Archive for May, 2014
Cyberattack that locked Apple devices in Australia reaches U.S.
May 28th
From: CBS News
First came reports of a widespread hack of Apple devices in Australia — the attacker locked the devices remotely and demanded ransom from the owners. Now, CBS Los Angeles reports the scam appears to have reached the U.S.
Earlier this week, many Australian owners of Apple devices began discovering that their iPhones, iPads and Macs had been hacked by someone using the name Oleg Pliss. They were directed to a PayPal account and told to send money to have them unlocked, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Belgium Desperately Seeking Cyber Security Czar
May 23rd
From: WSJ/digits
Frances Robinson
BRUSSELS– At the tail end of a bruising 2013, Belgium’s government decided it had had enough. The decision to set up a cyber-security agency followed a series of high-profile incidents, including the hacking of the country’s biggest telecoms operator, Belgacom and the leak to a newspaper of a CD containing the Prime Minister’s personal emails.
With EUR 10 million budget earmarked, the Centre pour la cybersécurité Belgique (CCB) was meant to be up and running in the first half of this year.
It’s now almost the end of May, the center is not operational, no chief has been chosen, and Belgium has been hacked again.
Don’t Force Google to ‘Forget’
May 19th
From: NYT
By JONATHAN ZITTRAIN
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — THE European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that Europeans have a limited “right to be forgotten” by search engines like Google. According to the ruling, an individual can compel Google to remove certain reputation-harming search results that are generated by Googling the individual’s name. The court is trying to address an important problem — namely, the Internet’s ability to preserve indefinitely all its information about you, no matter how unfortunate or misleading — but it has devised a poor solution.
Britain, Israel Agree to Finance Joint Cyber Defense Research
May 15th
From: The algemeiner
Britain’s Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance and Israel’s National Cyber Bureau on Thursday met in London to sign a pact to finance joint cyber defense research, the UK’s Jewish News reported.
“Britain is one of the most advanced countries in the world on cyber defense, and we place great importance on promoting and strengthening cooperation with our UK partners,” said Dr. Eviatar Matania, head of the Israeli agency. “We believe that mutual sharing of knowledge will strengthen both countries.”
Matania signed the pact with her British counterpart, James Quinault.
Former national security advisor Donilon: Use better cyber hygiene
May 14th
From: The Washington Post
President Obama’s former National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon on Tuesday urged Internet users to employ better “cyber hygiene” to protect themselves in a rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape.
At FOSE 2014, Washington’s annual federal IT expo, Donilon gave a keynote talk called “America’s Foreign, Defense and Cyber Policy: An Insider’s Perspective,”during which he said cyber threats are “more sophisticated and pervasive as the world leads more of its business life and its personal life and its security online.”
Alleged Navy Hacker Says His Group Just ‘Did Dumb Things’
May 12th
From: ABC News
By ALEXANDER TUCCIARONE
The former Navy sailor accused of leading a group of hackers that targeted U.S. government and private websites said today that he and his associates were “just a group of people that were dumb and did dumb things.”
“Essentially I am in trouble for posting all of the stuff on Twitter,” Knight told ABC News by email in his first interview. “Although a lot of people are saying I was the leader of some crime organizations that was out to get people which wasn’t true. Just a group of people that were dumb and did dumb things.”
Guard secrets against spy Net
May 9th
From: China Daily/Op-ed
By Wu Yixue
A female suspect named Gao Yu was detained for leaking “state secrets” to foreign contacts, said Beijing police on Thursday. Gao, 70, a Beijing resident and a former journalist, was suspected of illegally obtaining a highly confidential document of the Chinese central government and sending it to an overseas website in June last year, which later became widely circulated on foreign websites.
This is the third case reported this week on overseas espionage, which highlights the grave challenge to national security. It’s high time the related authorities tightened regulations on classified documents and raised people’s awareness of protecting state secrets.
India third country in world most vulnerable to cyber attack
May 7th
From: SearchSecurity.in
Anup Basti
The Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec shows that the world is in an era of “mega data breach”. Organizations worldwide are suffering and this includes both national security departments and commercial enterprises.
According to the latest report, the number of data records breached has increased by 62% in the last year, to 552 million.
India is the third most vulnerable country in the world when it comes to data breach threats from malicious cyber activities.
Big data report asks Obama to push data breach legislation, consumer privacy protections
May 2nd
From: FierceGovernmentIT
White House report makes big data policy recommendations
Big data poses a serious risk to consumer privacy and challenges corporations to responsibly handle security – two areas that need prompt attention and policy development from the White House, says a May 1 report (pdf) from administration officials on big data.
Among the report’s recommendations, authors urge the president to push data breach legislation and extend the consumer privacy protections first laid out in the White House’s February 2012 Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.