Threat Intelligence

The Real Face of Cyberwar?

Anyone who reads the papers sees stories -- or hype -- about cyberwarfare. Can it happen? Has it already happened, in Estonia or Georgia? There has even been a Rand Corporation study on cyberwarfare and cyberdeterrence. I wonder, though, if real cyberwarfare might be more subtle -- perhaps a "cyber cold war"? more

Online Drug Traffic and Registrar Policy

Last month I published an article called "What's Driving Spam and Domain Fraud? Illicit Drug Traffic" which explained how the many of the troublesome online crime issues are related to the online sale of narcotics and dodgy pharmaceuticals. Since this article was published we have witnessed one of the largest international law enforcement efforts against online drug traffic (Operation Pangea II)... more

Was the ClimateGate Hacker Justified? Join the Debate!

A few days ago a story broke where someone hacked into a global warming research institute and stole all emails from the past 10 years, proving a conspiracy. In the vast amount of emails stolen, some emails were also found with clear-cut lies, showing how some scientists conspired to deceive in scientific research about data that did not fit their agenda of proving global warming. I am opening the subject for debate... more

Announcement: Critical Internet Infrastructure WG is Now Open to Public Participation

ISOTF Critical Internet Infrastructure WG is now open to public participation. The group holds top experts on internet technology, critical infrastructure, and internet governance, from around the globe. Together, we discuss definitions, problems, challenges and solutions in securing and assuring the reliability of the global internet infrastructure, which is critical infrastructure for a growing number of nations, corporations and indeed, individuals -- world wide. more

China: Is It Our Cyber Defense Red Herring?

There are thousands of articles perpetuating the claim that China is out to get us on the Internet. And yet, all these discussions are begging the question, is it China attacking? Also, are they even the "usual suspects"?
While I can point to real facts of China making active use of information warfare, cyber warfare, or whatever else you choose to call it (such as the release of 0 days being patched by Microsoft and originally reported by the Taiwanese government, search Microsoft's site), I can also point to Germany (intelligence Trojan horse), the US (The Farewell Dossier) and other countries such as North Korea (without much detail, so questioned)... more

How Do You Do Secure Bank Transactions on the Internet?

Banks love it when their customers do their transactions on line, since it is so much cheaper than when they use a bank-provided ATM, a phone call center, or, perish forbid, a live human teller. Customers like it too, since bank web sites are usually open 24/7, there's no line and no need to find a parking place. Unfortunately, crooks like on line banking too, since it offers the possibility of stealing lots of money. How can banks make their on line transactions more secure? more

The Story of Conficker and the Industry Response

On November 2, 2009, Microsoft released its seventh edition of the Security and Intelligence Report (SIR). The SIR provides an in-depth perspective on the changing threat landscape including software vulnerability disclosures and exploits, malicious software (malware), and potentially unwanted software. Using data derived from hundreds of millions of Windows computers, and some of the busiest online services on the Internet, this report also provides a detailed analysis of the threat landscape and the changing face of threats and countermeasures and includes updated data on privacy and breach notifications. The following is an excerpt from the SIR, pp 29-32, about the Conficker worm and the industry response that showed an incredible amount of collaboration across vendors. more

The Role of a Cybersecurity Czar

For years now, there have been calls for a high-level cybersecurity official, preferably reporting directly to the president. This has never happened. Indeed, there is a lot of unhappiness in some circles that President Obama has not appointed anyone as "czar" (or czarina), despite the early fanfare about the 60-day cybersecurity review. There are many reasons why nothing has happened... more

Compromised Accounts - Are Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail Seeing an Increase in Spam Sent Out?

Last week, I commented on the the Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo username and password leak. The question we now ask is whether or not we are seeing an increased amount of spam from those services. On another blog, they were commenting that various experts were claiming that this is the case. more

Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail Compromised - But How?

One of the bigger news stories is that of 10,000 usernames and passwords of Hotmail users were posted this past week, victims of a phishing scam... It seems unlikely to me that this would be a hack where someone would break into Hotmail's servers and access the account information that way. It is much more likely that the spammers got the information by social engineering. Why is this more likely? For one, they'd have to get past all of the firewalls and security measures that Microsoft/Hotmail have to keep intruders out. more