Cybersecurity

Kazakhstan Using Malware Against Journalists, Political Activists, Lawyers

Journalists and political activists critical of Kazakhstan's authoritarian government, along with their family members, lawyers, and associates, have been targets of an online phishing and malware campaign believed to be carried out on behalf of the government of Kazakhstan, according to a new report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). more

Networking Firm Loses $46.7 Million to Fraudulent Wire Transfer

Ubiquiti Networks Inc., a San Jose based maker of networking technology, has disclosed that cyber criminals stole $46.7 million via a "business email compromise fraud involving employee impersonation." more

Cyber Security Forecast for 2009: Data and Mobility Key Part of Emerging Threats

Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GSTISC) today held its annual Security Summit on Emerging Cyber Security Threats and released the GTISC Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2009, outlining the top five areas of security concern and risk for consumer and enterprise Internet users for the coming year... According to the report, data will continue to be the primary motive behind future cyber crime-whether targeting traditional fixed computing or mobile applications. "It's all about the data," says security expert George Heron -- whether botnets, malware, blended threats, mobile threats or cyber warfare attacks. more

Internet Governance in 2026: Sovereignty, Security, and the Limits of Multistakeholderism

As Internet governance fragments in 2026, authority shifts from open, multistakeholder forums to state-led security regimes, legal instruments, and alliance-based cooperation, challenging longstanding institutions and reshaping global norms through enforcement rather than consensus. more

Hosters: Is Your Platform Being Used to Launch DDoS Attacks?

As anyone who's been in the DDoS attack trenches knows, large multi-gigabit attacks have become more prevalent over the last few years. For many organizations, it's become economically unfeasible to provision enough bandwidth to combat this threat. How are attackers themselves sourcing so much bandwidth? more

A Look at the Security Collapse in the HTTPS Market

While in recent years, HTTPS has become integral part of protecting social, political, and economic activities online, widely reported security incidents -- such as DigiNotar's breach, Apple's #gotofail, and OpenSSL's Heartbleed -- have exposed systemic security vulnerabilities of HTTPS to a global audience. more

Should You Pay Ransomware Demands?

Ransomware is a huge problem for small and medium businesses, and the most important question is this: should you pay the ransom? Ransomware has proven a successful revenue generator for criminals, which means the risk to businesses will grow as ransomware becomes more sophisticated and increasing numbers of ethically challenged criminals jump on the bandwagon. more

COVID-19: Business and Brand Protection Response

With the COVID-19 health crisis evolving so quickly, it's hard to predict the extent of the long-term impact on business and the economy. While every business sector is facing different considerations, it's safe to say all are handling challenges from supply chain interruptions, rapid shifts to remote work, and massive changes in consumer spending and communication habits. more

Characterizing the Friction and Incompatibility Between IoC and AI

Many organizations are struggling to overcome key conceptual differences between today's AI-powered threat detection systems and legacy signature detection systems. A key friction area -- in perception and delivery capability -- lies with the inertia of Indicator of Compromise (IoC) sharing; something that is increasingly incompatible with the machine learning approaches incorporated into the new breed of advanced detection products. more

Ransomware Attacks Skyrocket: Median Cost Doubles to $26,000, Representing a Quarter of All Breaches, Reports Verizon

A report from Verizon Business's 16th annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) reveals a startling surge in the frequency and cost of cyberattacks. It analyzed 16,312 security incidents and 5,199 breaches, showing a sharp uptick in the cost of ransomware.  more

Freedom to Connect

Over the last ten years, Andrew Odlyzko has been writing about a pricing algorithm that would assure reasonable service levels at reasonable prices. If you're going to F2C, you might want to read that brief article or this slightly more complex one to learn (or refresh your sense of) PMP -- Paris Metro Pricing models to deal with network congestion. You'll also get a sense of why throwing bandwidth at the network will not be sufficient. Here's a great article from 1995... more

U.S. Federal Government Response Too Slow to Friday’s Internet Attack, Warns Cybersecurity Official

"We often refer to the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland that caught on fire over 20 times before we actually did something to introduce the Clean Water Act," says Allan Friedman, the director of cybersecurity initiatives for the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), in conference call on Monday. more

Cybersecurity Standards Competition

The conventional wisdom in the world of legacy standards-making is that monolithic standards produce, if not accelerate, better products and services. Conformance, certification, and associated labelling schemes to implement those standards were believed essential to trust. Although competition law seems now evolving in the other direction, regulatory standards-making bodies themselves have been accorded considerable anticompetitive cartel liability protection. more

How a Resilient Society Defends Cyberspace

Seventy-five years ago today, on May 29th, 1934, Egyptian private radio stations fell silent, as the government shut them down in favor of a state monopoly on broadcast communication. Egyptian radio "hackers" (as we would style them today) had, over the course of about fifteen years, developed a burgeoning network of unofficial radio stations... It couldn't last. After two days of official radio silence, on May 31st, official state-sponsored radio stations (run by the Marconi company under special contract) began transmitting a clean slate of government-sanctioned programming, and the brief era of grass-roots Egyptian radio was over... more

European Airports Still Reeling from Ransomware Attack as Software Fix Nears

European air travel remains disrupted today following a ransomware attack on Friday that crippled automated check-in and boarding systems across several major airports. The culprit appears to be malicious code targeting Muse, a system developed by Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of RTX, which provides critical software to airlines. more