• Chinese cyber-attacks target U.S. lawmakers

    Computers in the office of a Virgnia congressman targted by Chinese hackers; information on four computers in the office of Congressman Frank Wolf, a harsh critic of China’s human rights record, compromised

  • Killing Internet worms dead

    Internet worms flood the Internet with junk traffic, and at their most benign, they overload computer networks and shut them down; Buckeyes researchers find new way to combat worms

  • Malicious software threatens internet economy

    Around one in four personal computers in the United States — or fifty-nine million — is already infected with malware; a booming market in cyber attack software and services has also made attacks more sophisticated and cheaper to perform

  • Worry: VoIP especially suitable for conveying hidden messages

    Steganography involves concealing messages within digitally transmitted images or sound files; VoIP systems tolerate packet loss and have built-in redundancy, and are thus especially suitable for conveying hidden messages; law enforcement officials have expressed frustration about the difficulty of deciphering VoIP messages made by suspected terrorists using Skype

  • Botnet cyberattack costs Japanese company 300 million yen

    There is a new type of blackmail in Japan: Hackers use botnets in denial-of-service attacks on companies’ computers — ending the attacks only when hefty ransom is paid

  • Cyber attacks grow in sophistication, menace; most originate in China

    More and more cyber attacks on organization aim to allow criminals to take control over enterprise assets; most attacks on companies and organizations around the world originate in China

  • Glaring gaps in network security, II

    Specialists in penetration testing take six hours to hack the FBI; hacking the networks of Fortune 500 companies takes much less time; even companies which have been Sarbanes-Oxley compliant for several years have been hacked within twenty minutes, with the hackers taking control of the business; these hackers proved they could actively change general ledgers and do other critical tasks

  • Glaring gaps in network security, I

    Specialists in penetration testing take six hours to hack the FBI; hacking the networks of Fortune 500 companies takes much less time; even companies which have been Sarbanes-Oxley compliant for several years have been hacked within twenty minutes, with the hackers taking control of the business; these hackers proved they could actively change general ledgers and do other critical tasks

  • Is the Internet "Critical Infrastructure"?

    The Internet’s architecture is optimized to be cheap and ubiquitous; such a network is never going to be perfectly secure or reliable; transactions that absolutely have to be done correctly and on time need to be done on a dedicated network

  • DHS to keep an eye on access to IT systems

    DHS to create a database of employees, contractors, and consultants with access to DHS computer systems; database will contain names, business affiliations, positions, phone numbers, citizenship, home addresses, e-mail addresses, access records, date and time of access, logs of Internet activity, and Internet protocol address of access

  • IT chiefs warn of cyber-terrorism threat to critical infrastructure

    UN expert dismissed as a dangerous myth the idea that events in the virtual world have only a limited impact on the physical world, saying that technology has “changed the dynamics of terrorism”

  • Hackers to concentrate on moving targets

    Security maven Howard Schmidt says more must be done to bolster mobile defenses

  • Power plants open to hacker attack

    Power plants, dams, and many other critical infrastructure assets are controlled by a system called supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA; a Boston technology specialist finds serious vulnerability in the system

  • Alarming open-source security holes found

    A programming error introduced serious security vulnerabilities in millions of computer systems; many systems affected

  • Permanent denial-of-service attack sabotages hardware

    HP’s Rich Smith to demonstrate a permanent denial-of-service (PDOS) attack that remotely wipes out hardware via flash firmware updates