National Homeland Security Knowledgebase

Welcome to Birmingham InfraGard!

For general questions about InfraGard, feel free to contact one of our officers:

• President - John Giordano, john.giordano@sungard.com
• Vice President - Gary Warner, gar@askgar.com
• Secretary - Thomas Torgerson, ttorgerson@bcbsal.org
• FBI InfraGard Coordinator - George Moore - George.Moore@ic.fbi.gov

Our Mailing Lists

birmingham_chapter@infragard.org: this is our main chapter mailing list. Meeting announcements, alerts, and discussion of interest to the chapter occurs here. The strength of our chapter is the relationships we have with our fellow security professionals. This mailing list is what keeps those relationships strong between meetings.

To join this mailing list, please email our Secretary, Thomas Torgerson - ttorgerson@bcbsal.org and cc: the Vice President, Gary Warner - gar@askgar.com

ig_malware@infragard.org: This mailing list is the successor to the popular "packet-ninjas" mailing list that established Birmingham InfraGard as the geekiest chapter of the 86 national chapters. The purpose of this list is to escalate the value of our members' research in cyber security matters by allowing for information sharing across the 86 chapters. Perhaps each chapter only has five people who are truly analyzing malware and determining the threat level, the functionality, the proper defense, and the point of origin of a new virus, worm, or botnet. With 86 chapters that could still be a valuable pool of 430+ if they were all sharing their knowledge with each other. We call ourselves a "volunteer forensics community" and welcome queries regarding malware threats from law enforcement or the general membership.

To join this mailing list, please login to the InfraGard Secure VPN, and visit this URL after logging in:

https://igc.infragard.org/http/listserv.infragard.org:8080/mailman/listinfo/ig_malware

Birmingham InfraGard Next Meeting:

Birmingham InfraGard meets on the Second Tuesday of each month. Our meetings are in the morning, with refreshments at 8:30, and the program running from 9:00 to 11:00 AM.

The location and agenda for our May 12, 2009 meeting at UAB will be posted shortly.

Be Prepared

• The Centers for Disease Control - Swine Flu Page
• The World Health Organization - Disease Outbreak News Page

PLANNING AHEAD . . . . .

May 12, 2009 - Meeting at UAB - details shortly.
June 9, 2009 -
July 14, 2009 -
August 11, 2009 -

If you would be interested in hosting a future meeting, please email InfraGard Vice President Gary Warner, at gar@askgar.com.

InfraGard Recent Meetings

March 10, 2009: Thanks to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama for hosting our meeting! The FBI's Joe Ronsigvalle shared with us about the Weapons of Mass Destruction program, and Gary Warner shared with us about an initiative to "Bring Cybercrime Home", a partnership to encourage state and local law enforcement to work more Cybercrime cases.

January 13, 2009: Thanks to the US Attorney's Office for hosting our meeting! Gary Warner from UAB Computer Forensics gave a presentation on the Cyber Propaganda War in Gaza, and Rob Saunders, a Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialist, shared a presentation on Identity Theft Compliance for companies.

InfraGard Out and About

Recent Meeting Topics:

• August 12, 2008: Our meeting at Southern Research's campus had two excellent presentations. David Wharton of Regions Bank, shared a presentation called "Vulnerability Discovery for Fun and Profit", where he stressed the importance of thorough application testing, with several real-world examples. Lt. Bill Eller, the Commander of the Alabama Fusion Center, gave us an update on how the Fusion Center helps to share information with all parties to prevent and respond to terrorism and crime.
• July 8, 2008: Our meeting to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the FBI was held at the Birmingham FBI Office. Our featured speaker was Birmingham FBI's Assistant Special Agent in Charge Charles Regan, who shared with us about his three month assignment to Afghanistan as the commander of all FBI resources deployed there. The FBI plays a significant role in Explosive Device Analysis and Crime Scene Analysis, including processing of DNA and Fingerprints across the theater.
• June 10, 2008: Our meeting at New Horizons featured a presentation called Current Trends in Identity Theft and Fraud by Gary Warner of UAB.
• May 13, 2008: The theme of this meeting, hosted by Protective Life, was "A Look Underground". UAB's Gary Warner shared details on what's happening in Credit Card Trading, Botnet, and Phishing forums, and how bad guys are sharing information to better protect their malware from detection. After the break, UAB CIS Student Brian Tanner joined Gary to do a live demo of "Remote Administration Trojans" currently found in the wild.
• April 8, 2008: The Birmingham FBI hosted our April meeting which featured Mike Whitt of Compass Bank sharing on "360 Degrees of Security", and Andy Willingham, from Atlanta's MARTA system, sharing with us about security risks to a transportation system, and his involvement in the Security Catalyst Community.
• March 11, 2008: HealthSouth corporation hosted our March meeting, which featured training from the FBI's Special Technologies and Applications Section, lead by Joseph Opacki. Joseph and his team focused on how the FBI analyzes malware. Following the meeting, his team lead two days of training at UAB for Law Enforcement and InfraGard members on malware analysis, which is being put to good use throughout the chapter.
• February 12, 2008: For something different, the chapter met for breakfast at the Piccadilly's Cafeteria in Riverchase. Our speakers were Supervisory Special Agent Dale Miskell, presenting "Cyber Intelligence Collection and how InfraGard Can Assist", and Dan Clemens of Packet Ninjas, who presented "Exploiting Low Environmental Risks to Compromise High Risk Assets" - a talk about his Penetration Testing experiences.
• January 8, 2008: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama hosted our January meeting. Our special guest was Michael Waters, the Protective Security Agent from the FEderal Department of Homeland Security, who shared about the PSA program and the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. Following Mr. Waters, Mike Shaw presented "Introduction to OpenID".
• December 11, 2007: Compass Bank hosted this meeting. Our speakers were Todd Miranda, speaking on "Threat Modeling", and John Giordano of SunGard, presenting the "SANS Top 20" and leading discussion.
• November 13, 2007: SunGard hosted our November meeting. The speakers were Joe Vest, discussing "TJX and Card Theft in History", followed by Walter Bradford, presenting the concept of "Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs)", including information on the National Highway
• October 9, 2007: Regions Bank hosted our October meeting. We began with a review of the National InfraGard Congress, attended by Gary, John, and Steve, along with our FBI Cyber Squad, SSA Dale Miskell, SA Mike Mauldin, SA Kim Castillo, and SA Steve Ferguson. After that review, Joshua Smith gave us an update on "Wireless Hacking", including a demonstration of breaking WEP encryption in 60 seconds or less.
• September - "Jihad in Historical Perspective" and "Security Through Obscurity: Why Not To Do It" were our topics this month. (hosted by Birmingham FBI)
• August - "GAO: CyberCrime Challenges", with guests from FBI and US Secret Service responding (hosted by UAB)