Military.com has a sobering article outlining how an Army after-action report they obtained discusses how an unarmored, undermanned convoy of fuel trucks was erroneously sent directly into fierce fighting that left nine Americans lay dead, 17 were seriously wounded and two missing in action, one of whom still is.
The report makes clear that the incident was a result of a misdirected email.
Only minutes before it was set to depart, the convoy’s route to the airport was changed; code named Alternate Supply Route “Sword,” it was to take them to the airport’s north gate. Then, just before the doomed line of vehicles pulled through the gate to leave, an e-mail intended to halt the convoy was sent to the wrong address.
Click here for the full article.
10:42 am | March 25, 2008
United Press International has posted a disturbing analysis of recent “cyber” attacks against Tibet advocacy groups, particularly in the US. The article outlines increasingly common behavior that is rarely reported because the victims, often corporations, typically do not like to advertise their breach.
Van Horenbeeck told United Press International that the attacks used e-mails purporting to come from known associates of the victims with attachments containing malicious code — so-called Trojan horse software — that stole e-mail and contact data, passwords and other information and covertly sent it on the Internet to special command servers.
We often use common sense to determine whether or not we should trust an email. If it’s from an address we don’t recognize or references a conversation we never participated in it sets off red flags. But, when the email looks like it’s coming from a person you know and simply continues an ongoing conversation you’re familiar with it causes us to lower our guard.
Continue reading Secure Tibet?
Richi Jennings has been pulling blogwatch duty over at Computerworld.com and put together a sampling of the stories being published about the recent The U.S. Air Force screw up that led to classified data being sent to a small town in the U.K. in unencrypted email.
There’s quite a few articles on the SNAFU but perhaps Tom Chivers describes it best in his article for the Telegraph.
A tourist information website promoting a small [English] town has had to shut down after it received a barrage of thousands of classified US military emails … Sensitive information … swamped Gary Sinnott’s email inbox after he established www.mildenhall.com, a site promoting the tiny town of Mildenhall where he lives … Mildenhall [also] is home to a huge US Air Force base … Mr Sinnott said: “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff that I have been receiving - I wonder if they ever had any security training … then I began to receive military communications from all over the world - a lot containing very sensitive information.
Click here for the full blogwatch rundown.
