The Rotary Club of
New York
Fellow Rotarians,
The speaker at our next meeting on October 8th
is J. J. Goldberg, the Editor in Chief of The Jewish Forward, the national
Jewish newsweekly published in association with the legendary Yiddish Daily
Forward (in Yiddish). Don’t worry! Mr. Goldberg will speak to us in English. You can read more about J. J. Goldberg in the latest
Bulletin on our website at www.nyrotary.org/Bulletin/bulletin100802.pdf.
Susanne Sebert has written Reporter of the Week in the Bulletin with an informative account of the last meeting. Susanne has been a member since 1999. She is Director of External Relations at AFS Intercultural Programs, Inc. and her classification is International Education Exchange.
Also during Fellowship Day, Lillian Coury conducted an open discussion forum to address membership concerns, and how the New York City Rotary Club can attract and retain new members. Lilian sent me the following message in follow-up to this forum:
Dear Fellow Rotarians:
I'd like to personally thank you for your
active and thoughtful participation in our discussion forum regarding our club
and its membership. I know we now have a great deal of direction in
building upon your comments, and incorporating them into our new brochures. Our
greatest asset is our members, and every thought will be considered and
included in our development plans. I continue to welcome further
discussion and ideas, as well as your willingness to serve. And I'll keep you
informed as to our progress.
With gratitude,
Lillian Coury
Co-Chair, Membership Division
The Board of
Directors has approved as new members Francesco Fadda and Vittorio Ansuini.
Francesco’s suggested classification is Marketing/Publishing and Vittorio’s
suggested classification is Restaurateur - North Italian. Welcome to our
legendary club! You can read more about our new members in the Bulletin.
Don’t forget that President
Silvio Amori and President Elect Greg Lynch invite us to an Office Housewarming
Party in our new office on Tuesday October 8th at 5:30-7:30PM. They
will treat us to wine and cheese (offered by them). It is a great opportunity
to see our new office and to experience camaraderie and fellowship after office
hours. Our new office is located at 322 Eighth Avenue (at 26th Street), Suite
1701, New York, NY 10001, tel: 212-633-1311. You can read more about it on our
website at www.nyrotary.org/Bulletin/office_house_warming_party.pdf.
The International Service Division will have their next Breakfast Meeting on Wednesday October 16th. You can read more about it on our website at www.nyrotary.org/int_service_div/int_service_div.html.
Computer viruses are becoming more and more aggressive over the Internet. The latest is the new Bugbear virus. I recently received the following information about Bugbear, written by Matthew Broersma and sent to me by Rotary History Chairman Jack Selway. I have included this information because it is important for everybody to know about the Bugbear virus:
Bugbear spreading--worse than Klez
By Matthew Broersma
October 3, 2002, 12:31 PM PT
The Bugbear worm is shaping up into the most
serious Internet threat in months, according to security researchers, as it
surpassed the lingering Klez.H to become the fastest-spreading virus of the
moment. Antivirus company Symantec on Wednesday upgraded the virus to a danger
rating of "4" out of a possible "5".
The rise of Bugbear to the top of the virus
charts is partly due to the speed at which it is spreading, but also in part to
an unexpected effect that it is having.
E-mail and security service provider
MessageLabs intercepted more than 21,000 copies of the virus on Thursday,
compared with nearly 6,000 copies of Klez.H, which has topped the virus charts
sporadically since February. This is partly because of Bugbear's rapid rise,
but MessageLabs said that in addition Klez activity has suddenly dropped to
about a quarter of its usual levels.
"With all the publicity around Bugbear,
people are finally getting around to updating their antivirus software, so Klez
is suddenly falling," MessageLabs chief technical officer Mark Sunner told
ZDNet UK. "Klez has been going forever and ever, and now it's been killed
off."
Meanwhile, the company predicted that Bugbear
has probably not peaked yet.
Threat of second-wave attacks
Sunner said that the virus' growing presence
poses a new threat. Since Bugbear leaves a backdoor program on infected
machines, there could now be thousands of computers around the world
susceptible to further attacks. "All a hacker has to do is point a browser
at that machine and they can get at everything on the hard disk," Sunner
said. "Because Bugbear has received so much publicity, all the hackers
will be riding onto this. There is a plethora of machines up for grabs."
Such vulnerable machines can be used, for
example, to overwhelm a company's servers in what is called a distributed
denial-of-service attack.
Known technically as W32.Bugbear or
I-Worm.Tanatos, experts now believe the virus to be a modified version of the
earlier Badtrans worm. Besides installing the backdoor, the worm disables
various antivirus measures and any personal firewall that might be present, and
installs a program for recording keystrokes--which can log any passwords the
user types in. It scours the computer for email addresses, to which it sends
infected messages via its own email engine. The virus only affects Windows
machines.
A flaw in MIME (the multipurpose Internet mail
extensions) lets a malicious program attached to an email message execute when
the text of the message appears in Outlook. The software problem was patched by
Microsoft almost 18 months ago, but some users apparently have not updated
their computers.
However, even with the patch, if a user clicks
on the attachment he can still be infected.
Clever social engineering
One of the factors that has made Bugbear spread so quickly is the way it
disguises infected messages. Besides the common method of sending a message
with a randomly-selected heading and "From" field, the virus can also
create a message as a reply or forward of an existing message.
"If you're receiving an old email from
someone who you know, it's confusing, and you're likely to click on the
attachment to find out what's going on," said Sunner. "It's a good social
engineering trick."
The worm began infecting computers on Sunday,
originating in the Asia-Pacific region, according to MessageLabs. That area is
still its biggest concentration, and because the company has fewer customers in
the region, there are probably many more uncounted viruses.
Security experts say that the biggest factor
in the continuing danger from Bugbear, Klez.H and other worms is that users
aren't bothering to update their virus protection--and this is particularly
true of home users.
Protection
Antivirus companies recommend that users
download Microsoft's Outlook patch, update their antivirus programs and avoid
clicking on mysterious attachments unless the sender confirms it is safe.
Eugene Kaspersky, head of Kaspersky Labs,
recommends updating antivirus software weekly or daily, treating any email
attachments with suspicion and paying attention to warnings from antivirus
companies. "If you follow these rules, you will be 90 percent
protected," he said in a recent interview with ZDNet UK.
Don’t forget to reserve your table for our next meeting. You can
do so via e-mail to our office at ny.rotary@verizon.net, or call Andreas or Ana at
212-633-1311. You can also fax in
the RSVP form, which you can download at www.nyrotary.org/Bulletin/rsvp100802.pdf.
Our fax number is 212-633-1954. Princeton Club’s
culinary staff will serve us Salmon during our next meeting.
I recommend that you visit our New York Rotary
website every week at www.NYRotary.org.
Enjoy the Fellowship of Rotary!
Internet
Communication Officer
The
Rotary Club of New York
Vice
Chairman
Rotary’s
Global History
This
newsletter has also been posted on our website at www.NYRotary.org.
In order to read the
PDF file of the Bulletin-on-the-Web, you need the latest version of the Acrobat
Reader (Version 5.0). If you don't have Acrobat Reader 5.0, you can download it
for free from the web at:
You can find the
following interesting websites at:
1.
New York
Rotary Club at www.NYRotary.org/.
2.
Rotary’s Global History
at www.rotaryhistory.org
3.
Rotary
Youth Leadership Awards at www.rotaryryla.com
4. Rotary
Radio every Tuesday 5-6 PM EST or 2-3 PM PST at http://12.162.161.64/cart/ProductList.asp?SearchFor=Rotary+Radio&x=36&y=6
5. Matts
Ingemanson, Helen Reisler and Jim Thompson from the New York Rotary Club were
interviewed on Rotary Radio Tuesday July 9, 2002.
http://12.162.161.64/cart/ProductDetail.asp?PR_ProductID=329
You need
Windows Media Player to listen to Rotary Radio. Windows Media Player is
included with Windows Millennium and Windows XP. If you use Windows 95 or
Windows 98, you can download Windows Media Player for free from Microsoft.
Click here to download Windows Media
Player