CISPA Cybersecurity Bill Passes the House

via mashable.com

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, passed the House of Representatives Thursday on a bipartisan vote of 287-127 with 18 representatives not voting. CISPA now faces the tough odds of being adopted and passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, which favors other approaches to cybersecurity legislation.

CISPA's passage in the House comes despite a veto threat from the White House, which argued the information-sharing bill risks compromising Americans' online privacy and affords companies legal shelter should they put customers' privacy at risk...

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Cyber threats at the top of US intelligence report for the first time

via theverge.com

Cyber threats are the number one type of danger facing the United States, according to US national intelligence director James Clapper, the man in charge of coordinating the CIA and the NSA, among many other agencies. "As more and more state and nonstate actors gain cyber expertise, its importance and reach as a global threat cannot be overstated," Clapper said in testimony he gave to the House Intelligence Committee last week, as part of his office's annual global threat assessment report.

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Will the next 9/11 be digital?

via digitaltrends.com

Just as our everyday lives depend on the Internet, the backbones of nations increasingly rely on the Internet for communication, coordination, and financial transactions. But relying on the Internet also exposes those core functions threats from anywhere in the world. Need examples? Two weeks ago, some 30,000 systems at South Korean banks and broadcasters were wiped out in a coordinated attack – it might have come from North Korea, but investigators are still chasing basic details. Last week, a cyber-brawl apparently between Spamhaus and CyberBunker has caused localized collateral damage and may have shaken some top-tier Internet providers.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper offered an assessment of current worldwide threats to the United States. The list included terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, competition for dwindling natural resources, and even pandemics. But the first item? Cyber threats.

Why are online threats now the top priority for U.S. national security – the first time they’ve outranked terror networks? And how could the U.S.’s heightened stance impact everyday use of the Internet?

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Inside the Biggest Cyberattack in History

via mashable.com

A cyberattack originally targeting a single company is now being described by experts as one of the biggest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in Internet history. The assault, which recently began impacting elements of the Internet's physical infrastructure, has been dragging down Internet speeds in Europe — but what makes this type of attack different from all other attacks?

First, some background: The attacks originally targeted a European anti-spam company called Spamhaus, which blacklists what it considers sources of email spam and sells those blacklists to Internet Service Providers. The attack began early last week as waves of large but typical DDoS assaults shortly after Spamhaus blacklisted Cyberbunker, a controversial web hosting company. Cyberbunker has not directly taken responsibility for the attacks against Spamhaus.

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The Biggest Cyber Attack In History Is Taking Place Right Now

via businessinsider.com

Internet speeds around the world have noticeably slowed down due to a massive "distributed denial of service" attack, reports the BBC.

These DDoS attacks bombard targeted web servers with so much dummy traffic that people trying to access a site for legitimate purposes are unable to do so. It's most analogous to a traffic jam on a highway with no one able to move.

The BBC says that security experts are describing it as "the biggest cyber-attack in history."

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South Korea Cyber Attack Heightens Tensions In Hair-Trigger Region

via readwrite.com

No one is at all clear at all about the origins of a purported cyber attack against South Korean media and financial organizations yesterday, which left broadcaster and bank networks paralyzed for hours. The obvious culprit is a state-sponsored attack from North Korea, but even if that nation isn't directly responsible, it may not make a difference, given the heightened tensions in the region.

According to reports, three South Korean TV networks, KBS, MBS and YTN, as well as Shinhan Bank and Nonghyup Bank, reported that their networks had suddenly been shut down on Wednesday afternoon, local time. The takedown was apparently not from a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack, but a virus that has apparently infected machines in these organizations and delivered its payload simultaneously. There were scattered reports of users seeing skulls on the screens of the affected machines before they shut down, anecdotal evidence that malware was indeed the cause.

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US Telecoms oppose strict cybersecurity controls, get them removed from FCC report

via theverge.com

An FCC panel appears to be backing down from recommending strict cybersecurity controls to US telecoms, submitting a watered-down list of recommendations instead, reports The Wall Street Journal. The final report is scheduled to be released Monday evening.

The Communications, Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) is tasked with making recommendations to the FCC for how to protect US communications systems. It doesn’t have regulatory authority, but its recommendations inform industry best practices. For instance, last year, the CSRIC unanimously recommended a code of conduct to mitigate botnet attacks, which was promptly implemented by many in the industry. This time around, the recommendations included a list known as the 20 Critical Security Controls. The list was created by a security training firm called the SANS institute, along with the National Security Agency, the Department of Defense, incident response firms like Mandiant, and companies with major security breach experience like McAfee and Lockheed. The controls include precautions like limiting which employees get administrator privileges on company networks, requiring regular backups and testing of company data, and restricting access to network ports and protocols.

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US national security advisor warns China: 'We will take action... against cyber threats'

via theverge.com

The White House is talking tougher in its growing public conflict with China over cyber attacks on American businesses, which have reportedly been linked back to hackers operating within China's boundaries. On Monday, Tom Donilon, the US national security advisor to President Obama, gave a lengthy address to the Asia Society in New York City, delivering the White House's sternest warning yet to China that the US could retaliate against suspected Chinese cyber attacks if and when it sees fit.

"Increasingly, US businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale," Donilon said in his prepared remarks posted on The White House website. "The international community cannot afford to tolerate such activity from any country. As the President said in the State of the Union, we will take action to protect our economy against cyber threats."

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Website Shows Cyberattacks as They Happen

via mashable.com

The Internet can be a dangerous place, and now you can see just how dangerous it gets — in real time, no less.

Deutsche Telekom, a German telecommunications company, has developed a website that allows users to monitor cyberattacks as they happen.

Sicherheitstacho.eu (loosely translated as "security tachometer") displays events as they happen, giving the time of the attack, country of origin and the intended target. While watching the site can be quite hypnotic, its relevance for the everyday user is limited (unless your website or network is currently under attack, in which case, the site still probably won't help much).

For Deutsche Telekom, however, the information will be invaluable. Sicherheitstacho allows the company to compile data for thousands of incidents daily, which will grant insight into common targets and attacker demographics.

Far and away the most belligerent country is Russia, with an impressive 2.4 million cyberattacks launched in February 2012. Taiwan comes in a distant second with 900,000, followed by the website's native Germany at 780,000 and the Ukraine with 566,000. The United States takes sixth place, with more than 355,000 attacks launched from its soil.

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US may consider military action, financial sanctions as repercussions for cyber attacks

via thenextweb.com

Today at the RSA cybersecurity conference, the White House’s cybersecurity leader Michael Daniel stated that the United States has a range of options under consideration for responding to cyber incursions.

According to The Hill’s Jennifer Martinez, the list of possible actions includes “financial sanctions, visa restrictions and military action.” TNW parses that as meaning that no method of possible deterrence has been removed from possibility. This is the proverbial ‘all options on the table’ moment.

Cybersecurity, long a simmering issue in American politics and policy, has reached a new plane of intensity following both first-hands reports by media and technology companies of hacking, but also a report by Mandiant, a security firm, published in the New York Times that indicated that a Chinese military unit was committing aggressive acts of hacking that infringed on American corporate interests and infrastructure points.

That report was corroborated in no small way recently when Senator Dianne Feinstein stated the following: “I read the Mandiant report. I’ve also read other reports, classified out of Intelligence, and I think the Mandiant Report, which is now unclassified, it’s public, is essentially correct.”

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US prepares economic countermeasures in light of recent cyberattacks

via theverge.com

The recent rash of hacking attacks shows no sign of slowing — Apple today announced it had fallen victim to the trend — but the US government is preparing some measures to help address the situation. The Associated Press is reporting that the White House will release a new strategy tomorrow, outlining penalties, fines, and trade restrictions designed to deter countries from participating in such efforts.

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Cyberwar With China Is Here, Like It or Not

via allthingsd.com

“Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.” Benjamin Franklin wrote that.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” The Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote that.

Both come to mind as the world is waking up a newly disclosed body of evidence from the Internet security firm Mandiant, publicly illustrating, in the starkest terms yet, how wide, deep and pervasive computer hacking attacks from China have become. As reported on the front page of today’s New York Times, numerous attacks on American, Canadian and British companies, dating as far back as 2006, have been carried out by a single unit of the China’s People’s Liberation Army. Mandiant, a firm based in Alexandria, Va., has identified it as Unit 61398, operating out of a single building just walking distance from the point in outer Shanghai where the Huangpu and Yangtze Rivers meet.

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Cyber Attacks Against Journalists Are On The Rise, Says Advocacy Group

via techcrunch.com

More journalists are now the target of cyber attacks, said the Committee to Protect Journalists. CPJ deputy director Robert Mahoney said cyber attacks on individuals and news organizations have increased notably over the past few years and that the practice serves as easy and inexpensive censorship. In a press conference with reporters, Mahoney cited the recent attacks on The New York Times, the Washington Post, Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal by Chinese hackers, but said other news organizations and journalists in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other regions had also been subjected to cyberattacks.

Attacks by hackers have ramped up so much that in a report last June, the CPJ said that it’s now “open season on online journalists,” with nation-states using customized software to exploit security flaws on personal computers and consumer Internet services in order to spy on users. Countries suspected in spying include the U.S., Israel and China. Journalists working in the latter country reported receiving regular warnings on their Gmail that their account had been targeted by what Google said was a “state-sponsored attack.”

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Microsoft and Symantec Just Busted a Major Cyber Crime Ring

via gizmodo.com

It sounds like the plot of a movie: two major software corporations join together to shut down an evil global cyber crime operation and engage in wacky hijinks along the way. While the latter can be neither confirmed nor denied, according to an exclusive report by Reuters, Microsoft and Symantec did shut down servers that had been controlling hundreds of thousands of PCs without their users being any the wiser.

Bamital botnet's—the major cyber crime operation's—main attack involved hijacking search results, among other schemes, that would allow them to fraudulently charge businesses with online ad clicks. The over 18 ringleaders from around the world registered websites and rented servers using pseudonyms. This allowed Bamital to redirect users' search results to the fraudulent websites, where they would be able to benefit from any subsequent clicks.

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World War III Is Already Here - And We're Losing

via readwrite.com

Every day the Pentagon is attacked 3 million times. They’ve infiltrated our banks. They’ve ransacked our technology industry. They’ve breached the networks of the Chamber of Commerce. They’ve read our email by taking down one of America’s pre-eminent technology companies, Google. It’s already World War III, people. And all we do is smile at the enemy.

Last Wednesday, The New York Times announced that its computers had been hacked. That passwords had been stolen. That its private networks had been traversed with impunity by a bunch of brazen hackers. We’re not talking Anonymous here nor a bunch of ethical hackers. No we’re at war with China.

To paraphrase on old newspaper joke, “what’s black and white and red all over?” The Chinese Red Army, that’s who.

How do we know that? As William Gibson might bark, “Pattern Recognition!” Computer security experts consulting with The New York Times identified the malware “as a specific strain associated with computer attacks originating in China.”

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U.S. Cyber Command To Recruit 4,000 new Cyber Soldiers

via readwrite.com

Over the next few years the U.S. Cyber Command, an army of 900 military personnel and civilians who monitor and defend against cyber attacks, is set to grow by 4,000 cyber soldiers. The command will expand its role in national defense by becoming a new kind of fighting force, one that protects the Internet safety of the entire country. As the expansion is implemented, Cybercom will be separated into three teams:

National Mission Forces
Combat Mission Forces
Cyber Protection Forces

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Anonymous Threatens To Leak Sensitive Records If The Feds Don't Reform An Anti-Hacking Law

via businessinsider.com

Hactivist group Anonymous has hacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission in the name of Aaron Swartz, threatening to leak sensitive government documents if the feds don't reform the justice system, CNET reports.
The collective posted a manifesto regarding "Operation Last Resort," along with a set of encrypted files that it claims have "enough fissile material for multiple warheads."

Anonymous won't specify the contents of the files at issue but said it would start leaking the documents, with heavy redactions, to one media outlet "at a regular interval commencing today," according to CNET.

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Anonymous Attacks Department Of Justice Website and Threatens Worse Over Aaron Swartz's Suicide

via gizmodo.com

Since Aaron Swartz's suicide two weeks ago—an incident largely blamed on the charges being levied against him—the 'net has been grieving. And Anonymous has been doing that in its own special way: tearing shit up. In the latest of several attacks, they took down the U.S. Justice Department's Sentencing Commission site and left behind a video threatening more cyber-carnage.

The defaced website which usually contains sentencing guidelines for federal crimes instead displayed a 10-minute video and written copy of the same message posted below it. First and foremost, it reiterated characteristic Anonymous rage at the situation saying...

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Anonymous Declares War on the US Government

via theverge.com

Hacktivist group Anonymous took over the United States Sentencing Service's website earlier today to announce its intention to expose government secrets in response to the US Department of Justice's treatment of Aaron Swartz. The group says Swartz's indictment was a "twisted and distorted perversion of justice," and claims to have hacked government organizations in retaliation. Anonymous hasn't revealed the nature of the "sensitive" information it's uncovered, but says that "everyone has secrets, and some things are not meant to be public." It's gathered all the information into a "warhead:" a file called U S - D O J - L E A - 2013 . A E E 256.

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Cyber Monday Sales Are up 24.1% So Far

via mashable.com

Cyber Monday isn’t even over yet, but it’s shaping up to be a happy day for online retailers.
IBM reports that online sales through noon Monday EST are up 24.1% compared to the same period in 2011. Mobile is a big factor this year. Some 22.4% of consumers are using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site and 12% of them are using such a device to make a purchase. Parsing the data further, IBM found that 8.7% of shoppers are coming from iPhones, 7.2% are from iPads and 6.3% are accessing a retail site from their Android device.

Meanwhile, only 0.2% of all Cyber Monday sales so far are referred from social networks.

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