newspapers, magazines, Internet sites and social networks. They're looking for “comments that ‘reflect adversely' on the government.

This covers a lot of ground - sinful, criminal, harmless and otherwise - but Homeland Security reassures one and all that it is not looking for disparaging remarks about the Obama administration, the government or the bureaucrats who work for the government. The agents are not looking for signs of “general dissent.” Of course not. Who would suspect the government of poking its nose into the business of private citizens? Would Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, do that?

The government nevertheless can be dull and dimwitted. An investigator for one of the many government security agencies, a young man with the requisite 1950s haircut and polite manner, one day called to ask whether I would vouch for the character of a young man, just out of Harvard Law, who had applied for a position with a Senate committee. I knew him to be exactly what the government should be looking for, Harvard trained or not, and said so.

“Well,” the agent replied, “we have information that he lived abroad for several years. Do you know why?”

I looked at the dates he had indeed lived abroad, in a large European capital famous for its spies, furtive nocturnal liaisons and dark diplomatic intrigues. “Yes,” I said, “that is roughly the time his father was the American ambassador there, and the young man would have been between 2 and 6 years old.”

The agent was not persuaded. “Still, that is a long time to live abroad. He may have had a good reason to spend so much uninterrupted time in a foreign capital, but we would like to know why.” The young man finally was cleared for duty several months later, the stain on his baby character overlooked.

The watchdog group that obtained the list of suspicious words complained to the House subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence that the Homeland Security list is “broad, vague and ambiguous” and includes “vast amounts of First Amendment-protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.”

The bureaucrats trying to keep the homeland secure, even at the cost of damage to the First Amendment, concede that the manual's language is vague and should be “updated.” In the hands of normal speakers of English, the lists can be harmless enough, but computers are only as smart as whoever is punching the keyboard. That's not always very smart. The hands of government agents are heavy on all of us. That's why watchdogs need teeth.

• Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/29/pruden-sticks-stones-and-dangerous-words/?page=all#pagebreak

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Danish police arrest 2 men in terror plot

by Jan M. Olsen

COPENHAGEN (AP) — Two Danish brothers originally from Somalia have been arrested on suspicion of plotting a terror attack, Denmark‘s security service said Tuesday.

The men, aged 18 and 23, were suspected of “being in the process of preparing an act of terror ” after being overheard talking about methods, targets and different weapon types, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service said.

The agency, known by its Danish acronym PET, said the brothers were arrested late Monday — one in the western Danish city of Aarhus and the other as he arrived by plane at Copenhagen's international airport.

The suspects are “Danish citizens of Somali origin” who have lived in Denmark for 16 years, the agency said.

One of the men had been at a training camp in Somalia run by the Islamist militant group al-Shabab, which has links to al Qaeda, PET said.

The men were charged with receiving training with the aim of committing an act of terror , in what the agency said are the first known terror-trained suspects in Denmark .

“According to PET's assessment, the arrests have prevented a concrete act of terror and the arrests therefore don't lead to a changed evaluation of the terror threat in Denmark ,” the agency said, adding that the terror threat level in Denmark remains “serious.”

PET's former operative chief, Hans Joergen Bonnichsen, said previous suspects had been “kitchen-table terrorists” with no experience or training.

The Scandinavian country has been in the cross hairs of Islamist terror groups after the publication of newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in 2005.

“To me there is no doubt that the latest arrests are rooted in the Muhammad cartoons,” Mr. Bonnichsen said.

A Somali man living in Denmark was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 10 years in prison after breaking into the home of Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists, with an ax in 2010.

Last year, a Chechen-born man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for preparing a letter bomb that exploded as he was assembling it in a Copenhagen hotel in 2010.

Another trial is under way in Denmark against four men accused of plotting a shooting spree at another Danish newspaper.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/29/danish-police-arrest-2-men-terror-plot/

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EDITORIAL: Giving the Internet to the U.N.

The new world order invades your computer

Imagine if everything you did online was subject to monitoring and control by the United Nations. Powerful authoritarian states, including China and Russia, are spearheading an effort to place the most potent information system in the world under centralized international control. They want the Internet to work with the same efficiency, speed and reliability as the U.N.

This week, Congress will consider legislation to amend the 1988 International Telecommunication Regulations to give the U.N. extraordinary powers over the Internet. In September, the authoritarian bloc submitted a proposal titled “The International Code of Conduct for Information Security.” In theory, it seeks to systematize and standardize the Internet and establish rules for maintaining cybersecurity. In fact, it will give the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) - a U.N. agency that oversees global telecommunications - vast new powers to regulate and control access to the Internet and information flow in cyberspace.

That Beijing and Moscow are backing the idea is enough to know it's a bad one. The free flow of information has always been an enemy of thuggish regimes. To them, individual expression and the unlimited exchange of ideas - which the Internet has made possible for some oppressed people for the first time in history - must be stamped out. Such countries view the Internet as a vast intelligence operation, a means of collecting sensitive information on people and preventing freedom of expression through a sophisticated array of censorship tools.

Some critics see the proposal as an affront to the decentralized, dispersed, free-form nature of the Internet. Worse, however, are the vast national security implications to international control of the Internet. This was pitched as a way of securing the Internet, but centralizing the system will only give security to those who wind up in control of the network. It's foolish to believe the U.N. will act as a disinterested agency free of pressure from member states. For comparison, consider that China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia are on the U.N. Human Rights Council. Assuming a similar cabal would be better at protecting the system from cyberthreats than individual states or private entities is unrealistic. The U.S. government handling of the cybersecurity issue has been dysfunctional enough; imagine putting the U.N. bureaucracy on top of it.

There are economic consequences as well. The Internet is critical to American commerce, and it would not be in the country's interest to give any measure of control over that to an international body. The damaging impact on personal privacy and open communication can only be imagined. Given the repressive nature of the architects of the proposal, it's reasonable to conclude that over time, the Internet would become less free, less safe, less private, less available, more restricted and more controlled. Americans invented the Internet. Let's keep it.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/28/giving-the-internet-to-the-un/

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From Google News

Syria bodies pile up as U.N. consensus for action remains elusive

by Charlie D'Agata

(CBS News) The United Nations mission in Syria reported Wednesday the discovery of 13 bodies with their hands tied behind their backs and evidence that some were shot at close range.

The latest sign of unchecked violence comes hours after U.N. and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan left Damascus after calling the massacre of 108 people in Houla last Friday a tipping point in the Syrian crisis.

"This is what the international community is asking for now - action, not words," said Annan.

But the question remains what the brutal slaying of so many people - including many women and children - will be a tipping point toward.

The U.N. Security Council will meet Wednesday to discuss what - if anything - can be done to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

Reaching any kind of unified response will prove difficult.

Officials from Russia and China reiterated earlier in the day that they're categorically opposed to any military intervention, and say it's too early for the U.N. to take any new measures.

Despite massacre, U.S. still won't arm Syria rebels
U.S., nations expel Syrian diplomats over massacre
U.N.: "Entire families" shot in homes in Syria

The White House made it clear Tuesday that the Obama administration remains opposed to any military action at this stage.

New French president, Francois Hollande, however, said military action cannot be ruled out.

The horrific images of the massacre in Houla, a group of villages near the battered city of Homs, have prompted the U.S. and 10 other nations to expel senior Syrian diplomats.

The U.N. has accused Syrian forces of killing about 15 of the total 108 with shelling, but President Bashar Assad's regime denies opposition accusations that the rest of the dead were the victims of government-backed thugs going door to door and killing people execution-style.

Thirty-four women and 49 children, by the U.N.'s count, were stabbed or shot dead at point blank range.

Assad and his ministers have rejected any involvement in the bloodshed at Houla, blaming "armed terrorists" for the majority of the killings and saying government forces were only defending themselves from attack by rebels.

"They pointed guns at us and trapped us in a room like sheep before spraying us with bullets," a woman who witnessed the massacre says. "They did not leave a family without killing one of its members."

Syrian state-run media, meanwhile, has been criticizing the expulsion of Syrian diplomats around the world as unfounded "hysteria".

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57443443/syria-bodies-pile-up-as-u.n-consensus-for-action-remains-elusive/

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Etan Patz Case: Pedro Hernandez's Mental Health, Confession Questioned

by DAN CHILDS

Since Pedro Hernandez's confession to the killing of Etan Patz last week, questions are beginning to rise regarding the man's mental health and whether he is telling the truth about what happened in lower Manhattan 33 years ago when he allegedly murdered the 6-year-old boy.

Despite his confession and the second-degree murder charges filed against him, police have offered no possible motive for the crime Hernandez allegedly committed as a teenager, leaving some skeptics wondering if he is admitting to something he didn't do.

As Hernandez's lawyer has said that he "has a history of hallucinations," a trio of forensic psychiatrists has spoken to ABC News about the considerations that come along with a confession from someone who has psychotic mental illness, Hernandez's mental state, and how it might impact the case against him.

"You have to rule out the possibility that he may be faking," said Dr. Harold J. Bursztajn, co-founder of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at Harvard Medical School. "This may be a wish to get attention; it may even be an unconscious wish, a wish to feel self-important. That's something which needs to be explored in psychological examination."

New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Hernandez, a 51-year-old New Jersey builder, had told relatives, friends and a church group as early as 1981 that he'd "done a bad thing and killed a child in New York."

While psychopaths generally show no remorse after they commit a violent crime, Hernandez reportedly broke down emotionally during his confession. Unlike most child molesters, Hernandez has no criminal record.

Dr. John Thompson, who is a director at the Division of Forensic Neuropsychiatry at Tulane University, said that a psychiatric evaluation and testing compared with forensic and other data should help lead to a conclusion regarding the accuracy of his confession. While he said that it is difficult to make conclusive statements about Hernandez's mental state given the limited information available, he noted that it is possible that psychological troubles could have led Hernandez to make up his story about what happened to Patz 33 years ago.

"Since one of the hallmark symptoms of schizophrenia is a delusion, or 'fixed false belief,' it is possible for such an individual to make a false confession," Thompson said.

Even if he was telling people about the murder, how did Hernandez provide such grisly details in his confession on how he choked Patz in the basement of a bodega and stored the body in the freezer before disposing of it in the garbage?

Dr. Park Dietz, president of Park Dietz & Associates, Inc. in Newport Beach, Calf., would not directly comment on the Patz case, but said that people with a history of psychosis may have a memory of events that is formed from other sources, such as news, gossip, dreams, fantasies and delusions. Until such details are supported by evidence, their validity is anyone's guess.

"All confessions to notorious cold cases must be treated with skepticism, whether the confessor is psychotic or not, and the determination of guilt must rest on the confessor giving details that were never released to the public and that can be corroborated and/or by the discovery of corroborative evidence," Dietz said.

But why did it take so long for Hernandez to confess to police that he killed Patz? Bursztajn said: "Conscience is timeless and becomes more pronounced as mortality becomes more a reality with age."

Still, forensic psychiatrists caution that all the facts in this case need to be collected and examined.

"The only way to tell if he is telling the truth or not is to go ahead and to get all the facts," said Bursztajn. "There has to be corroborative data as well. You need to see in which areas he is psychotic, and which other areas in which he may be sufficiently psychosis-free."

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/etan-patz-case-pedro-hernandezs-mental-health-confession/story?id=16456499

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Easton Pennsylvania

Forks Police Reach Out to Elementary Schools

Forks Police talk to elementary students about safety and checking in with parents.

by Dino Ciliberti

As the Forks Township Police Department's new community resource officer, Brooks Kranich serves as the go-to guy with businesses, citizens and now schools.

The police department recently launched a program in which Kranich visits schools to discuss various safety issues regarding children.

Over the past few months, Kranich has visited the first grades of Forks and Shawnee Elementary Schools.

There, he has promoted a Safe Kids Check First program in which Kranich tries to tell first-graders that while it is a good idea to be aware of strangers, it's best to check first with parents no matter what and about anything.

"We're trying to get kids away from the stranger/danger concept," Kranich said. "Eighty percent of crimes are made on children by people who are familiar to them."

Next year, the program will expand to a Safe House program for second-graders besides the first-grade program, Kranich said.

He also hopes to develop something for those in fifth and sixth grades.

Kranich said it's been a little difficult starting the program so late in the school year since most schools have their days mapped out already.

But he's pleased with the new role.

"It's great. I'm also a township resident so this means a little more to me personally," said Kranich, a Forks officer for almost five years who has a dozen years of police experience under his belt.

Kranich said he's assumed other roles for the police department.

He heads the summer youth academy, bike derby and serves as child seat technician, too.

"Overall, our community policing philosophy states that it is important to not just be reactive," Police Chief Greg Dorney said. "We're trying to be involved as much as possible."

Township Supervisor David Billings believes the program is a great idea.

"I have always been supportive of community outreach programs as it fosters a collaborative relationship between the police department and the public," Billings said.

http://palmer.patch.com/articles/police-launch-awareness-programs-in-forks-township-schools