"A group of Democratic U.S. senators on Tuesday demanded Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) to explain why hackers' theft of user information for half a billion accounts two years ago only came to light last week and lambasted its handling of the breach as "unacceptable," reports Dustin Volz from Washington in Reuters.
The Internet and tech got very little mention last night during the first of three presidential debatest. The only notable exception was cybersecurity where moderator Lester Holt asked: "Our institutions are under cyber attack, and our secrets are being stolen. So my question is, who's behind it? And how do we fight it?" The following are the responses provided to the question by the two candidates.
"A radical review of cybersecurity in space is needed to avoid potentially catastrophic attacks," warn researchers at the International Security Department of UK-based thinktank, Chatham House.
"Yahoo is expected to confirm a massive data breach, impacting hundreds of millions of users," reports Kara Swisher today in Recode.
Speaking at the Billington Cyber Security Summit in Washington DC, Ciaran Martin, head of UK's Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) and the first Chief Executive of the new National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), set out how the new organization will use DNS filters as part of its plan to curb cyberattacks.
"Over the past year or two, someone has been probing the defenses of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet," wrote renowned security expert, Bruce Schneier, in a piece published in Lawfare.
"The U.S. Justice Department has formed a threat analysis team to study potential national security challenges posed by self-driving cars, medical devices and other Internet-connected tools," reports Dustin Volz from Washington in Reuters"
New York state is proposing new rules requiring banks and insurance companies to establish cybersecurity programs and designate an internal cybersecurity officer.
As part of its effort to improve defenses against hackers, the White House today named a retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Gregory J. Touhill as the first Federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) -- the position was announced eight months ago as part of Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP).
"China Sets New Tone in Drafting Cybersecurity Rules," By Eva Dou in Beijing and Rachael King in San Francisco reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
"Singapore is planning to cut off web access for public servants as a defence against potential cyber attack," according to a report today in the Guardian.
"Russian banks will be faced with a whole range of new regulations, and penalties for non-compliance, when it comes to cyber-security, according to the country's Central Bank," Eugene Gerden reported today in SC Magazine UK
"Massive Email Bombs Target .Gov Addresses," Brian Krebs writes in Krebs on Security: "Over the weekend, unknown assailants launched a massive cyber attack aimed at flooding targeted dot-gov (.gov) email inboxes with subscription requests to thousands of email lists."
The release on websites this week of what appears to be top-secret computer code that the National Security Agency has used to break into the networks of foreign governments and other espionage targets has caused deep concern inside American intelligence agencies, raising the question of whether America's own elite operatives have been hacked and their methods revealed.
A mysterious hacker or hackers going by the name 'The Shadow Brokers' claims to have hacked a group linked to the NSA and dumped a bunch of its hacking tools. In a bizarre twist, the hackers are also asking for 1 million bitcoin (around $568 million) in an auction to release more files.