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Pentagon says U.S. fixed drones hacked by Iraqi insurgents
Iraqi insurgents, using a $25.95 off-the-shelf commercial application, were able to intercept communication between U.S. surveillance UAVs and the UAVs’ command center; the hacking was discovered when the U.S. military found files of intercepted drone video feeds on laptops of captured militants; U.S. soldiers discovered “days and days and hours and hours of proof,” one U.S. officer said; the same hacking technique is known to have been employed in Afghanistan; the U.S. government has known about the UAV communication flaw since the 1990s, but assumed its adversaries would not be able to take advantage of it.
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Adobe to patch zero-day Reader, Acrobat hole
On 12 January Adobe will release patches to fix zero-day vulnerabilities in Reader and Acrobat; malicious Adobe Acrobat PDF files are distributed via an e-mail attachment that, when opened, executes a Trojan that targets Windows systems, according to Symantec; the rate of infection is extremely limited and the risk assessment level is very low, the company said.
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Top 10 information security trends for 2010
Further adoption of cloud, social media, and virtualization technologies will continue to blur the network parameter; organizations — large and small — should consider a layered, centralized security solution that provides multiple security touch points within the network, rather than around it
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U.S. Army funds a new discipline: Network Science
The U.S. Army gives Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York State $16.75 million to launch the Center for Social and Cognitive Networks; the new center will link together top social scientists, neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists with leading physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers in the search to uncover, model, understand, and foresee the complex social interactions that take place in today’s society
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GAO: U.S. unready to face growing cyber threats
A GAO reports says that cyber-threats facing federal networks and the U.S. critical infrastructure are becoming increasingly sophisticated; the number of attacks is exponentially growing (security incidents grew “by over 200 percent from fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2008”), the report concludes that the United States is not optimally prepared to protect itself from such attacks
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Raytheon-led team to provide the Pentagon with network-security early warning system
A team including Raytheon, General Dynamics, SAIC, Eye Street Software, and BCMC receives a $28 million contract to provide the Pentagon with an early-warning system for defense against cyber attacks on military networks
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More headlines
The long view
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.