GAO on Virtual Currencies

Editor’s Note: Bitcoina high tech Beanie Baby.

From: US General Accountability Office: Virtual Currencies: Emerging Regulatory, Law Enforcement, and Consumer Protection Challenges. GAO-14-496

Additionally, because virtual currencies operate over the Internet, they have implications for agency components that investigate and prosecute computer crimes (also called cybercrimes). For example, DOJ’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section stated that virtual currencies can be attractive to entities that seek to facilitate or conduct computer crimes over the Internet, such as computer-based fraud and identity theft. The section’s responsibilities include improving legal processes for obtaining electronic evidence and working with other law enforcement agencies in improving the technological and operational means for gathering and analyzing electronic evidence. The FBI, Secret Service, and ICE-HSI also investigate computer crimes.

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Thousands of hospitals making simple cyber security error, exposing devices

From: FierceMedicalDevices

By

Drug infusion pumps that can be manipulated from afar, defibrillators than can be programmed to deliver random shocks, refrigerators whose temperature settings can be reset, these are some of the cybersecurity problems uncovered by Scott Erven, the head of information security for healthcare facility operator Essentia Health.

It took Erven’s team only half an hour to find another healthcare organization that was exposing information about 68,000 systems, including at least 488 cardiology systems, 332 radiology systems and 32 pacemakers, according to Wired Magazine.

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Attack on Reuters Makes Mockery of Cyber Security

From: LiveScience Op-Ed

By Bill Buchanan, Edinburgh Napier University  

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

One big security issue that has arisen lately concerns control of news media. National boundaries have become blurred on the internet, and the control any nation can have over information dissemination has been eroded – on news websites but especially on open platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Medtronic Reveals They Were Targeted By Hackers, Lost Patient Records

From: redOrbit

The largest stand-alone medical device manufacturer in the world has revealed that hackers had successfully infiltrated its computers, and that it had lost some patient records in separate incidents last year.

In regulatory documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday, Minneapolis-based Medtronic confirmed that it and two other large medical technology companies had been victimized by cyberattacks originating from Asia, according to Reuters reporter Jim Finkle.

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Why A Secured Network Is Like The Human Body

From: Dark Reading

Dan Ross

It’s time to throw away the analogies about building fortresses and perimeter defenses and start to approach InfoSec with the same standard of care we use for public health.

The networked enterprise is often compared to a fortress: Guard your perimeter, build a secure wall, keep out intruders, beware spies and traitors. Like many of our approaches to cyber security, this metaphor is outdated and doesn’t help clarify the complex of challenges we are facing.