US Lowers Terror Alert at `Hardened&#39; Finance Sites
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The US government lowered the terrorism alert level for financial sites in New York City, Washington and northern New Jersey, because those buildings are now ``hardened,&#39;&#39; or sufficiently protected, an official said.
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LONDON -- With eight suspects in last weekend's attempted car-bomb attacks in custody, all of them foreign doctors or other medical professionals, Britain reduced its terrorism threat level from critical to severe yesterday and Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced more rigorous background checks on foreign doctors applying for visas to work in the United Kingdom.
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In the wake of Sept. 11, there is a prevailing sense of wariness in the finance industry, in regard to the security environment as well as the direction of the markets.
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Share prices closed lower in Tokyo this morning, ahead of the outcome of tomorrow&#39;s US presidential election. New terrorist threats also prompted caution, following the airing on Friday of a videotaped message
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Supporters of the troubled US-VISIT program warned yesterday that the decision to suspend a crucial part of the national security program launched after the 2001 attacks will leave the nation vulnerable to terrorism.
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HELSINKI, Finland - US embassies in Finland and Latvia issued a rare warning to Americans in the Nordic and Baltic region to be wary of shopping centers and public transport amid a threat of a possible terror attack Monday.
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Crude-oil futures gave back much of the previous session&#39;s gains today, dropping about 2 percent after seeing no further terrorist incidents in Saudi Arabia.
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The two cities targeted in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will receive far less counterterrorism money this year in what the Homeland Security Department described Wednesday as an effort to spread funding to other communities facing threats.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has warned U.S. banks and financial institutions of a threatened cyberattack by the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. The group called on allies to attack the Web sites of U.S. financial institutions in December in retaliation for the U.S. holding suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp, according to a U.S. government source. US-CERT, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sent out the alert Thursday, but it has "no information to collaborate the threat," said Joanna Gonzalez, a DHS spokeswoman. The alert was "really sent out of an abundance of caution," she added. Such alerts are "not uncommon," Gonzalez said, although she declined to give details about how often US-CERT issues the alerts. Asked if al-Qaeda has the ability to carry out such a threat, Gonzalez said she didn't have that information.
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Danish embassies are not affected by Sunday&#39;s terror warning from US officials to American citizens in the Nordic and Baltic countries, local media quoted Danish Ritzau News Agency as reporting on Tuesday.
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The city remained at high terror alert yesterday, despite the federal government&#39;s move to lower its threat level for high-profile financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington, officials said.
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The government issued an alert Thursday to U.S. stock market and banking Web sites about a possible Internet attack from a radical Muslim group, but said the threat was unconfirmed and seemed to pose no immediate danger.
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US Congress gave final approval to a massive reorganisation of America&#39;s intelligence system, which lawmakers said would reduce the risk of terror strikes like the attacks on September 11, 2001.
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(InfoWorld) - A planned cyberattack against U.S. financial institutions by Islamic jihadists has so far failed to materialize, Internet security observers said Friday. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)Â warned of the possible attack Thursday, apparently prompted by discussions earlier in the week in a jihadist discussion forum, said Adam Raisman an analyst with the SITE (Search for International Terrorist Entities) institute, which tracks terrorists. The attack, dubbed "the Electronic Battle of Guantanamo" by jihadists, had been scheduled to start Friday and last until the end of the month, Raisman said. It was planned in retaliation for the U.S.'s holding of suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp, he said. Both Raisman and Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks Inc.'s Security Engineering and Response Team said they saw no evidence of an attack coming Friday. Arbor, which monitors the Internet backbone for distributed denial-of-service attacks, saw no new attempts to create large attacks, Nazario said. The threat, which DHS attributed to the al-Qaeda terrorist group, seems out of step with the group's past efforts to focus on physical damage instead of cyberdamage, Nazario said. "We think there's a low chance that this is ready to go," he added. Earlier Friday, DHS spokeswoman Joanna Gonzalez downplayed the possible attack, saying her organization had "no information to corroborate the threat," and was sending out the alert "out of an abundance of caution." Over the past few months, jihadists had threatened similar attacks against the Vatican and Royal Air Maroc Web sites, Raisman said. By Friday afternoon, Internet research firm Netcraft Inc. had seen no downtime on the U.S. financial Web sites that it monitors, according to Rich Miller, an analyst with the company. Even if an attack were launched, it would require a certain degree of technical sophistication to succeed against major financial institutions, which are generally pretty well defended, he said. "We're talking about sites that have put a lot of security in place," he said. The U.S. Congress has required financial institutions to take strong measures to protect customer privacy since 1999, when the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed, added Pam Johnston, a lawyer with the Foley & Lardner LLP law firm and former federal prosecutor focused on bank fraud. "Banks have been at the forefront of sophistication" in protecting online data, she said. While neither the Vatican nor Royal Air Maroc threats resulted in successful attacks, there have been widespread denial of service attacks in the past. In January, about 800 Danish Web sites were hacked in response to the furor over a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Cybersecurity experts disagreed about whether the latest DHS warning was useful. Banks have taken several measures since the Sept. 11. 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. to secure their data, said Vivek Mehra, chief enterprise architect for global financial services at Keane Inc., an IT consulting firm. "The threat is overstated," Mehra added. "[The warning] is almost meaningless. It doesn't really change anything." But Johnston and Arbor's Nazario said DHS did the right thing by alerting financial institutions of the threat. "It gives companies a chance to ask their IT guys, 'Are we buttoned down?'" Johnston said. Â
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Federal officials lowered the alert level at Mount St. Helens Wednesday as the volcano entered a new quiet phase that scientists cannot yet explain.
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A US judge on Thursday struck down a law allowing federal anti-terrorism agents to access financial, telephone and Internet records without a warrant.
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TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.  - The U.S. military  dropped spy charges on Wednesday against a Syrian-American  airman who worked as a translator at the detention center at  Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the latest setback to the Bush  administration's war on terror.