NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, April 5, 1995
7A
Mexico stems plunge of peso
Severe steps heal economy president says
The Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — President Ernesto Zedillo, addressing the nation's stockbrokers, said yesterday that his austerity measures were beginning to heal a battered economy and that investor confidence ultimately would follow.
Zedillo told the sixth-annual Conference of the Mexican Stock Market that his new government has acted decisively to control a rapid plunge by the peso, which has lost
half its value against the dollar.
"We have acted with firm decision and swiftness, avoiding an even greater financial crisis," Zedillo said, speaking of the recipe of tax hikes and wage restraints he imposed last month.
The Mexican Stock Exchange's key index already has risen nearly 400 points since March 16. It gained 4.9 percent Monday and was trading up again yesterday at just under the 2,000-point mark.
The peso, meanwhile, was trading at 6.655 to the dollar, slightly strengthening from Monday's close of 6.765 pesos. That was still about half of what the peso was worth when the crisis erupted Dec. 20.
But Zedillo said he saw encouraging signs.
He noted that Mexico, for the
first time in more than four years,
had a trade surplus of $452 million
in February.
A trade and services deficit totaling $28 billion at the end of 1994 was blamed as a major factor in the peso's instability.
Yet, Mexicans in recent weeks have seen their purchasing powers plunge amid price increases.
Zedillo said he would now seek to put new emphasis on internal savings, both within the Treasury and among average Mexicans, as part of a long-term economic recovery.
The minimum wage was increased 12 percent April 1, but inflation is forecast to leap far ahead, 42 percent this year. The minimum wage is now worth the equivalent of less than $3 a day.
Zedillo also has increased the
national sales tax from 10 percent to 15 percent, sparking protests by Mexicans who complain businesses will close and jobs will be lost by the hundreds of thousands in the crisis.
Members of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party have called for concerted opposition.
The conservative opposition National Action Party announced yesterday that it will launch a campaign of peaceful marches and demonstrations in the last two weeks of April against the sales tax increase.
"I call on civil society to rebel against this increase in the sales tax because it is unconstitutional, unjust and unfair," declared one federal congressman, Victor Quintana, at a meeting of Democratic Revolution officials.
Computer security threatened by new program
The Associated Press
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Computer security experts could be in for a devil of a time from SATAN when its creator distributes it free on the Internet today.
SATAN is a new piece of software designed to find security gaps in computer systems and make them harder to crack, and Dan Farmer and his partner are releasing it despite fears that hackers will use it to execute break-ins.
"As far as abuse goes, I think it will actually decrease because people can make better decisions about improving their security." Farmer said yesterday.
SATAN, which stands for Security Administrators Tool for Analyzing Networks, lets people who run computer systems directly linked to the Internet find security holes.
While there have been similar programs and serious hackers already are familiar with ways of breaking into computer systems, experts say
SATAN is significant because it is easy enough for novices to use.
Youngsters could easily play computer pranks, on-line vandals could scramble a hospital's medical records and white-collar criminals could steal corporate secrets, said Donn Parker, a computer security consultant with SRI International, a consulting company in Menlo Park
"It's like any other powerful tool! It can be used for great good and great harm," Parker said.
Farmer, who lives in San Francisco, developed SATAN with Wietse Venema, a security expert at the University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. They first planned to release the program on the Internet on April 1.
Then they realized that the day unofficially set aside for pranks fell on a Saturday, so they pushed the release date to April 5, Farmer's 33rd birthday.
Parker said Farmer should have sold SATAN only to experts guarding computer systems, and he disputed the argument that SATAN would help protect against electronic intrusion.
Experts agree that the average home-computer user won't be affected, and the military's computers holding classified information are isolated and also are not at risk.
But SATAN's impending release has prompted government agencies and businesses to take steps against electronic intrusions.
Computer security experts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco have developed a program that alerts computer operators to SATAN attacks. The program, dubbed Courtney, sounds an alarm and identifies the computer where the intrusion originated. It also is available free on the Internet.
Hewlett-Packard Co., one of several corporations that already have tested SATAN, has warned customers about it.
puter security expert, and his employer, Silicon Graphics Inc. in Mountain View. Farmer quit last month during what a company vice president, Bill Kelly, described as a difference in philosophies.
Reports about SATAN led to a disagreement between Farmer, a com-
"The widespread distribution of this software in this manner is not a good idea," Kelly said.
Some security experts believe that managers of computer networks need to be more careful about security and that SATAN will force them to pay attention to weak spots.
Marcus Ranum, an engineering manager at Trusted Information Systems, a security consulting company in Glenwood, Md., said that any organization that had sensitive material and was connected to the Internet should be worried about security, regardless of SATAN.
"It does happen, but those folks are like people who get in a car without fastening their seatbelt," he said.
Japanese police continue search for cult chemists
'Supreme Truth' continues to deny attack in subway
Police are searching for 30 chemists who worked at the building in Kamikuishiki,60 miles southwest of Tokyo,for investigation of plotting mass murder.
The Associated Press
The maze-like building at the foot of Mount Fuji reportedly contained tons of chemicals and equipment needed to produce sarin, the deadly gas developed by Nazis during World War II and used in March 20 attacks in the Tokyo subway.
The NHK network reported yesterday that the building used power levels of up to 6,600 volts. Outlets in ordinary Japanese homes deliver 100 volts.
TOKYO — The "Science Ministry" where chemists from a secretive cult allegedly made deadly nerve gas had a power supply strong enough to run a medium-sized factory, Japanese television reported yesterday.
Investigators planned to look at the energy records of the compound to see if the patterns might indicate cult members were making sarin. NHK reported. Police declined to
comment on the report.
The sect, called Aum Shinri Kyo, or Supreme Truth, has denied it was making the chemical and has said it was not involved in the subway attacks that killed 11 people and injured 5,500.
Japanese newspapers have reported that the chemicals police seized at the compound could have produced enough sarin to kill millions of people, and that the cult also may have been working on biological and nuclear weapons.
Sarin can kill in tiny amounts by paralyzing muscles, including those used for breathing.
The raids of Aum Shinri Kyo facilities continued yesterday
Police searched a large two-story building in Tomizawa, 18 miles from the Mount Fuji compound, seizing documents, medicine and computer disks. Kyoto News Service quoted former sect members who said the building housed machinery used to make gun triggers and knives.
About 500 officers searched a cult site on the island of Kyushu, about 550 miles southwest of Tokyo. Police reportedly seized videotapes, computer disks and chemicals used to make the sarin antidote.
Police have made no arrests in the subway attack or in the shooting last week of Japan's top police officer, who was heading the investigation.