-
FERC adopts critical infrastructure protection standards
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approves eight new mandatory critical infrastructure protection reliability standards; move taken against the backdrop of growing worries in the U.S. intelligence community about attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure
-
-
EDI to use Xyratex to manage Beijing Airport security
EDI Technology, a Chinese storage integrator, will use Xyratex F5412E RAID system from Xyratex, a U.K.-based enterprise data storage subsystems and storage process technology provider, for online and archive storage of video surveillance at Beijing Capital International Airport
-
-
Companies, government responses to war game draw mixed reviews
Details emerge of a $3 million, invitation-only war game — Cyber Storm —which simulated what DHS described as plausible attacks over five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines, and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers
-
-
One way to fight criminals, terrorists: Register pre-paid cell phones
Texas state senator offers legislation, with the support of state police chiefs, which would help in fighting crimes — and terrorism: Legislation would require prepaid cellphone customers to present ID and limit purchases to three phones at a time; it also would require prepaid cellphone service providers to make phone records accessible to police
-
-
Swedish bank stops sophisticated digital theft
Forget ski masks and machine guns: Savvy Swedish bank robbers stealthily placed an electronic device under the desk of a bank employee; the device gave instructions to the computer atop the desk to transfer millions of dollars from bank deposits to an account the robbers had set up
-
-
Spam, Q4 Email Threat Trends of 2007
A steep rise in attacks using social networking techniques which target user psychology and behavior patterns; spammers launched attacks by predicting user behavior patterns, such as looking for easy cash and discounted gifts during the holiday season, and preying on consumer trust to generate interest in cheap pharmaceutical products and stocks
-
-
Emphasis shifts to analytical tools rather than building sturdier walls
The $169 million PayPal paid for Israeli on-line security specialist Fraud Sciences is part of a larger trend in security: “Security is less a matter of keeping everyone outside the outer wall and more one of detecting them sneaking through the premises,” as one analyst put it
-
-
U.K. Ministry of Defense selects BAE for SSEI
The Software Systems Engineering Initiative (SSEI) aims to reduce the cost and speed up production of the software; the government has identified such software as “the critical enabling technology” for modern platforms; BAE’s Military Air Solutions will lead a consortium to manage the project
-
-
Marks & Spencer loses personal information on 26,000 staff
A laptop belonging to Marks and Spencer was stolen in May 2007, joining a lengthening list of personal data breaches in the United kingdom; Information Commissioner’s Office takes action against company
-
-
NSA, other spy agencies enlisted in effort to address cyber vulnerability
Prepare for another heated NSA-domestic spying debate: The Bush administration issues secret directive on 8 January — informally known as the “cyber initiative” — expanding the intelligence community’s role in monitoring Internet traffic; the goal is to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies’ computer systems
-
-
Estonian student convicted for 2007 attack against Estonian Web sites
A 20-year-old Estonian student has been fined $1,642 for launching a cyber attack which crippled the Web sites of banks, schools, and government agencies
-
-
OMB wants privacy review details in FISMA reports
U.S. government agencies will have to provide more details about the privacy reviews they conduct as part of annual reporting in compliance with FISMA
-
-
SPARQL is a new, format-independent query technology
Many successful query languages exist, including standards such as SQL and XQuery, but they were primarily designed for queries limited to a single product, format, type of information, or local data store; SPARQL is the key standard for opening up data on the Semantic Web, and the goal of the Semantic Web is to enable people to share, merge, and reuse data globally
-
-
Swiss move on quantum cryptography
Ensuring effective data security is the next challenge for global data networks; quantum cryptography offers such effective security; the Swiss national election in October 2007 provided first real-life test of the technology, and Swiss now move to implement it in security-sensitive sectors of the economy
-
-
Reviewing -- and fixing -- Open Source code security holes
Popular open source projects such as Samba, the PHP, Perl, Tcl dynamic languages, and Amanda were found to have dozens or hundreds of security exposures; some are quicker than others in fixing the problem
-
The long view
Russia’s active measures architecture: Task and purpose
Russia’s latest iteration of the Soviet-era tactic of “active measures” has mesmerized Western audiences and become the topic de jour for national security analysts. In my last post, I focused on the Kremlin’s campaign to influence the U.S. elections from 2014 to 2016 through the integration of offensive cyber hacking, overt propaganda, and covert social media personas In this post, I focus on the elements of Russia’s national power that execute active measures abroad.
Russia’s corruption, influence “a matter of national security”: U.K. Parliamentary panel
“Dirty” Russian money is undermining Britain’s efforts to stand up to the Kremlin and supports President Vladimir Putin’s campaign “to subvert the international rules-based system,” a British parliamentary report says. “The scale of damage that this ‘dirty money’ can do to U.K. foreign-policy interests dwarfs the benefit of Russian transactions in the City,” Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Tugendhat said today (21 May) ahead of the release of the report. “Over the years, Moscow has turned from being a corrupt state to an exporter of instability. Russian corruption and influence has become a matter of national security,” he added.
Cyber and international law in the 21st century
“Cyber space is not – and must never be – a lawless world. It is the U.K.’s view that when states and individuals engage in hostile cyber operations, they are governed by law just like activities in any other domain,” said the U.K. Attorney General Jeremy Wright, QC MP, on 23 May 2018, setting out, for the first time, the U.K.’s position on applying international law to cyberspace. “What this means is that hostile actors cannot take action by cyber means without consequence, both in peacetime and in times of conflict. States that are targeted by hostile cyber operations have the right to respond to those operations in accordance with the options lawfully available to them and that in this as in all things, all states are equal before the law.”
Failing to keep pace: The cyber threat and its implications for our privacy laws
“The time has come — indeed, if it has not already passed — to think seriously about some fundamental questions with respect to our reliance on cyber technologies: How much connected technology do we really want in our daily lives? Do we want the adoption of new connected technologies to be driven purely by innovation and market forces, or should we impose some regulatory constraints?” asked NSA General Counsel Glenn Gerstell in a Wednesday presentation at Georgetown University. “Although we continue to forge ahead in the development of new connected technologies, it is clear that the legal framework underpinning those technologies has not kept pace. Despite our reliance on the internet and connected technologies, we simply haven’t confronted, as a U.S. society, what it means to have privacy in a digital age.”