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Political denial-of-service attacks on the rise
The cases of Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008 illustrate how dedicated denial-of-service attacks can nearly paralyze a country; trouble is, now attackers can purchase tools such as Black Energy or NetBot Attacker, made by Russian and Chinese hackers, respectively, for less than $100 a piece
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Experts: Russian intelligence behind cyber attacks
A panel of IT security experts concluded that there is a “strong likelihood” that the Foreign Military Intelligence agency (the GRU) and Federal Security Service (the FSB) directed cyber attacks on Georgian government servers in July and August of 2008
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Large defense contractors look for cyber-security business
Cyber attacks on U.S. government networks and private companies have grown exponentially; the result is a vast increase in the attention paid to, and money spent on, cyber security; the biggest U.S. military contractors are counting on winning billions of dollars in work to protect the U.S. federal government against cyber attacks
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Critic: U.K. fraud strategy "more worthy of Uzbekistan"
Business fraud costs Britain £14 billion a year; the U.K. government today launched its National Fraud Strategy, but a Cambridge professor harshly criticizes the initiative
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Leading browsers easily felled at hacker contest
Students at a hacker convention easily breach the protections built into Safari, IE 8, and Firefox; contestants do so in front of appreciative spectators and in a matter of hours
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CSC to help combat cyber warfare
Cyberattacks pose a major threat to the welfare and security of developing countries; developing protection against that threat offers business opportunities
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Cyber criminals already using March Madness for their scams
March Madness begins at the end of this week, but cyber criminals are already exploiting the popular college basketball event for their nefarious purposes
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Yoran: Better metrics needed for security
Amit Yoran says that the security industry is awash in bad data, and that companies that attempt to use the metrics could take the wrong actions
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UNC students win cyber defense competition
University of North Carolina students win, for the second time in four years, the DHS-sponsored Southeastern Region Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
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New York City is especially vulnerable to rise in sea level
Although low-lying Florida and Western Europe are often considered the most vulnerable to sea level changes, the northeast U.S. coast is particularly vulnerable because the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is susceptible to global warming
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2007 cyber attack on Estonia launched by Kremlin-backed youth group
Sustained cyber attacks in April and May 2007 on Web sites of the Estonian government paralyzed many government functions and commercial activities; it was the first such sustained attack on a country’s networks
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Critics: Commercially driven deep packet inspection (DPI) is akin to wiretapping
New technology now allows third parties to engage in deep packet inspection (DPI), a technique that makes it possible to peer inside packets of data transmitted across the Internet; data collected is then sold to other companies to allow them more targeted advertising
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U.S. slow to pinpoint source of cyber attacks
U.S. director of national intelligence tells lawmakers that “It often takes weeks and sometimes months of subsequent investigation [to identify the source of a cyber attack]… And even at the end of very long investigations you’re not quite sure who carried out the offensive”
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France, Ireland to launch e-crime police training programs
With the problem of cyber crime looming ever larger, European universities want the EC to back a plan to create an academically accredited cybercrime training program for law enforcement
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U.K. government shelves multi-million intelligence net project
The project, dubbed Scope, was designed to move security intelligence into the twenty-first century with the replacement of a systems for distributing reports by paper with an electronic system; government abandons project for unspecified technical problems
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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.