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Virtually every agency of the U.S. government has been hacked: Experts
DHS’ National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) has so far responded to more than 600,000 cyber incidents this fiscal year; has issued more than 10,000 alerts to recipients to help secure their systems; and in seventy-eight cases deployed DHS experts to provide technical assistance.Robert Anderson, the executive assistant director for the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services branch, told lawmakers that virtually all agencies of the U.S. government have in some way been hacked.
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Political traffic by Arabs on social media overwhelmingly hostile to, suspicious of U.S.
Researchers found that a great deal of the political and social traffic by Arabs on social media is deeply hostile to and suspicious of the United States. U.S. officials are concerned that Internet users in the Arab world understand history and current events in ways fundamentally different from the American version. “Suspicion and opposition to U.S. foreign policy appear to be so deep and so widely shared, even by those on opposite sides of other contentious issues, that it’s hard to imagine how the U.S. could begin to rebuild trust,” said one expert.
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Moving cybersecurity technologies from the lab to the real world more expeditiously
Through the Department of Homeland Security’s Transition to Practice (TTP) program, cybersecurity technologies developed at Sandia National Laboratories — and at other federal labs — now stand a better chance of finding their way into the real world. The TTP program, spearheaded by DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), helps move federally funded cybersecurity technologies into broader use. Getting research discoveries and new technologies over the so-called “valley of death” — the gap between early, promising research on one side and technology that’s in use on the other — is a pressing need in the national lab community.
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A tool helps malware identification in smartphones
With the massive sales of smartphones in recent years (more than personal computers in all of their history), malware developers have focused their interest on these platforms. The amount of malware is constantly increasing and it is becoming more intelligent. Researchers have developed a tool to help security analysts protect markets and users from malware. This system allows a large number of apps to be analyzed in order to determine the malware’s origins and family.
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Day of commercially available quantum encryption nears
If implemented on a wide scale, quantum key distribution technology could ensure truly secure commerce, banking, communications, and data transfer. Los Alamos National Laboratory signs the largest information technology agreement in the lab’s history which aims to bring quantum encryption to the marketplace after nearly twenty years of development at the national-security science laboratory.
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State Department’s social media campaign against ISIS questioned
The State Departmentis advancing its anti-terrorism efforts on social media by reaching out to vulnerable English-speakers who could be recruited to join the Islamic State (IS). The campaign emphasizes IS’s brutality, and, mockingly, advises would-be recruits to learn “useful new skills” such as “blowing up mosques” and “crucifying and executing Muslims.” Experts say that there is a psychological error in trying to scare people off with threats that something might be exciting and thrilling. “If you challenge a young adult, particularly a male, with the fact that something might be especially difficult or challenging, you’re just exciting them,” says an expert in the psychology of terrorists.
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Former Jihadists effective in dissuading would-be IS recruits from joining the group: Experts
Last week British prime minister David Cameron announced new powers, allowing police to seize the passports of terrorist suspects to stop them from returning to the United Kingdom. London mayor Boris Johnson also called for British Jihadists to have their citizenship revoked. Richard Barrett, former counter-terrorism chief at MI5 and MI6, disagrees. He is advocating a passage of return for repentant fighters, saying “Many of the people who have been most successful in undermining the terrorist narrative are themselves ex-extremists.”
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Retailers spend less on cybersecurity than other industries, and it shows
Cybersecurity analysts say that retailers are spending less on cybersecuirty measures than banks and healthcare providers. Retailers spend 4 percent of their IT budgets on cybersecuirty, while financial services and healthcare providers spend 5.5 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively. On cybersecurity spending per employee, the banking and finance industries spend roughly $2,500 per employee, while retailers invest about $400 per employee. On Tuesday, Home Depot became the latest retailer to investigate a potential major breach of customer credit or debit card data.
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Virginia welcomes cybersecurity start-ups to a state-backed business accelerator
Earlier this week, MACH37, a business accelerator for cybersecurity start-ups in Virginia, welcomed a new group of companies one year after it was launched to help establish the state as a hub for cybersecurity firms. The three-month program, funded with state money, offers a $50,000 investment and access to a network of mentors to companies that can turn their ideas into viable businesses.
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Who is to blame when iCloud is "hacked" – you or Apple?
A hacker’s release of personal photos of actress Jennifer Lawrence and other female celebrities on the Internet on the weekend has again drawn our attention to the security of our personal information online. Apple may wish to absolve itself of responsibility when individuals lose control of their personal data, yet understanding the control of data as a personal matter disregards how iCloud and similar services actually operate. If Apple and other cloud-based services want our trust, then they have to acknowledge the role their products play in perpetuating anxieties of data-out-of-control.
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Social networks aim to curb terror posts
Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram have all become a staple of everyday Western lifestyles – and these avenues have also become more interesting for terrorists to exploit to advance their goals. These companies admit, however, that curbing free speech and screening violent and hateful content does involve walking a fine line.
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Deterring cyberattacks requires building a public-private partnership
Cyberattacks loom as an increasingly dire threat to privacy, national security, and the global economy, and the best way to blunt their impact may be a public-private partnership between government and business, researchers say. The time to act is now, however, rather than in the wake of a crisis, says an expert in law and technology. The expert says that an information-sharing framework is necessary to combat cybersecurity threats.
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ISIS cleverly exploits social media for recruiting, communicating, and instilling fear
Islamist militants have adopted social media as their primary medium for communicating with the public. Terrorism experts and social media analysts agree that in recent weeks IS has demonstrated a mastery of social media that far exceeds that of al-Qaeda. That use of social media is partly due to the participation of young Western-educated recruits who join IS.
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Major weakness discovered in Android, Windows, and iOS
Researchers have identified a weakness believed to exist in Android, Windows, and iOS mobile operating systems that could be used to obtain personal information from unsuspecting users. They demonstrated the hack in an Android phone. The researchers tested the method and found it was successful between 82 percent and 92 percent of the time on six of the seven popular apps they tested.
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Social media grappling with problems posed by terrorists-supporting contents
Terrorist organizations have adopted social media as a tool for spreading propaganda and recruiting new members. Social media allow terrorist groups to interact with an audience and spread their message to a broader base. Legal scholars warn that as social media networks become the modern space for public discourse, they must be careful about publishing certain content because they could come under legal scrutiny for materially supporting terrorist organizations.
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More headlines
The long view
States Rush to Combat AI Threat to Elections
This year’s presidential election will be the first since generative AI became widely available. That’s raising fears that millions of voters could be deceived by a barrage of political deepfakes. Congress has done little to address the issue, but states are moving aggressively to respond — though questions remain about how effective any new measures to combat AI-created disinformation will be.
Ransomware Attacks: Death Threats, Endangered Patients and Millions of Dollars in Damages
A ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, a company that processes 15 billion health care transactions annually and deals with 1 in 3 patient records in the United States, is continuing to cause massive disruptions nearly three weeks later. The incident, which started on February 21, has been called the “most significant cyberattack on the U.S. health care system” by the American Hospital Association. It is just the latest example of an increasing trend.
Chinese Government Hackers Targeted Critics of China, U.S. Businesses and Politicians
An indictment was unsealed Monday charging seven nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their involvement in a PRC-based hacking group that spent approximately 14 years targeting U.S. and foreign critics, businesses, and political officials in furtherance of the PRC’s economic espionage and foreign intelligence objectives.
Autonomous Vehicle Technology Vulnerable to Road Object Spoofing and Vanishing Attacks
Researchers have demonstrated the potentially hazardous vulnerabilities associated with the technology called LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, many autonomous vehicles use to navigate streets, roads and highways. The researchers have shown how to use lasers to fool LiDAR into “seeing” objects that are not present and missing those that are – deficiencies that can cause unwarranted and unsafe braking or collisions.
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.