• Alt-right racists to flood Twitter with “fake black people” posts

    White supremacists associated with the alt-right movement said they were planning to retaliate against Twitter by inundating it with postings from fake accounts pretending to be black people. The alt-right extremists said the retaliation is in response to Twitter’s banning several accounts belonging to individuals and groups associated with the racist and anti-Semitic movement. Alt-right figure Andrew Anglin of the neo-Nazi Web site Daily Stormer instructed his followers: “When you have time, create a fake black person account,” he wrote. “Just go on black Twitter and see what they look like, copy that model. Start filling it with rap videos and booty-shaking or whatever else these blacks post.”

  • Twitter suspends accounts of alt-right individuals, organizations

    Twitter has suspended the accounts of several individuals and groups linked to the alt-right. The alt-right movement embraces white supremacists, anti-Semites, and all manner of bigots in addition to conspiracy theorists and more “traditional” rabble-rousing populists and extremists. Steve Bannon, the publisher of the alt-right’s main organ, the Breitbart News Web site, was Trump campaign CEO, and is slated to become the strategic counselor to the Trump in the White House. Twitter said that company rules prohibit “violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies.” “The great purge is upon us. But Twitter could have purged the #AltRight BEFORE we memed a President into the White House. They didn’t because they never believed it was possible,” Pax Dickinson, founder of alt-right site WeSearchr; wrote. “Banning us now is too little & too late.”

  • DHS releases Strategic Principles for Securing the Internet of Things

    DHS the other day issued a set of Strategic Principles for Securing the Internet of Things (IoT), Version 1.0. These principles highlight approaches and suggested practices to fortify the security of the IoT. They aim to equip stakeholders to make responsible and risk-based security decisions as they design, manufacture, and use internet-connected devices and systems.

  • Bolstering small businesses cybersecurity

    Small-business owners may think that they are too small to be victims of cyber hackers, but NIST experts know otherwise. NIST reaches out to small businesses, helping them understands the challenges they face in protecting their data and systems. The agency has just released Small Business Information Security: The Fundamentals, a guide written for small-business owners not experienced in cybersecurity, which explains basic steps they can take better to protect their information systems.

  • Germany launches broad cybersecurity strategy

    The German government on Wednesday adopted a new cybersecurity strategy to counter a rising number of threats targeting government institutions, critical infrastructure, businesses, and citizens. The new strategy was adopted in response to a dramatic increase in sophisticated cyberattacks originating in Russia and China. Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday, and Interior Minister Thomas de Maziere on Wednesday, warned that Russia would be using hacking and disinformation campaign in an effort to influence next year’s election in Germany.

  • Using hardware to fight computer viruses

    More than 317 million pieces of new malware — computer viruses, spyware, and other malicious programs — were created in 2014 alone, according to work done by Internet security teams at Symantec and Verizon. Malware is growing in complexity, with crimes such as digital extortion (a hacker steals files or locks a computer and demands a ransom for decryption keys) becoming large avenues of cyberattack. Fighting computer viruses is not just for software anymore, as researchers study how hardware can help protect computers too.

  • Germany worries about Russian cyberattacks influencing German election

    Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Russia could launch a cyberattack campaign in an effort to influence Germany’s general elections next year. “We are already, even now, having to deal with information out of Russia or with Internet attacks that are of Russian origin or with news which sows false information,” the German chancellor said. Hans-George Maassen, the director of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, issued a formal warning earlier this year, saying that that the German government, business, educational facilities, and critical infrastructure were under “permanent threat” from Russian cyberattacks.

  • CyberSeek: An interactive resource for cybersecurity career information

    The U.S. rapidly growing cybersecurity jobs market has many more openings available than trained workers to fill them. For example, there are 128,000 positions for “Information Security Analysts,” but only 88,000 workers currently employed in those positions — a talent shortfall of 40,000 workers for cybersecurity’s largest jobs. Jobs requesting cloud security skills remain open ninety-six days on average — longer than any other IT skill. NIST last week introduced CyberSeek, an interactive online tool designed to make it easier for cybersecurity job seekers to find openings and for employers to identify the skilled workers they need.

  • Vanderbilt hosts student-teams hackathon this weekend

    More than 350 students from Vanderbilt University and Southern and Midwest schools such as Purdue, Georgia Tech, and the University of Illinois will work around the clock during VandyHacks, a hackathon, or invention marathon, beginning Friday evening 11 November and ending Sunday, 13 November.

  • Vulnerability flaws in some voting machines

    Voting security surface in every election round, but this time there is an additional worry: Russia’s hacking campaign in the run-up to Election Day has added a new dimension to the more traditional security worries. Experts say now is the time to take decisive action to protect the U.S. election system. “Starting on November 9, we really need to have a strong national conversation about what we’re going to do with our voting systems so that the next election we don’t have this same issue” one cybersecurity expert said.

  • Future mischief: Russia’s disinformation campaign will continue after elections

    The continuing dumping of e-mails which Russian government hackers stole from the Clinton campaign has led U.S. intelligence officials to worry that Russia will escalate its disinformation campaign after Election Day. A senior U.S. intelligence official said that Putin is not interested only in discrediting the legitimacy of Tuesday’s elections, but is eager to undermine the effectiveness of the next president, regardless of who he or she is. “Don’t think that the Russian activity was solely about the election, or about Trump,” the officials said. “It wasn’t. It was about their agenda, what they are trying to accomplish” in expanding Russia’s power and influence around the world.

  • U.S. readies retaliation if Russian disrupts Election Day

    Russian government hackers have interfered in the political process leading up to the 8 November elections by undermining the campaign of Hillary Clinton. In preparation for an American retaliation in the event Russia tries to change the counting of actual votes on election day, U.S. government cyber operatives have “penetrated” Russia’s telecommunications networks and electric grid. The penetration, and the sleeper malware left behind, would allow the United States to hit back in case Russian intelligence agencies do carry out a cyberattack on U.S. election systems on Tuesday.

  • FBI investigating fake documents targeting Clinton campaign

    The FBI, as part of a broader investigation into attempts by Russia to interfere in and influence the U.S. presidential election, is examining forged documents aiming to discredit and disrupt the Hillary Clinton campaign. Senator Tom Carper (D-Delaware), who sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has referred one of the fake documents to FBI investigators, one of several documents handed over to the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice for review in recent weeks. U.S. officials have been privately warning since August that the Russian government agencies orchestrating the hacking campaign could move beyond hacking the e-mail systems of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, to include posting fictional “evidence” of voter fraud or other disinformation in the run-up to Election Day.

  • Twitter goes down and believers in conspiracy theories pounce

    Twitter service in Japan and parts of the United States was down earlier today (Monday), shortly after WikiLeaks claimed that its servers had been subjected to a cyberattack. When service was restored, some users were quick to see a conspiracy, linking the outages at WikiLeaks and Twitter to the WikiLeaks release of a new set of hacked e-mails from the Democrat National Committee. “.@Twitter was down ~ 25 min. #DDOS or US Govt? #DNCLeak2 intel docs reference killings of Vince Foster & Ron Brown,” said one tweet.

  • Replacing vulnerable password with secure keystroke biometrics

    Lapses in computer security can be seen as downright negligent, in a time when major data breaches and leaks dominate international headlines on a regular basis. But it also draws attention to a more compelling question: just how secure are text-based passwords, really? Experts believe that there should be alternatives to the ubiquitous, text-based user authentication method – and that one such alternative is a new method of user authentication using keystroke biometrics.