Love Emails Of The Psycho Astranaut Are Released

Orbiting Earth at 17,500 mph may be considered enough to get anyone's pulse racing. But Bill Oefelein, the pilot of the space shuttle Discovery, had an added reason to be thrilled as he cruised 220 miles above the planet.

As he scrolled through his e-mail inbox, packed with complex instructions from Nasa controllers and memos about navigational coordinates, one e-mail in particular, entitled "I need a rub down", may have caught his eye more than most.

Sent by his new girlfriend, Colleen Shipman, an air force captain he had met just before his 13-day space mission last December, it raised the promise of a warm welcome when he returned home.

"Will have to control myself when I see you. First urge will be to rip your clothes off, throw you on the ground and love the hell out of you. Am anxious to get you alone," Ms Shipman, 30, wrote.

The steamy e-mail — and an admission by Mr Oefelein, 41, that he had two-timed her with fellow astronaut Lisa Nowak — was among documents released yesterday by prosecutors investigating how the love triangle prompted a showdown that has left Ms Nowak, 43, facing a potential life sentence. The mother of three was arrested in Orlando, Florida, on February 5 after driving nearly 1,000 miles (1,600km) from her Texas home — wearing a nappy to save delays en route — to attack Ms Shipman.

She was armed with pepper spray, an air gun, a knife and a steel mallet.

The papers reveal that Ms Nowak had been divorcing her husband of 19 years to be with her lover, but had gone off the rails after Mr Oefelein left her in early January. She found Ms Shipman's love notes on his computer during an apparent snooping session at his apartment, to which she had a key. Printouts from Mr Oefelein's inbox were discovered in Ms Nowak's car after her arrest.

Other documents released include a police statement in which Mr Oefelein admitted that a two-year affair with Ms Nowak had begun in 2004, a year before he divorced his wife of 15 years, and ended two months after he started dating Ms Shipman last November.

He claimed that the relationship with Ms Nowak had ended amicably early in January. Days before the attack Ms Nowak wished Mr Oefelein a "nice weekend", knowing that he was going to spend it with Ms Shipman, he claimed.

But other documents found in Ms Nowak's car suggest that she was still infatuated. In a letter to Mr Oefelein's mother, Billye, Ms Nowak raved: "Bill is absolutely the best person I've ever known and I love him more than I know possible."

Ms Shipman told police that she had felt uncomfortable over her boyfriend's continuing closeness to Ms Nowak. Her fears were confirmed one night, she said, when "we were laying in bed and he called me Lisa". Ms Nowak, who is on bail, has been charged with attempted kidnap and burglary with assault. She is on 30 days' forced leave from Nasa, which expires tomorrow and is expected to be renewed.

The scandal is said to have dashed Mr Oefelein's chances of another space mission. Even before the incident, he wrote in an e-mail to Ms Shipman that while Nasa had plans to return man to the Moon, hopes of him being involved were scant.

"Maybe I will be able to clean the toilets of those so fortunate to be chosen," he lamented.

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A New Serius Security Threat

Symantec announced that Symantec Security Response in conjunction with the Indiana University School of Informatics has uncovered a significant new security threat. In this attack, dubbed "Drive-by Pharming," consumers may fall victim to pharming by having their home broadband routers reconfigured by a malicious web site. According to a separate informal study conducted by Indiana University, up to 50 percent of home broadband users are susceptible to this attack.

With traditional pharming, an attacker aims to redirect a user attempting to visit one web site, to another bogus web site. Pharming can be conducted either by changing the host file on a victim's computer or through the manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS). Drive-by pharming is a new type of threat in which a user visits a malicious web site and an attacker is then able to change the DNS settings on a user's broadband router or wireless access point. DNS servers are computers responsible for resolving Internet names into their real "Internet Protocol" or IP addresses, functioning as the "signposts" of the Internet. In order for two computers to connect to each other on the Internet, they need to know each other's IP addresses. Drive-by pharming is made possible when a broadband router is not password protected or an attacker is able to guess the password -- for example, most routers come with a well-known default password that a user never changes.

Drive-by pharming involves the use of JavaScript to change the settings of a user's home broadband router. Once the user clicks on a malicious link, malicious JavaScript code is used to change the DNS settings on the user's router. From this point on, every time the user browses to a web site, DNS resolution will be performed by the attacker. DNS resolution is the process by which one determines the Internet address corresponding to a web site's common name. This gives the attacker complete discretion over which web sites the victim visits on the Internet. For example, the user may think they are visiting their online banking web site but in reality they have been redirected to the attacker's site.

These fraudulent sites are an almost exact replica of the actual site so the user will likely not recognize the difference. Once the user is directed to the pharmer's "bank" site, and enters their user name and password, the attacker can steal this information. The attacker will then be able to access the victim's account on the "real" bank site and transfer funds, create new accounts, and write checks.

Symantec Security Response recommends that users employ a multi-layered protection strategy:

- Make sure their routers are uniquely password protected. Most routers come with a default administrator password which is easy for pharmers to guess

- Use an Internet security solution that combines antivirus, firewall, intrusion detection, and vulnerability protection

- Avoid clicking on links that seem suspicious - for example, those sent to you in an email from someone you don't recognize

Existing security solutions on the market today cannot protect against this type of attack since drive-by pharming targets the user's router directly, and the existing solutions only protect the user's computer system. Symantec's Consumer Business Unit has been actively working on technologies to help address this problem using client-side technology. Symantec's goal is to develop the means to automatically impede the attack by using a number of embedded techniques running on the client, embedded in the network stack, and in the browser.

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