• ISIS monthly revenue drops from $80 million to $56 million

    ISIS’s monthly revenue has dropped by almost 30 percent in the last year, according to new analysis. Oil production is down to 21,000 barrels per day from 33,000. The loss of territory and population under ISIS control has shrunk the organization’s tax base. To compensate for declining income, ISIS has imposed new taxes on broken satellite dishes and fines for driving on wrong side of the road.

  • S&T licenses physical/cyber risk assessment tool to the commercial market

    DHS S&T announced that a fifth cybersecurity technology has been licensed for commercialization as a part of the Cyber Security Division’s Transition to Practice (TTP) program. The TTP program builds on the S&T process of funding projects through the full research and development lifecycle through to the commercial marketplace. The new technology — Physical and Cyber Risk Analysis Tool (PACRAT) — assesses cyber risks simultaneously with physical risks.

  • 2015 was the most lethal year for terrorism in Europe in a decade

    2015 was the most lethal year for terrorist violence in Europe in nearly a decade, as terrorists increasingly target private citizens and public gatherings. This marks the first net increase in global terrorism risk ratings since 2013, with the risk ratings of eighteen countries experiencing an increase and thirteen countries seeing a decrease. Shootings overtake bombings in the Western world for the first time since 2007, with terrorists targeting private citizens and public gatherings.

  • The past, present, and future of ransomware

    The rise of ransomware over the past year is an ever growing problem. Business often believe that paying the ransom is the most cost effective way of getting their data back — and this may also be the reality. The problem we face is that every single business that pays to recover their files, is directly funding the development of the next generation of ransomware. As a result of this we are seeing ransomware evolve at an alarming rate.

  • The politics of asylum accommodation in the U.K.

    A new study offers a first examination of recent changes in the nature of asylum accommodation in the United Kingdom, arguing that in the model existing today, economic calculations make asylum-seeking a “market” in which neoliberal norms of market competition, economic efficiency, and dispersed responsibility are central.

  • WhatsApp implements end-to-end encryption

    WhatsApp announced on Tuesday that it has implemented complete end-to-end encryption which will protect all text, photo, video, and voice communications from eavesdropping. This means hackers and criminals will be shut out, but so will law enforcement and intelligence services, and even the company itself. This means that the company will not able to comply with court orders to allow law enforcement access to the information stored on the encrypted device. Leaders of law enforcement agencies were quick to criticize WhatsApp’s move for creating “warrant-proof” spaces for criminals and terrorists.

  • Global warming of 2.5°C degrees would put at risk trillions of dollars of world’s financial assets

    An average of $2.5 trillion, or 1.8 percent, of the world’s financial assets would be at risk from the impacts of climate change if global mean surface temperature rises by 2.5°C (4.5°F) above its pre-industrial level by 2100, according to a new study. that the authors found, however, that uncertainties in estimating the “climate Value at Risk” mean that there is a 1 percent chance that warming of 2.5°C could threaten $24 trillion, or 16.9 percent, of global financial assets in 2100.

  • ISO to collect data about terrorism insurance for Treasury Department

    ISO will collect, aggregate, and help analyze terrorism data this year for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the federal agency charged with assessing the effectiveness of the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Program. ISO is a Verisk Analytics.

  • FBI cracks terrorists’ iPhone without Apple's help

    The Justice Department on Monday asked a court to withdraw the government’s request that the court order Apple to help the FBI gain access to the encrypted iPhone used by the San Bernardino terrorists. The Justice Department filed the request after the FBI had successfully accessed data stored on an encrypted iPhone. The FBI wanted the court to compel Apple to relax the 10-attempt limit, which is part of the encryption system which comes with the device. If there are more than ten attempts to guess the password, the phone locks forever and all the data on it is wiped out. The FBI argued that its computers, using brute-force, would be able to break the phone’s password, but that it would take more than ten attempts.

  • Texas’s E-Verify law operating under honor system

    After former Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order in December 2014 mandating the use of E-Verify for state agencies, some lawmakers noted the directive lacked a mechanism to ensure compliance. But more than nine months after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a separate E-Verify bill, some of those gaps still exist.

  • Bangladesh central bank governor resigns after discovery of $81 million cybertheft

    Bangladesh’s central bank governor, Atiur Rahman, resigned on Tuesday after $81 million was stolen from the bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It was one of the largest cyber-heists in history. The Bangladesh central bank said that the hackers had tried to withdraw $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but the other transactions were blocked after a typo in one of the instructions raised alarms.

  • WhatsApp to add encryption to voice chats

    Reports say that WhatsApp is planning to add encrypted video chats to its app in order to make it impossible for, so that nobody could snoop on its users. Adding encrypted voice chats will mean that all of the messages that pass through WhatsApp will be secure. Text messages are already encrypted.

  • Identifying national security threats posed by everyday commercial technologies

    For decades, U.S. national security was ensured in large part by a simple advantage: a near-monopoly on access to the most advanced technologies. Increasingly, however, off-the-shelf equipment developed for the transportation, construction, agricultural, and other commercial sectors features highly sophisticated components, which resourceful adversaries can modify or combine to create novel and unanticipated security threats. DARPA’s “Improv” effort asks the innovation community to identify commercial products and processes that could yield unanticipated threats.

  • How organizations can secure their teleworkers, data

    As the number of employees who telework trends upward — and new kinds of devices are used in telework — the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) says it is updating its guidance to include the latest technology available to strengthen an organization’s remote-access data security.

  • Snowden dismisses FBI's claim it cannot unlock San Bernardino killers’ iPhone

    Edward Snowden has joined the debate over the FBI’s attempt to force Apple to help it unlock the iPhone 5C used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists. The FBI says that only Apple can deactivate certain passcode protections on the iPhone — for example, the 10-attempt limit, which makes the phone permanently inaccessible after ten attempts to guess the password —which would allow law enforcement to guess the passcode by using brute-force.