Mar 04
If there weren’t already enough problems in Ukraine, it’s now coming under heavy electronic attack, too.
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Sep 28
Oh, how times have changed. Almost a year ago, Iranian officials claimed the country was suffering from constant internet-based attacks. Now, according to the WSJ, it’s Iran — or hackers working for the Iranian government — that’s allegedly behind a series of digital intrusions on the US Navy’s unclassified computers. The report, which cites unnamed US officials, says the attacks these past few weeks targeted computers that the Navy’s been using for email and intranet. Since no sensitive information was stolen, the US is reportedly more worried about the digital attacks’ implications: Iran is gaining hacking proficiency, and fast. Supposedly, it’s because Russian hackers have been extending their help — true or not, it’s clear that the US can no longer view Iran as a non-threat in the cyber arena. The Navy has already patched up its security system, but the US government is reportedly still waiting for what comes out of the US-Iran talks before deciding whether to take action.
Filed under: Internet
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Jun 17
Come June 28th, Wall Street outfits including the likes of Citigroup and Bank of America will be under siege — from fake hackers, that is. Representatives from a total of 40 companies along with the Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission, US departments of Treasury and Homeland Security will take part in Quantum Dawn 2: a simulated cyberattack on faux trading and information systems. Led by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the drill will test the ability of participants to cooperate via email and phone to suss out what’s going on and hatch a plan. The exercise will momentarily pause so that those involved can decide on a course of action, and then it’ll speed up and model the effects of the decision over a longer period of time. With the recent flurry of hacking incidents and international finger pointing, something tells us this won’t be the last we hear of drills like Quantum Dawn.
[Image credit: MoneyBlogNewz, Flickr]
Filed under: Alt
Via: AllThingsD
Source: Reuters
May 14
Amidst increasing concern about cybersecurity, researchers at North Carolina State University have taken one step closer to guarding America’s infrastructure from Cylon attack. Well, almost. Dr. Mo-Yuen Chow and Ph.D candidate Wente Zeng have developed an algorithm that detects cyber attacks aimed at distributed network control systems (D-NCSs), which differ from their more vulnerable counterparts in that they don’t rely on a centralized brain to coordinate the network’s activities. Essentially, then, D-NCSs are nervous systems comprised of several mini-brains working together. In the event of a cyber attack, the algorithm isolates the infected brain before the contamination can spread across the network’s pathways. This software solution will be a good first line of defense when vengeful A.I. inevitably rises up in revolt. In the words of Admiral William Adama, so say we all.
Oct 16
Kaspersky Labs preps its own OS to guard vital industry against cyberwarfare
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Kaspersky Labs’ namesake Eugene Kaspersky is worried that widely distributed and potentially state-sponsored malware like Flame and Stuxnet pose dire threats to often lightly protected infrastructure like communication and power plants — whatever your nationality, it’s clearly bad for the civilian population of a given country to suffer even collateral damage from cyberattacks. To minimize future chaos and literally keep the trains running, Kaspersky and his company are expanding their ambitions beyond mere antivirus software to build their own, extra-secure operating system just for large-scale industry. The platform depends on a custom, minimalist core that refuses to run any software that isn’t baked in and has no code outside of its main purposes: there’ll be no water supply shutdowns after the night watch plays Solitaire from an infected drive. Any information shared from one of these systems should be completely trustworthy, Kaspersky says. He doesn’t have details as to when the OS will reach behind-the-scenes hardware, but he stresses that this is definitely not an open-source project: some parts of the OS will always remain confidential to keep ne’er-do-well terrorists (and governments) from undermining the technology we often take for granted.
Filed under: Software
Kaspersky Labs preps its own OS to guard vital industry against cyberwarfare originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Oct 2012 13:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Oct 03
Iran claims to have been hit by ‘heavy’ cyber attack, pins slowdowns on coordinated hacking campaign
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Whatever you think of Iran’s politics, it’s hard to deny that the country has frequently been the target of internet-based attacks that sometimes go beyond the originator’s plans. If you believe High Council of Cyberspace secretary Mehdi Akhavan Behabadi, the pressure is only getting worse. He tells Iranian media that the nation is under “constant” digital bombardment and was just hit with a major assault on Tuesday that bogged down local internet access. Behabadi unsurprisingly contends that the attacks are deliberate efforts to undermine Iran’s data, nuclear and oil infrastructures, with a finger implicitly pointed westward. While it’s no secret that the country’s enemies want to slow down what they see as a rush towards nuclear weapons, it’s difficult to know how much of the accusation is serious versus bluster: we’ve seen individual smartphone users who consume more than the “several gigabytes” of traffic that reportedly caused national chaos in the most recent incident. No matter the exact nature, it’s likely that residents stand to lose as Iran fences off the internet to keep outside influences, hostile and otherwise, from getting in.
[Image credit: Amir1140, Wikipedia]
Filed under: Networking, Internet
Iran claims to have been hit by ‘heavy’ cyber attack, pins slowdowns on coordinated hacking campaign originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Oct 2012 01:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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