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Cyber-espionage Campaign Uses Professionally-made Malware
May 22, 2013 2:38 pm | CommentsTrend Micro researchers have discovered a new, massive cyber espionage campaign that has been hitting as many as 71 victims each day, including government ministries, technology companies, academic research institutions, nongovernmental organizations and media outlets.
US Urged to Allow Cyber Counterattacks
May 22, 2013 9:19 am | by David Sanger | CommentsWith President Obama preparing for a first meeting with China’s new president, a commission led by two former senior officials in his administration will recommend a series of steps that could significantly raise the cost to China of the theft of American industrial secrets.
Journalists Who Find Security Hole Get Called Hackers
May 22, 2013 8:36 am | by Sean Gallagher | CommentsCall it security through absurdity: a pair of telecom firms have branded reporters for Scripps News as "hackers" after they discovered the personal data of over 170,000 customers — including social security numbers and other identifying data that could be used for identity theft — sitting on a publicly accessible server.
Large Attacks Hide More Subtle Threats in DDoS Data
May 21, 2013 4:37 pm | by Robert Lemos | CommentsLarge attacks are not the most significant denial-of-service (DoS) threat for most companies, according to DDoS mitigation experts. While approximately three-quarters of all DoS attacks are bandwidth-clogging floods of network packets, the remaining quarter are application-layer attacks.
US Power Companies Say They Face Cyber Attacks
May 21, 2013 4:18 pm | CommentsSeveral U.S. power utilities say they face constant cyber attacks on critical systems, according to a report by two Democratic lawmakers amid warnings from the Obama administration that foreign hackers are seeking to attack the electric grid. More than a dozen utilities said they experienced daily, constant or frequent attempted cyber attacks, according to a 35-page report summarizing their responses.
Insider Theft of Intellectual Property
May 21, 2013 11:04 am | CommentsThis is the sixth entry in the Spotlight On series published by the CERT Insider Threat Center. Each entry focuses on a specific area of threat to organizations from their current or former employees, contractors, or business partners and presents analysis based on hundreds of actual insider threat cases cataloged in the CERT insider threat database.
Find TrueCrypt and BitLocker Encrypted Containers and Images
May 21, 2013 10:55 am | CommentsPassware announced that Passware Kit Forensic 12.5 can now recognize hard disk images and containers, such as TrueCrypt, BitLocker, PGP, during a computer scan. For a computer forensic professional this means that no evidence is hidden inside a volume.
Feds Tracked Reporter's Movements, Personal Email
May 21, 2013 10:23 am | by Kim Zetter | CommentsIn an effort to unmask a leaker who fed a reporter classified information about North Korea, FBI investigators tracked the journalist’s movements in and out of a government building, obtained copies of emails from his personal account and also took the unprecedented step of alleging that the reporter engaged in a criminal conspiracy simply for doing his job.
Chinese Google Breach Accessed Sensitive Data
May 21, 2013 8:35 am | by Ellen Nakashima | CommentsChinese hackers who breached Google’s servers several years ago gained access to a sensitive database with years’ worth of information about U.S. surveillance targets, according to current and former government officials. The breach appears to have been aimed at unearthing the identities of Chinese intelligence operatives in the United States who may have been under surveillance by American law enforcement agencies.
Complaint Filed against Snapchat
May 20, 2013 11:47 am | CommentsA privacy watchdog group is going after Snapchat for deceiving users about self-destructing messages that don't actually self-destruct. The smartphone app has become popular with young people for sending messages that a few seconds later disappear. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
Chinese Hackers Resume US Attacks
May 20, 2013 11:24 am | CommentsThree months after hackers working for a cyberunit of China’s People’s Liberation Army went silent amid evidence that they had stolen data from scores of American companies and government agencies, they appear to have resumed their attacks using different techniques, according to computer industry security experts and American officials.
Cyber Teams Need to Look for Trouble
May 20, 2013 11:05 am | by William Jackson | CommentsAgency cybersecurity teams have not been accepted by IT shops as full partners in the job of supporting agency missions and as a result are falling farther behind in efforts to detect and block threats. Security needs to adopt a more aggressive posture, seeking out threats rather than just detecting them and working with IT departments to follow through on remediation.
Uncovering Syrian Hackers
May 20, 2013 8:29 am | by Nicole Perlroth | CommentsIt’s the question of the moment inside the murky realm of cybersecurity: Just who — or what — is the Syrian Electronic Army? The hacking group that calls itself the S.E.A. struck again, this time breaking into the Twitter accounts and blog headlines of The Financial Times.
Lawmakers Introduce Bill Requiring Court Order to Seize Phone Records
May 17, 2013 10:23 am | by Kim Zetter | CommentsIn the wake of the AP scandal, in which federal investigators obtained the phone records of journalists using only a subpoena, four lawmakers have introduced legislation in the House that would prevent federal agencies from seizing any phone records without a court order.
Romanian Hacker Aims to Protect World's ATMs
May 17, 2013 9:40 am | by Radu Marinas | CommentsValentin Boanta, sitting in his jail cell, proudly explains the device he has invented which, he says, could make the world's ATMs impregnable even to tech-savvy criminals like himself. Boanta, 33, is six months into a five-year sentence for supplying gadgets an organized crime gang used to conceal ATM skimmers, which can copy data from an unsuspecting ATM user's card so a clone can be created.
