National Homeland Security Knowledgebase
Welcome to Birmingham InfraGard!
The Birmingham Chapter of InfraGard is celebrating its sixth year as a chapter. The 220+ members of the local chapter are part of the more than 20,000 national members who realize that it is *OUR* job to protect our nation's Critical Infrastructures. We do this by gathering together monthly and communicating on our mailing lists to share information between our members and with the federal government about risks to our nation's Critical Infrastructures. In many cases, we end up discussing Cyber Threats, because Cyber is the one Infrastructure that is present in all of the others.For general questions about InfraGard, feel free to contact one of our officers:
- President - Gary Warner, gar@askgar.com
- Vice President - John Giordano, john.giordano@sungard.com
- Secretary - Steve Adwell, Stephen.Adwell@epl.net
Looking for Packet Ninjas?
We have two mailing lists for our chapter:Packet-Ninjas: this mailing list is a place for the discussion of the more technical aspects of data security. We call ourselves a "volunteer forensics community". The list was started to exchange help and ideas related to packet captures and analysis of network traffic. Its grown to include all things geeky - such as malware analysis and system vulnerabilities. Started by and for InfraGard members, the list is open to all cyber security researchers.
Birmingham-InfraGard: this is our main chapter mailing list. Meeting announcements 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 EITHER mailing list, please send an email to our chapter secretary, Steve Adwell, at stephen.adwell@epl.net who will ensure that you are added to the list.
Birmingham InfraGard Next Meeting:
Our next InfraGard Meeting is at HealthSouth Conference Center on March 11th, with refreshments at 8:30AM and the program from 9:00 to 11:00.
Our topics this month:
* Our special guest speaker this month is Joseph Opacki from the FBI's Special Technologies and Applications Section in Washington DC. *
Mr. Opacki and his team will be sharing with us: - the current malware threatscape - the FBI's role in malware analysis - FBI STAS's role in supporting field agents - how InfraGard can support the FBI's malware efforts
The HealthSouth Conference Center is on Highway 280, just south of I-459.
Directions to the HealthSouth Conference center can be found on MapQuest here:
1 Healthsouth Pkwy S Birmingham, AL 35243-2358, US Please park in the UPPER lot.
Recent Meeting Topics:
- October - an update on the National InfraGard Congress, and a presentation on the state-of-the-art in Wireless Internet Exploitation. (hosted by Regions Bank)
- 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)
Presentations from Meeting 67 - Estonian DDOS, Economics of DDOS, and DDOS Technical History and Response.
(other presentations coming soon!)
PLANNING AHEAD . . . . .
Go ahead and put us on your calendar for every SECOND TUESDAY. It would be a good idea to go ahead and put these on your calendar now to keep the time free!
November 13 - hosted by SunGard
December 11 - hosted by Compass Bank
January 8, 2008 - hosted by Blue Cross Blue Shield
February 12, 2008
March 11, 2008
April 8, 2008
May 13, 2008
June 10, 2008
If you would be interested in hosting a future meeting, please email InfraGard Vice President John Giordano, at john.giordano@sungard.com
LOOKING BACK . . . .
May 8 - Second Annual Firearms Safety DayAround 50 Birmingham InfraGard members joined the FBI to learn about how the FBI trains with firearms, to see a demonstration of the FBI SWAT Team in action, and to fire all of the weapons used by the FBI. Afterwards, lunch was prepared by Alagasco's Grill Team.
May 1 - Tech Mixer 3.0
Several of our members joined FBI Special Agent Mike Mauldin to share with many hundred attendees what our organization is about.
April 10 - Monthly Meeting: "ANI & The Myth of Anti-Virus".
We had a great turn-out at the FBI Building for our April meeting where we saw detailed analysis of the way criminals took advantage of the "Animated Icon" Microsoft exploit to distribute spyware, viruses, and trojans during the time for which there was no patch available. This led to a great group discussion on how companies can protect themselves from similar emerging threats in the future.
April 6 - FBI Wireless Security press release
An InfraGard conversation about Wireless Security and the new techniques for breaking WEP even faster (now less than one minute) led to a "headline" story on the national fbi.gov website. Got a Wireless Network? Its Time To Shore Up Security The story was covered by all Birmingham networks and appeared in the Birmingham News as well.
March 13-15 - The Birmingham Conference on Phishing
The FBI Birmingham CyberSquad and UAB's Computer Science and Justice Science Departments hosted a Law Enforcement Training Event on investigating phishing attacks. Instructors included Earthlink's Lindsey Wegrzyn, GoDaddy's Ben Butler, Birmingham InfraGard member Gary Warner, and a hacking demonstration from Smart Fox Solutions.
March 13 - Monthly Meeting: Wireless Security
Protective Life hosted our March meeting where Birmingham InfraGard member Joshua Smith explained how hackers break into our wireless networks and what we can do to protect ourselves.
Feb 13 - Monthly Meeting: "InfraGard: Curiosity Required"
HealthSouth hosted our February meeting where we investigated four recent Case Studies where suspicious activity observed by alert InfraGard members led to FBI investigations. As InfraGard members, being alert and curious, and FOLLOWING UP WITH ACTION helps to make our program valuable!
Jan 9 - Monthly Meeting: "Torpig: The Most Advanced Banking Trojan"
The FBI hosted our January meeting where we explained the function of an extremely wide-spread banking trojan. Torpig detects when infected machines visit more than 500 different websites and can alter the banking web pages in real-time! Members learned how to detect and report suspicious banking activity.
2006
In 2006 we stayed true to our cyber origins, but also discussed "Gangs in Birmingham", "Jihad Online", "The War on Terror", and hosted a special day-long meeting on "Pandemic Flu Planning" with speakers from Auburn University's Veterinary school, UAB's Geographic Medicine Department, Jefferson County EMA, the Red Cross, Jefferson County Board of Health, and Energen Corporation and Regions Bank.
PIRT: Special Anti-Phishing Opportunity
Birmingham InfraGard member, Gary Warner, is one of the team leaders of the PIRT project.PIRT = Phishing Incident Reporting & Termination Squad
Learn more about PIRT
Earlier presentations
August - Daniel Uriah Clemens presented on SQL Injection techniques. If you sec ure your network, but not your web-based applications, you do not have security. His presentation is available here. He has also provided an Advanced SQL Inject ion presentation from Victor Chapela, one of his research partners.April - at our April meeting Gary Warner discussed PHP Vulnerabilities. Some more information from that presentation is available here as: PHP Urgency
February - Two presentations from our Phocus on Phishing meeting are available in an edited-for-online form.
October - Presentation on Hurricane Ivan and Remote Administration Trojans are available from our October 12, 2004 meeting.
September - Presentations on Operation Web Snare and Privacy and Strong Encryption are available from our September 14, 2004 meeting.
Check out one our most eleet packet ninja's writings on sobig.e and many other things Joe Stewart