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Interface could help Facebook members limit security leaks
Researchers develop a sign-up interface for Facebook apps could help members prevent personal information — and their friends’ information — from leaking out through third-party games and apps to hackers and identity thieves
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Cyber-attackers think as regular crooks
An engineer and a criminologist are applying criminological concepts and research methods in the study of cybercrime; their work has produced recommendations for IT managers to use in the prevention of cyber attacks on their networks
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A Winner in DARPA’S Shredder Challenge competition
A small team from San Francisco won the $50,000 first prize in DARPA’s Shredder Challenge, a competition among teams trying to reconstruct shredded documents; in total, the winning team spent nearly 600 man-hours developing algorithms and piecing together documents that were shredded into more than 10,000 pieces
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Lockheed Martin UK opens its U.K. cybersecurity center
Lockheed Martin UK has officially opened its first Security Intelligence Center (SIC) at Farnborough; the role of the SIC will be detection, identification, and response to information security incidents; this is accomplished by bringing together three primary capabilities: pervasive sensors, data management, and analyst collaboration
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Both hackers and security vendors are embracing the cloud
Large-volume hackers are now using the cloud for lucrative large-scale attacks, using public infrastructure to put at risk companies which adopt ambitious but poorly considered cloud-computing strategies. Even as they move to the cloud, too many companies simply move their security and reliability problems from the current infrastructure to the new one.
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Top 5 influential IT security thinkers
There are many tough challenges security professionals must contend with each day. This special section of SC Magazine focuses on people who represent the highest degree of professionalism in the IT security field, “individuals who stand out for their technical skills, managerial prowess, insight and advocacy.”
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Congressional approval of cybersecurity bill looks promising
Amid the partisan acrimony of the budget battles on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration and the Senate have made promising efforts to pass a sweeping cybersecurity bill in a rare show of bipartisan agreement; the bill is now at the top of the Senate’s agenda, and Senator Harry Reid (D – Nevada), the majority leader, said he plans to bring the bill to the floor during the first working session of 2012
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Some smartphones are more vulnerable to attack
New research shows that some smartphones specifically designed to support the Android mobile platform have incorporated additional features that can be used by hackers to bypass Android’s security features, making these phones more vulnerable to attack
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U.K. unveils new cyber defense strategy
The U.K. government last week published its new Cyber Security Strategy; the government said the new strategy sets out “how the United Kingdom will support economic prosperity, protect national security, and safeguard the public’s way of life”
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Anonymous retaliates against cyber investigators
The international hacktivist group known as Anonymous recently released two large torrents of stolen government data including details on forensic methodologies and information regarding current and former law enforcement agency employees; the latest attacks come in retaliation to harsh sentences given to members of its group
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DHS: Hackers did not cause Illinois water pump to fail
Cybersecurity experts and critical infrastructure operators can rest a bit easier now that DHS investigators have determined there is nothing to suggest that hackers caused a water pump to fail in Springfield, Illinois
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Pentagon confirms policy of military response to cyberatacks
In a Pentagon report recently made public, the U.S. military confirmed that it would launch physical strikes in response to cyberattacks
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U.K. banks pass cyberdefense stress test
To bolster cyberdefenses in the financial industry, U.K. banks recently took part in a stress test to determine their ability to cope with a cyberattack; eighty-seven banks took participated in the drill including Barclays, HSBC, and Royal Bank of Scotland
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Hackers fail in AT&T cyberattack
Last week AT&T announced that it had successfully fended off an attack by hackers; the company said it is still unclear what the hackers’ intentions were, but no accounts were breached
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Overcoming full disk encryption in digital investigations
The increasing use of full disk encryption (FDE) can significantly hamper forensic digital investigations, potentially preventing access to all digital evidence in a case
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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.