This has been a very busy week. With the United States launching its invasion of Iraq world tensions are high. The Information Security world has been on alert for new viruses, worms, denial-of service or hacking attempts related to pro or anti-American sentiment. With the Cyber Warfare directive signed by President Bush we also wonder if or when the United States may use a cyber attack as a strategic military weapon.

So far, with the exception of a sharp increase in the defacement of web sites, there has been no major cyber attack. However, there have been significant vulnerabilites announced in the past couple weeks. If malicious programmers exploit these vulnerabilities in a worm or denial-of-service the results could be devastating.

Of particular interest are the Sendmail vulnerability and the Windows Active Script vulnerability. Both affect a huge population of computers worldwide. Left unpatched, these computers provide a huge target of opportunity for malicious programmers and hackers.

Be sure to check out the new Subjects- Polls and Wireless Security. There is also a new book review of Kevin Mitnick's book- The Art of Deception and a new How-To showing users of Internet Explorer how to Disable Active Scripting.

If you have any questions or suggestions for articles or reviews feel free to contact me: Tony Bradley