Posts tagged as:

Cybersecurity

Foreign intelligence agencies hack into British companies

11 March 2010

Daily Telegraph, 12 March 2010: “Large scale” electronic attacks by foreign intelligence services have sucessfully compromised the security of many large British companies, according to a Government agency. In evidence to a Parliamentary committee, The Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, a Government agency, said that Government-backed hackers from China and Russia were behind [...]

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Britain fends off flood of foreign cyber-attacks

8 March 2010

Guardian/Observer, 7 March 2010: Foreign states and terrorist groups are regularly launching cyber-attacks on the UK’s computer systems with the potential to cause widespread damage, according to the government’s security tsar. Lord West of Spithead, who is parliamentary under-secretary for security and counter-terrorism, told the Observer that the UK was under daily cyber attack, often [...]

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Mystery of alleged MI6 traitor’s data theft

5 March 2010

The Register, UK, 5 March 2010: Next week, a 25-year-old man will appear at the drab Magistrates’ court in Westminster’s Horseferry Road to answer allegations he tried to sell Top Secret MI6 files to a foreign intelligence agency for £900,000. Daniel Houghton, who has joint British and Dutch citizenship, is accused of walking out of [...]

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The Cyber Threat: Using Intelligence to Predict and Prevent

5 March 2010

FBI, 4 March 2010: Terrorists plotting and scheming anonymously online—and posting videos on how to build everything from backpack bombs to bio-weapons. Spies, hired cyber mercenaries, and criminal syndicates worming their way into government networks, attempting to steal our nation’s most sensitive secrets.
Criminal hackers using seemingly innocuous information about a business and its employees to [...]

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How cybercriminals invade social networks, companies

5 March 2010

USA Today, 4 March 2010: “Hey Alice, look at the pics I took of us last weekend at the picnic. Bob” That Facebook message, sent last fall between co-workers at a large U.S. financial firm, rang true enough. Alice had, in fact, attended a picnic with Bob, who mentioned the outing on his Facebook [...]

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How To Fight The New Cyberspies

5 March 2010

Forbes, 3 March 2010: As cyber espionage gains new tactics and new targets, here are some real ways to keep your data safe. Welcome to the third wave of the corporate cyber wars.
At the beginning of the last decade, the “hacker threat” was what cybersecurity researchers now describe as a pimply teenager in his mother’s [...]

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Google China hackers stole source code: researcher

4 March 2010

Reuters, 3 March 2010: The hackers behind the attacks on Google Inc and dozens of other companies operating in China stole valuable computer source code by breaking into the personal computers of employees with privileged access, a security firm said on Wednesday. The hackers targeted a small number of employees who controlled source code management [...]

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U.S. Declassifies Part of Secret Cybersecurity Plan

3 March 2010

Wired, 2 March 2010: The Obama administration declassified part of the government’s cybersecurity plan Tuesday, publishing parts of it that discuss intrusion detection systems for federal computer networks and the government’s role in securing critical infrastructure. The declassification announcement was made by Howard A. Schmidt, a former Microsoft security executive who in December was appointed [...]

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Corporate Espionage: Tomorrow Arrived Yesterday

1 March 2010

CSO, 26 Feb 10: Even today there are some still blank stares when I suggest to an audience of C-level executives or security professionals that they should all read the front pages of the Financial Times, the Yomiuri Shimbun, etc., as well as the technology news, if they want to know what cyber risks and [...]

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Enterprise Security Tips

24 February 2010

PC World, 23 Feb 10: Whether your business is a big fish or a small-fry home office, you can get hacked just the same, and the stakes are higher than a few canceled credit cards. Here are a few tips to protect your users and your networks–steps that even enterprise-class security specialists may slip up [...]

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Ex-Intel chief: U.S. would lose cyber war

24 February 2010

The Hill, 23 Feb 10: A former intelligence chief warned lawmakers Tuesday the U.S. would lose a cyber war waged today. John Michael McConnell, a former Navy vice admiral and director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush, told the Senate Commerce Committee at a hearing Tuesday afternoon that the United States was the [...]

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Report on the Operation of the Iran Cyber Army in Hacking Websites

23 February 2010

Payvand, 22 Feb 10: During the past few months, the activities of Iran’s Cyber Army have been noted by the Iranian and even the international media. The theory that these hacker groups are connected to the Iranian government was strengthened when, after several sites were hacked, they issued warnings to the Green Movement. The scope [...]

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Social networking sites used by foreign intelligence services

22 February 2010

Expatica, 22 Feb 10: Most people join social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter to get to know others better. But the Dutch secret services are warning that some use the very same sites for more sinister ends.
They say people should be careful when placing information on their personal sites as foreign intelligence agencies [...]

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‘Panda’ Exploit Offers Rare Inside Look at China’s Cybercrime Networks

22 February 2010

Wall Street Journal, 18 Feb 10: WUHAN, China—Some of today’s biggest cybersecurity worries trace their roots to this central Chinese city, where a hacker with a junior high school education slapped cartoon pandas onto millions of computers to hide a destructive spy program.
The Panda Burns Incense computer worm, created by 27-year-old Li Jun, wreaked [...]

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Pennsylvania schools spying on students using laptop Webcams, claims lawsuit

22 February 2010

Computerworld, 18 Feb 10: A suburban Philadelphia school district remotely activates the cameras in school-provided laptops to spy on students in their homes, a lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday alleged. According to the lawsuit filed by a high school student and his parents, the Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. has spied on [...]

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Broad New Hacking Attack Detected

18 February 2010

Wall Street Journal, 18 Feb 10: Hackers in Europe and China successfully broke into computers at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies over the last 18 months in a coordinated global attack that exposed vast amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft, according to a computer-security company that discovered the breach.The damage from the [...]

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You’ve Got A Mole Giving Away Your Sensitive Data

18 February 2010

StorefrontBacktalk, 17 Feb 10: Retailers everywhere are losing sensitive information to their competitors every day. It’s not because some hacker has compromised the corporate database or because some corporate espionage team has gone dumpster diving after a corporate meeting. No, the people responsible for this breach are actually your own customers. The kicker is that [...]

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Dozens of Defense Contractors, Agencies Hacked

18 February 2010

Forbes, 17 Feb 10: For anyone who has a security clearance and doesn’t believe the U.S. faces a cyber-espionage crisis, Colonel Steven Shirley has 102 stories to share with you. That’s the number of cases in which Shirley’s team of Pentagon researchers discovered cyberspies breaching the networks of government agencies, defense contractors and other organizations [...]

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Blackberry Users Vulnerable to Applications That Spy

11 February 2010

Information Week, 10 Feb 10: In early December news broke about a security researcher who developed Spyphone, an application that uses the public iPhone API to grab data from other iPhone applications. This week a security researcher demonstrated a similar application that snoops on the Blackberry. Tyler Shields, senior researcher for the application security company [...]

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Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks

4 February 2010

Washington Post, 4 Feb 10: The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity. Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China [...]

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Cyberespionage threat ‘larger than anybody has ever conveyed’

4 February 2010

Wired, 3 Feb 10: . . . . Now a leading computer forensic firm is providing the closest look so far at the nature of the attacks, and attackers, that struck Google and others. The report never mentions Google by name, or any other companies, but focuses on information gathered from hundreds of forensic investigations [...]

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Hacking for Fun and Profit in China’s Underworld

2 February 2010

New York Times, 1 Feb 10: With a few quick keystrokes, a computer hacker who goes by the code name Majia calls up a screen displaying his latest victims. “Here’s a list of the people who’ve been infected with my Trojan horse,” he says, working from a dingy apartment on the outskirts of this city [...]

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Cyber attacks take aim at the heart of the American empire

1 February 2010

Sydney Morning Herald, 1 Feb 10: Al-Qaeda demonstrated on September 11, 2001, how a handful of scruffy extremists could use asymmetrical warfare to damage key US assets. Now imagine that the asymmetrical warfare against the US is being waged not by a few fanatics but by one of the world’s most powerful nation states. This [...]

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China bugs and burgles Britain

1 February 2010

Times of London, 31 Jan 10: THE security service MI5 has accused China of bugging and burgling UK business executives and setting up “honeytraps” in a bid to blackmail them into betraying sensitive commercial secrets.
A leaked MI5 document says that undercover intelligence officers from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of Public Security have [...]

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Utilities, Refineries and Banks Are Victims of Cyber Attacks, New Report Says

28 January 2010

Wall Street Journal, 28 Jan 10: Companies that run key public infrastructure assets like electric utilities, oil refineries and banks are regularly victims of the kind of cyber attacks that recently penetrated Google Inc., according to a new report by a former top homeland security official. Cyber attacks are often coupled with extortion demands, according [...]

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Cyberwar: In Digital Combat, U.S. Finds No Easy Deterrent

26 January 2010

New York Times, 26 Jan 10: On a Monday morning earlier this month, top Pentagon leaders gathered to simulate how they would respond to a sophisticated cyberattack aimed at paralyzing the nation’s power grids, its communications systems or its financial networks.
The results were dispiriting. The enemy had all the advantages: stealth, anonymity and unpredictability. No [...]

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Report: Unprepared for cybercrime

26 January 2010

CNET, 25 Jan 10: Many organizations are focused on stopping random hackers and blocking pornography when they should be concerned with bigger threats from professional cybercriminals, according to a new cybersecurity report. In a survey conducted last year of 523 IT and security managers, top-level executives, and law enforcement personnel, hackers were rated the biggest [...]

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US oil industry hit by cyberattacks: Was China involved?

26 January 2010

Christian Science Monitor, 25 Jan 10: At least three US oil companies were the target of a series of previously undisclosed cyberattacks that may have originated in China and that experts say highlight a new level of sophistication in the growing global war of Internet espionage. The oil and gas industry breaches, the mere existence [...]

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Botnets: “The Democratization of Espionage”

22 January 2010

CSO, 22 Jan 10: The cyber attacks against Google, Adobe and a raft of other top U.S. corporations late last year were by most accounts sophisticated and targeted attempts to steal proprietary data. But lost in all of the resulting media hoopla over who the remaining victims were and whether Chinese hackers or indeed the [...]

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IDF unit to monitor soldiers’ entries on Facebook

22 January 2010

Haaretz, 21 Jan 10: The Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps has set up a special unit to find intentional media leaks by soldiers and officers, as well as unintended leaks via social media networks such as Facebook. The crackdown is a product of the Second Lebanon War and the conclusions of the Winograd Committee, among [...]

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Inside Google’s Secret Struggles With Chinese Cyber Power

21 January 2010

Atlantic, 20 Jan 10: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that December’s mass cyber attack against 33 American companies was most likely the result of a coordinated espionage campaign endorsed by the Chinese government.
Google’s revelation that they’d been hit was deemed a “watershed” moment by security industry analysts, but the other 32 companies [...]

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Google probing possible inside help on attack

19 January 2010

Reuters, 18 Jan 10: Google is investigating whether one or more employees may have helped facilitate a cyber-attack that the U.S. search giant said it was a victim of in mid-December, two sources told Reuters on Monday. Google, the world’s most popular search engine, said last week it may pull out of the world’s biggest [...]

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Chinese hackers pose a growing threat to U.S. firms

15 January 2010

Los Angeles Times, 15 Jan 10: The scale and sophistication of the cyber attacks on Google Inc. and other large U.S. corporations by hackers in China is raising national security concerns that the Asian superpower is escalating its industrial espionage efforts on the Internet.
While the U.S. focus has been primarily on protecting military and state [...]

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Web Is New Front Among Cold War Foes

14 January 2010

Wall Street Journal, 14 Jan 10: Alleged attacks on Google Inc. from China redraw the battle lines between the U.S. and its former Cold War adversaries, who are now squaring off on a new front: cyberspace. In the new cyber war, the targets are U.S. companies as much as embassies or spy services, because corporations [...]

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China’s expansion of economic espionage boils over

14 January 2010

Foreign Policy, 13 Jan 10: . . . .The Chinese government has adapted the tactics it has used for military cyber espionage for corporate purposes and is now using them on a wide scale. Added to a fundamentally unfair business environment for foreign firms, the damaging effects of Chinese cyber spying may be scaring off [...]

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Google claim is latest in series of Chinese cyber-attacks

13 January 2010

Daily Telegraph, 13 Jan 10: Google’s claim that it was targeted by Chinese hackers, along with twenty other major international corporations, is only the latest episode in a series of cyber-attacks originating in China. Three years ago, British intelligence experts warned that China was at the top of the list of countries trying to hack [...]

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Corporate spy risks from free email

13 January 2010

Secure Computing, 13 Jan 10: Small business users of Gmail, Yahoo! mail and Hotmail were vulnerable to corporate spies when logged into their accounts on public Wi-Fi networks, a penetration tester has found. Business users of public Wi-Fi hotspots, such as those at cafes, who sent commercially sensitive information were at risk, said Hacklabs tester [...]

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Google Warns of China Exit Over Hacking

13 January 2010

Wall Street Journal, 13 Jan 10: Google Inc. said it may leave China after an investigation found the company had been hit with major cyber attacks it believes originated from the country — a move that would amount to a high-profile rebuke of China by a major U.S. firm. The attack targeted as many as [...]

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FBI names new head of Washington Field Office

8 January 2010

Washington Post, 8 Jan 10: The FBI has tapped a cybersecurity expert as its new head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, one of the largest and most prestigious posts in the crime-fighting bureau, a spokeswoman confirmed Friday. As assistant director in charge of the office, Shawn Henry, 47, will be responsible for leading federal [...]

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Cybersecurity: Here’s What Really Worries the Pentagon

6 January 2010

Wired, 6 Jan 10: . . . . . In the military, there’s now broad agreement that one cyber threat trumps all others: electronic espionage, the infiltration (and possible corruption) of Defense Department networks.
Well-placed spy software not only opens a window for an adversary to look into American military operations. That window can also be [...]

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Hackers’ attacks rise in volume, sophistication

29 December 2009

San Francisco Chronicle, 26 Dec 09: Security experts describe the typical hacker of 2009 as more sophisticated, prolific and craftier than ever. If anything, criminals will be remembered by the sheer number of attacks they unleashed upon the Web.
. . . . One of the most preoccupying trends was personalized attacks designed to steal [...]

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As attacks increase, U.S. struggles to recruit computer security experts

23 December 2009

Washington Post, 23 Dec 09: The federal government is struggling to fill a growing demand for skilled computer-security workers, from technicians to policymakers, at a time when network attacks are rising in frequency and sophistication. . . . .
. . . . . The lack of trained defenders for these networks is leading to [...]

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China to Create ‘White List’ of Approved Web Sites

23 December 2009

Fox News, 22 Dec 09: There’s an Internet boom in China: Its estimated the country has 350 million Web users. Chinese use the Web to find facts, do business and complain. No wonder Beijing is worried.
The Chinese government’s latest attempt to “curb” the information highway: A demand that all Web sites register their domain names [...]

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Cyber Security Shortcomings at Nuclear Labs

22 December 2009

ABC News, 22 Dec 09: The Department of Energy, which is responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, may jeopardize the security of its technology and lose millions of dollars if it does not improve its cyber security, according to a recent Inspector General’s report.
Delays by the DOE’s Office of Science in [...]

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FBI Probes Hack at Citibank

22 December 2009

Wall Street Journal, 21 Dec 09: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing a computer-security breach targeting Citigroup Inc. that resulted in a theft of tens of millions of dollars by computer hackers who appear linked to a Russian cyber gang, according to government officials.
The attack took aim at Citigroup’s Citibank subsidiary, which includes its [...]

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North Korea’s Cyberspying Streak

22 December 2009

Forbes, 21 Dec 09: A note on the new rules of international cyber intrigue: When it comes to stealing digital secrets, even the least likely Luddite may be snooping around in your servers.
That’s the lesson, it seems, that the South Korean military learned after hackers seemingly based in North Korea intercepted confidential defense strategy [...]

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Four ways to protect your info from cyber espionage

21 December 2009

Tucson Business, 19 Dec 09: . . . . Cyber espionage is the practice of obtaining information not intended for the public about a company or from a company through network or computerized means, often illegally. Ultimately, the goal is to get sensitive information through computers and networks.
The information gathered might be direct, such as [...]

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