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2012 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition kicks off 20 April
The National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC) is returning to the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) for the seventh consecutive year; the 3-day national championship will kick off 20 April
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U.S. power and water utilities face daily cyberattacks
American water and energy companies deal with a constant barrage of cyberattacks on a daily basis; these incidents usually take the form of cyber espionage or denial-of-service attacks against the utilities’ industrial-control systems
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Passwords contribute to online insecurity
One percent of passwords can be cracked within ten guesses; German and Korean speakers also had passwords which were more difficult to crack, while Indonesian-speaking users’ passwords were the least secure
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Cyberweapon blowback
The real concern about Stuxnet is that its existence demonstrates what is achievable; security analysts are confident that they can stop anything that is a variant of Stuxnet, but the real challenge is stopping something in the style of Stuxnet; this is where the confidence ends
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zvelo reaches 100 OEM milestone
Pivotal milestone attributed to strong adoption of zvelo’s URL database, website categorization and malicious website detection solutions for a vast array of applications
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Including ads in mobile apps poses privacy, security risks
Researchers have found that including ads in mobile applications (apps) poses privacy and security risks; in a recent study of 100,000 apps in the official Google Play market, researchers noticed that more than half contained so-called ad libraries, and that many of the apps included aggressive ad libraries that were enabled to download and run code from remote servers, which raises significant privacy and security concerns
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Triple-threat computer protection reduces identity theft
Having a triple-threat combination of protective software on your computer greatly reduces your chances of identity theft; computer users who were running antivirus, anti-adware, and anti-spyware software were 50 percent less likely to have their credit card information stolen
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U.K. holds amateur cybersecurity challenge to spur interest in field
For the past several weeks amateur cybersecurity experts have been searchingfor malware, defending against cyberattacks, and raising firewalls as part of Britain’s Cyber Security Challenge
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NATO commander target of persistent Facebook cyberattacks
The senior commander of NATO has been the target of repeated Facebook-based cyberattacks that are believed to have originated from China; Admiral James Stavridis is the subject of a campaign to gain information about him and his colleagues, friends, and family
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Cambridge first year student wins U.K. Cybersecrity Challenge competition
Cyber Security Challenge U.K. announces a winner and unveils this year’s new Challenge program (open for registrations as of yesterday); the winner, Jonathan Millican, competed with thousands of registered candidates in 6-month competition
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NYC cyberattack simulation to spur Senate cybersecurity legislation
Last Wednesday, in an attempt to bolster support for cybersecurity legislation, the White House staged a mock cyberattack on New York City’s power supply for the Senate
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NASA official says hackers gained “full functional control”
Last week NASA officials disclosed details about the alarming extent that hackers were able to penetrate the agency’s networks
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Top LulzSec hackers arrested, leader turns them in
In the ongoing battle between law enforcement officials and hackers, authorities announced on Tuesday that they had arrested leading members of the hacktivist group known as LulzSec after their leader allegedly turned them in
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Anonymous retaliates, takes down Interpol site
In retaliation for the arrest of twenty-five suspected members of the hacktivist collective known as Anonymous, the group briefly took down Interpol’s website on Tuesday
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Cryptographic attack shows importance of bug-free software
Researchers have developed an attack that can circumvent the security OpenSSL should provide; the attack worked on a very specific version of the OpenSSL software, and only when a specific set of options were used
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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.