• Senator seeks to end wasteful government cybersecurity spending

    Senator Tom Carper (D – Delaware) is actively seeking ways to end wasteful government cybersecurity spending; Carper believes that the government can spend its money more efficiently on IT security; he believes that too many government programs are expensive, inefficient, and do not actually secure government networks; Carper was careful to note that he was not advocating for budget cuts, but rather more efficient spending; Carper has proposed mandating that all agencies only purchase technology that is preconfigured with encryption or other security measures; he is currently working with Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) on the Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act of 2011, which contains many of his proposals

  • Major increase in cyber attacks on China's government

    China recently reported that last year its government websites experienced a 68 percent increase in cyber attacks; a total of 35,000 Chinese websites, including 4,635 government sites, were hit by hackers in 2010; attacks on non-government websites decreased 22 percent in 2010, while attacks on government websites had increased; in response to the increased number of cyber attacks, the report urged local regulators to step up efforts to police the Internet and deter these hackers by imposing stricter penalties; five million Chinese IP addresses had been infected with a trojan horse or corpse virus

  • Law enforcement, and domain name registrars discuss ways to tackle net crooks

    Police and other law enforcement agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom are increasingly turning their attention to domain names as an Internet choke-point that can be used to shut down Web sites selling counterfeit goods and enabling the trading of pirated movies and child pornography

  • Critical cyber vulnerabilities found in financial system

    A recent report found critical weaknesses in automated high-frequency trading systems that hackers could exploit to make money or simply wreak havoc on the financial system; cPacket Networks fears that hackers could use what it calls a “side channel attack” stealthily to manipulate financial data as it is received by these high-frequency trading program; many analysts believe that the “flash crash” in May 2010, when the Dow dropped nearly a thousand points in several minutes, was unintentionally caused by high-frequency trading systems; cPacket is working with financial institutions to optimize their high-frequency trading systems to detect these manipulations

  • Android phones more vulnerable to cyber attacks than Apple iPhone

    Android smart phones are more susceptible to hacking and viruses than Apple’s iPhone; the Android operating system is open source, allowing hackers to understand the underlying code; Apple iPhone may have a safer operating system, but it is not impervious to attacks; McAfee warns that 2011 will see hackers increasingly target mobile devices like Android phones, iPads, and iPhones

  • Quick Heal introduces technology to track laptops

    New laptop tracking technology will help Indian police track and locate stolen laptops across the country; Quick Heal, the company offering the technology, also aims to create a centralized database of lost or stolen laptops; the database will be accessible to retailers and consumers

  • Obama pushing for Internet ID for Americans

    The Obama administration is currently drafting what it is calling the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which will give the Commerce Department the authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans

  • Germany reports "sharp rise" in China-originated cyberattacks

    Germany detected a sharp rise in serious cyberattacks in 2010; in the first nine months of 2010 there were some 1,600 such attacks recorded, compared to around 900 for the whole of 2009, plus most likely a considerable number that went undetected; Interior Ministry spokesman: “Germany is a very high-tech country with considerable experience and know-how, so of course others will naturally try to get hold of this knowledge—- China is playing a large role in this”

  • Mobile phone forensic tools to reduce hi-tech crimes

    Government funded technology center in India is developing a set of mobile forensic tools that will assist the law enforcement agencies in cracking unlawful activities committed using mobile phones; the center is a government agency, and will be able to provide the tools at reasonable cost

  • Car immobilizers no longer a problem for car thieves

    For sixteen years, car immobilizers have kept car thieves at bay — but that may now be changing; most cars still use either a 40 or 48-bit key, even though the 128-bit AES — which would take too long to crack for car thieves to bother trying — is now considered by security professionals to be a minimum standard

  • WikiLeaks episode demonstrates insider security threat

    Even the toughest security systems sometimes have a soft center that can be exploited by someone who has passed rigorous screening; the U.S. Defense Department’s Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), a system of dedicated and encrypted lines and servers set up by the Pentagon in the 1990s globally to transmit material up to and including “secret,” the government’s second-highest level of classified information; in 1993, GAO report estimated more than three million U.S. military and civilian personnel had the clearance to access SIPRNet

  • New anti-cybercrime software emulates DNA matching process

    The biologically inspired software digitally mimics the DNA matching process used in the real world. The software tracks the sequence of events that follow a hacker’s first access request into a secure network system and creates a “digital fingerprint”

  • U.S. Internet hosts are essential for criminal botnets

    Cybercrime is often associated with Russia and China, and rightly so — but many of the servers vital to their activities are located elsewhere; facilities provided by Internet companies in the United States and Europe are crucial to these criminal gangs’ activities

  • Keystroke biometric solution will protect against hacking

    Virginia Tech researchers develop an authentication framework called “Telling Human and Bot Apart” (TUBA), a remote biometrics system based on keystroke-dynamics information; the technology will prevent hackers from using a computer program designed to produce keystroke sequences in order to spoof more conventional security systems

  • ID theft costs U.K. £2.7 billion a year

    Identity fraud affects 1.8 million Britons every year, costing £2.7 billion in the process; victims can spend up to 200 hours undoing damage