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Market Jitters Hint at Social Hacks' High Threat Level April 24, 2013 
Shortly after 1 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the world just about ended as far as Wall Street was concerned, when the AP tweeted that President Obama had been injured by explosions at the White House. Within minutes, the Dow dropped 145 points. Shortly afterward, the AP reported its Twitter account had been hacked. The markets quickly settled back into their normal rhythm of buying and trending, but the event left its mark.
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Aussie Police Nab Possible Lulzsec Ringleader April 24, 2013 
Police in Australia have arrested a 24-year-old who claims to be a high-level member of the international hacking collective Lulzsec. The IT worker was charged with two counts of unauthorized modification of data and one count of unauthorized access to/modification of restricted data. In other words, he attacked and defaced a government website.
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Report: State-Sponsored Cyberattacks Heat Up in 2012 April 23, 2013 
State-sponsored cyberespionage incidents tripled over last year, according the 2013 Verizon Data Breach Report. 96 percent of those attacks were attributable to East Asia. Verizon's study, which analyzed 47,000 security incidents, expanded its contributors this year to 19, including a wider range of worldwide law enforcement agencies. Three key types of cyberattackers were identified in the report.
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Fed Budget Makes Room for Cloud, Cybersecurity Upgrades April 23, 2013 
From partial unpaid furloughs of personnel to travel cutbacks, U.S. government agencies are scrounging to come up with ways to save money. In that light, the Obama Administration's proposed 2014 federal budget for information technology resources is good news for agency IT shops -- and for vendors serving the market. The administration has proposed spending $82 billion for information technology in fiscal 2014.
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Android: A Second Career in Security? April 23, 2013 
Many of us have a wealth of decommissioned corporate-provisioned mobile devices: We've bought them, handed them out, and seen them used successfully for years. Now they're on their way to the great docking station in the sky. However, because these devices are already off the books adapting them for specific security functions can mean achieving certain goals practically for free.
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Social Sharing May Be Eroding Office Security April 22, 2013 
It's no secret that security experts don't have a lot of love for social media. Information freely available at social media sites makes it easier for net marauders to fashion targeted attacks on organizations. However, social media may be undermining data security in a more profound way. Much has been made of the growing willingness of people to cough up personal information about themselves.
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Feds Sue to Pry Crammed Charges From Cellphones April 18, 2013 
The Federal Trade Commission filed a suit against Wise Media this week, accusing the company of slipping unauthorized charges into consumer cellphone bills. Wise Media allegedly charged cellphone users fees for services to which they'd never subscribed, a practice referred to as "cramming." The company used short codes, which have legitimate purposes within the mobile landscape.
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CISPA on Collision Course With Obama Veto April 18, 2013 
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which faces a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, may end up vetoed by President Obama. CISPA encourages private companies to share security information among themselves and with the government. The House Rules Committee on Tuesday rejected a bipartisan amendment that would have addressed user privacy.
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DDoS Attacks Hammering Targets Harder April 17, 2013 
The number, size and impact of distributed denial of service attacks increased sharply in the first quarter of this year, according to a new report from Prolexic. The average attack bandwidth in this period was 48.25 Gbps, 718 percent more than the 5.9 Gbps chalked up by attacks in the previous quarter. The average packet-per-second rate hit 32.4 million, and the average duration of an attack increased 7.14 percent.
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Safety, Privacy Issues Temper Google Glass Coolness April 16, 2013 
Google on Tuesday released the tech specifications for Google Glass, which will sport 720p resolution for the eyeware's video camera and 16 GB of onboard flash storage. The forthcoming availability of the Web-connected glasses, however, is also raising questions about health/safety and privacy. The glasses will include the ability to take 5 MP still camera images and have WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.
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Lame U/P Combos Make WordPress Irresistible to Hackers April 16, 2013 
An attack of unprecedented proportions has been hitting sites using WordPress, a free and open source blogging tool and content management system that powers more than 60 million websites worldwide. It appears the hackers are trying to take over WordPress servers to give them added muscle for future attacks. Poor choice of passwords and inadequate server security are making their task easier.
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Google, EU Reach Meeting of the Minds April 15, 2013 
In an effort to appease European regulators, Google for the first time has agreed to make legally binding changes to its search results. The changes stem from a two-year investigation into whether Google abused its online search dominance in Europe. The changes will not force Google to amend its algorithm, but instead will require it to clearly label search results from its own properties.
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Report: Big Biz Shakes Off Hack Attacks April 15, 2013 
A lot of noise has been made about the consequences of data breaches for companies, but a recent survey of some of the largest U.S. businesses may have wrapped those noisemakers in a muffler. Of the 27 largest companies reporting cyberattacks in their most recent filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, none said they sustained any major financial losses from those net assaults.
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Bing Tops Google in Malware-Ridden Search Results April 13, 2013 
Bing may be engaged in a "Scroogled" marketing campaign, but an 18-month study by an antivirus security firm shows that Microsoft's search engine may need to play some defense, thanks to results showing more malware-infected links popping up in its search results than for Google.
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Real-World Marauders Infest Online Games April 12, 2013 
A scenario involving cybercriminals using techniques developed by state-sponsored cyberespionage groups sounds like a plot point in a video game, but the Winnti crew aren't the villains in some new release. These Chinese hackers are very real, and online games are their target. The group has been conducting a long-running cybercrime campaign targeting online gaming companies worldwide, Kaspersky Lab reported this week.
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Civilian Oversight Overlooked as CISPA Clears House Committee April 12, 2013 
A revived version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act -- with provisions for civilian oversight absent -- passed by a vote of 18-2 Thursday in the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee adopted six amendments, but removed others aimed at privacy protection. Three of those were proposed by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., with one offered by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
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Remote Airplane Hijack Threat Demoed: Simon Says 'Crash!' April 11, 2013 
Airplanes can be hijacked using an Android smartphone, security consultant and trained commercial pilot Hugo Teso told an audience at a conference in Germany on Wednesday. Teso, who works for N.runs, created an exploit framework he calls "SIMON," and crafted an Android app he named "PlaneSploit" that delivers attack messages to an aircraft's flight management system.
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IRS May Be Sifting Through Email in Defiance of Court Order April 11, 2013 
The ACLU has raised a disturbing possibility after reading 247 pages of records it obtained from the Internal Revenue Service via a Freedom of Information Act request: The agency may be reading taxpayers' emails without a warrant. The IRS was told not to do this after a 2010 appellate court ruling in United States v. Warshak. However, the ACLU now seems to think the IRS has reverted to its previous behavior -- or perhaps never stopped.
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Iran To Launch 'Islamic Google Earth' April 11, 2013 
Iran -- long irked by Google's mapping systems -- said that it will launch its own 3D mapping service, one liberated from the geographical inaccuracies and "Zionist" bent of Google Earth. The system will be an "Islamic Google Earth," according to Mohammad Hassan Nami, Iran's minister for information and communications technology.
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Brainwaves Could Make Passwords Old School April 10, 2013 
Brainwave authentication can be used instead of passwords to protect computer logins, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information said this week. The development opens up the potential for users thinking certain thoughts or picturing specific images to gain access to devices, thereby adding a layer of biometric security.
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