contributed by Mortel
The Storm Prediction Center, an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) was defaced yesterday. While the site was primarily used to distribute severe weather warnings, that information was available from other sources such as the National Weather Service. Unfortunately NOAA chose to run critical services such as email on the same machine so when they took down the server to correct the defacement their email was also off line creating severe disruptions in office work flow.

HNN Defaced Pages Archive
Fox News
MSNBC
Computer World
Andover News

Correction: 1615EST
We have been informed that the email server was not on the same machine as the web server but was taken offline as a precautionary measure until the extent of the attack could be determined.

contributed by RickDogg
Set to be released on July 10th at Defcon, Back Orifice 2000 is already making news. The new version of Back Orifice will run on NT, be much harder to detect and have a very robust plugin architecture.

Wired
Back Orifice 2000

contributed by RickDogg
Microsoft and HP have announced their support for the HTTP/1.1 Message Digest Authentication specification. This new specification published by the Internet Engineering Task Force last month proposes the use of MD5 instead of SSL for password traffic.

ZD Net

contributed by RickDogg
An employee of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency is under investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations for allegedly seeking unauthorized access to the computer system of a coworker. Evidently the employee requested access to a senior official's computer while the official was away. The request was denied and no access was gained.

San Jose Mercury News

contributed by Deepquest
Melissa and WormExplorer were devastating to business and governments world wide. As viruses get more sophisticated and virus writers get more creative what sort of viruses can the world expect to see in the next six months or a year?

BBC

contributed by wannabe
We have all heard of BO (Back Orifice) or NetBus but what about DIRT? DIRT stands for Data Interception by Remote Transmission and is a commercial software package only available to law enforcement officials. DIRT, like BO and NetBus, allows remote control of a PC with or without the user's knowledge. Unfortunately this article makes no mention of whether it is necessary for law enforcement to get a search warrant before they use such a tool.

PC World

Correction 1615EST
Evidently the above story does mention that a search warrant is needed before law enforcement can use this tool. Unfortunately we missed that information. The story does mention that Frank Jones think that the Cult of the Dead Cow stole the idea for Back Orifice after seeing a DIRT demo. We have recieved staunch denials of this accusation from several members of cDc.

contributed by mortel
Illustrating the problem of debit card use on the Internet Don Garlock, a consultant for the Bedford County Sheriff's Department in Bedford, VA describes his search for the people who wiped out his bank account.

MSNBC

contributed by mortel
A woman in Grafton Ohio has redefined the term 'computer hacker'. Twenty nine year old Kelli Michetti, upset that her husband was spending too much time online took a meat cleaver and attacked the home computer. She was fined $200 for her actions.

CBS News

contributed by Anonymous
Cracked
The following sites has been reported as compromised.
http://www.georgeabbot.surrey.sch.uk
http://chef.fab.albany.edu
http://altpro.pdp.albany.edu
http://caster.gsfc.nasa.gov
http://www.umkc-efkc.org
http://www.spc.noaa.gov