Infosecurity News
NIST advises organizations to prepare for CA compromises
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published a bulletin for organizations on how to prepare for and respond to certificate authority (CA) compromises that result in the issuance of fraudulent certificates.
Cyber Security Challenge UK launches new summer Cyber Camp
The task faced by Cyber Security Challenge UK is to fill the skills gap – there are simply not enough security specialists coming through the system. The organization’s latest innovation is a new 5-day summer camp to be held at Lancaster university next month.
Disttrack/Shamoon: a new targeted and destructive virus
Anti-virus companies and researchers are warning about a new targeted and destructive virus variously known as Shamoon and Disttrack. It seems to be targeted at the oil industry – and it wipes PCs.
AT&T DDoS’d by unknown attackers
For most of Wednesday many AT&T business customers suffered ‘intermittent disruption’ to their service while AT&T DNS servers came under DDoS attack from an unknown source.
Malware targeting Android triples in second quarter
The amount of malware targeting the Android platform almost tripled in the second quarter compared with the first quarter of 2012, according to Kaspersky Lab.
Bugs beware: Google to offer researchers bonuses on top of bounties
Google has announced plans to hand out bonuses, in addition to its existing bug bounties, to researchers who report particularly troublesome flaws in its Chrome browser.
Atlanta police provides personal information to insurance scammers
At least three dozen members of the Atlanta police force provided personal information to scammers who posed as agents selling insurance benefits.
NASA not ready for APTs, warns audit
NASA’s inspector general (IG) is criticizing the space agency for not being ready to combat advanced persistent threats (APTs).
Security issues increase corporate BYOD costs
Despite the perception that bring your own device (BYOD) saves organizations money, more than two-thirds of IT professionals believe it increases costs, primarily due to the added security risks and measures required, according to a survey by Lieberman Software.
Adobe’s patches for Windows and OS/X expose Linux
During June, Google researchers seeking to strengthen the security posture of the embedded PDF reader for Chrome discovered numerous vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader. Most of these were patched in this week’s Adobe security update – but not for Linux.
CloudFlare helps restore WikiLeaks
After more than a week of persistent DDoS attack by Anti Leaks, WikiLeaks is now available again, courtesy, it says, of increased capacity and CloudFlare protection.
Assange: asylum crunch day
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, wanted by Sweden (definitely) and the US (probably) is inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London seeking political asylum. Today, Thursday 16 August, is the day that Ecuador has said it will announce its decision.
Adobe pulls Flash Player from Google Play store
Adobe is pulling its Flash Player plug-in from Android’s Google Play store because the app is likely to exhibit “unpredictable behavior” when used with the Jelly Bean, the latest version of Android.
Canadian spy agency disciplines employees over security policy breaches
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has suspended two employees for violations of the agency's information security policies.
Security vendor Prolexic uncovers vulnerability in hacker toolkit
Security vendor Prolexic has turned the tables on cybercriminals and exposed a vulnerability in the Dirt Jumper toolkit used to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against corporate networks.
Data security is top legal concern of corporate counsels and directors
More than half of corporate general counsels and close to half of corporate directors listed data security as their top legal concern, according a survey by FTI Consulting.
Bitcoinica, twice hacked in 2012, is being sued
Bitcoinica is a UK-based online trading site for the online cash alternative ‘bitcoin’. Following its second hack, Bitcoinica was taken offline and will remain off-line until a ‘transitional’ period designed to improve security is complete.
What made Entrust leave a forum that it co-founded?
The answer is simple: politics and mathematics. Politics comes in when smaller members can see a benefit to be had from the larger members; and mathematics when there are enough small members to outvote the large members. That’s why Entrust withdrew from the CA/Browser forum.
The ICO gets tougher on data breaches
Current details from the Information Commissioners Office show that the ICO increased its use of CMPs (civil monetary penalties, or fines) from £430,000 to £1.8 million in the last year; and increased the issue of warning notices from 46 to 68.
Companies hunker down in response to targeted attacks
Nearly half of companies have been the victim of a targeted cyberatttack within the past year and most favor adopting a military-style approach to combatting those attacks, according to a survey by CounterTack.
