Cybersecurity

Governments Changing Censorship Tactics as More Websites Adopt HTTPS

With websites and social media platforms moving from HTTP to secure HTTPs connections in recent years, a new degree of complication is affecting Internet censorship efforts around the world. more

Nominet Rolls Out DNSSEC for 9.4 Million .UK Domains

UK registry Nominet has enabled the deployment of domain name system security extensions (DNSSEC) for 9.4 million second level .uk domains. Completing the rollout represents over a year's work and marks an important milestone in making the web a more trusted environment for UK consumers and businesses, says Nominet, which is responsible for running the .uk internet infrastructure. more

Domain Transfers… Domain Hijacking… Make Your Voice Heard

ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO) has formed a working group to consider changes to the domain transfer process to enhance security and reduce hijacking. The working group consists of registrars, aftermarket players, domainers and other members of the ICANN Community. The group published its preliminary recommendations at the ICANN meeting in Brussels two weeks ago and the 20-day comment period has just begun. more

Mac Hit by Another Wave of Malware… Users in Denial?

In case you haven't been watching cyber news recently, last week various security researchers published that Macs were infected by the Flashback Trojan and that the total number of infections worldwide was 600,000. This number was published by a couple of blogs. I debated writing about this topic since we had a previous Mac outbreak last year that initially spiked up, caused Apple to go into denial about the affair before issuing a fix, and then the malware kind of went away. Will this follow the same pattern? more

Cyber Crime: It’s All About Data (Part 1)

Cyber crime = crime. How do we make police forces understand this and how to get it prioritized? In this series of blogs I am looking into whether aggregating data can change the way cyber crime is approached and prioritized. At a seminar at the IT Security trade fair in Utrecht detective super intendant Charlie McMurdie, head of the cyber crime unit of the London Metropolitan police, said that cyber crime was recently prioritized by the UK government. She also said the following and I'm allowed to quote this... more

Global Payments Breach Confirmation

This morning, Global Payments held a conference call with investors and analysts covering their earlier breach announcement and projected earnings. Global Payments had also released an update advisory yesterday stating that "the company believes that the affected portion of its processing system is confined to North America and less than 1,500,000 card numbers have been exported" and that only Track 2 card data may have been stolen. more

An Economic Outlook on Information Security

As enterprise information security spending is scrutinized in unprecedented fashion in 2009 Information Technology management will seek to get more for their security dollar. While budgets tighten and risks grow due to the global economic downturn IT departments will be looking for point solutions, not suites of security tools. more

Precrime Regulation of Internet Innovation

In the sci-fi movie Minority Report, a 'precrime' police unit relies on the visions of psychics to predict future crimes, then arrests the potential perpetrators before they do anything wrong. In the world of Internet governance, the future is now, as regulators want online services to predict and prevent safety threats before they actually occur. more

Why Domain Name Security Matters Most?

In my recent CircleID post, DNS, Domain Names, and Certificates: The Missing Links in Most Cybersecurity Risk Postures, I highlighted the importance of applying multiple layers of defense to secure these business-critical assets. Last Friday, Brian Krebs, the world-renowned cybersecurity journalist, reiterated the criticality of domain name security because the domain name "e-hawk.net" was stolen from the rightful owner using social engineering tactics targeting its domain name registrar. more

Cybercriminals Shifting Focus From Windows PCs to Other Systems and Mobile

In a major cybercrime turning point, scammers have begun shifting their focus away from Windows-based PCs to other operating systems and platforms, including smart phones, tablet computers, and mobile platforms in general, according to the Cisco® 2010 Annual Security Report, released today. The report also finds that 2010 was the first year in the history of the Internet that spam volume decreased, that cybercriminals are investing heavily in "money muling," and that users continue to fall prey to myriad forms of trust exploitation. more

Belarus-Linked Hackers Target Diplomats, Likely With State Support

Foreign diplomats based in Belarus have been under the digital crosshairs of hackers with suspected ties to the Belarusian government for nearly a decade, security researchers revealed on Thursday. more

Designing Secure Networks with Cisco Technology, Part 2

In this multipart series I will be presenting some of the leading industry-standard best practices for enterprise network security using Cisco technologies... In Part 1 of this series, I provided an overview of the critical role that properly designed data security architectures play within an Internet-connected organization. Before we begin to discuss the security designs, processes and recommendations related to Cisco technology, let's first discuss some of the ways a network becomes unsecure... more

Cyber Criminals Infiltrate Even Small Businesses

I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today entitled Cyber Criminals Sniff out Vulnerable Firms. It's a story of a small business owner in New York whose company was broken into by cyber criminals and stole $1.2 million from its bank accounts, although the owner was able to later recover about $800,000 of that. The moral of the story is that small businesses feel like they are not a major target for online thefts like these. more

The Crimeware Infection Lifecycle

The distribution and installation of malicious and unauthorized software has evolved consistently throughout the 21st Century. The evolutionary path from annoying viruses, to destructive malware and on to financially driven crimeware, is well documented and can even be conveniently traced via the parallel evolution of technologies that were designed to counter each new aspect of the then contemporary threat. more

UK Government Releases New Cyber Security Standard for Self-Driving Vehicles

UK government today announced the release of a new cyber security standard for self-driving vehicles. Funded by the Department for Transport, the British Standards Institute has developed the guidance to set a marker for those developing self-driving car technologies. more