Threat Intelligence

Permanent Denial-of-Service Attacks on the Rise, Incidents Involve Hardware-Damaging Assaults

Also known loosely as "phlashing" in some circles, Permanent Denial-of-Service (PDoS) is an increasing popular form of cyberattack that damages a system so badly that it requires replacement or reinstallation of hardware. more

IRS Reports Hackers Accessed Data of Up to 100,000 People via Financial Aid Site for Students

U.S. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner (IRS) testified before the Senate Finance Committee stating the agency has discovered fraudsters could use someone's personal data to fill out a financial aid application, and the "Data Retrieval Tool" would populate the application with tax information. more

Google to Distrust Symantec-Issued Certificates Amid Misuse

In a post on a developers’ forum, software engineer on the Google Chrome team Ryan Sleevi has announced Google’s plan to start gradually distrust all existing Symantec-issued certificates. more

Cisco Warning Software Used in Hundreds of Its Products Vulnerable to Critical Security Flaw

The security flaw was discovered by the company's own security researchers in WikiLeaks' most recent disclosure of classified information, released last week. more

Google Claims It Fixed the Security Holes the CIA Exploited

WikiLeaks shook the internet again on March 7, 2017, by posting several thousand documents containing information about the tools the CIA allegedly used to hack, among others, Android and iOS devices. These classified files were obtained from the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, although they haven't yet been verified and a CIA official declined to comment on this incident. This isn't the first time that the U.S. government agencies were accused of crossing the line and undermining online security and civil liberties, as it's been only a year since the infamous FBI-Apple encryption dispute. It's like "1984" all over again. more

The Internet as Weapon

One of the most striking and enduring dichotomies in the conceptualization of electronic communication networks is summed up in the phrase "the Internet as weapon." With each passing day, it seems that the strident divergence plays in the press -- the latest being Tim's lament about his "web" vision being somehow perverted. The irony is that the three challenges he identified would have been better met if he had instead pursued a career at the Little Theatre of Geneva and let SGML proceed to be implemented on OSI internets rather than refactoring it as HTML to run on DARPA internets. more

WikiLeaks’ Vault 7: CIA Gives a Free Lesson in Personal Cyber Security

WikiLeaks' newly released Vault 7 trove is a tantalizing study in how one of the world's premiere intelligence agencies hacks devices. Analysts and experts have signaled that this leak appears authentic based on some clues in the content. But while it may ultimately be comparable in size to the Snowden or Manning leaks, it lacks the "wow" factor that made those landmark whistleblowing cases so important. What lessons are to be learned from the leaks, and how should we apply them to our personal digital lives? more

Over a Billion Email Addresses of Major Spam Operation Exposed via Unprotected Backups

A spamming group called River City Media (RCM) has had its database of 1.4 billion records leaked. This was revealed today by MacKeeper Security Researcher, Chris Vickery in cooperation with CSO Online and Spamhaus. more

Into the Gray Zone: Considering Active Defense

Most engineers focus on purely technical mechanisms for defending against various kinds of cyber attacks, including "the old magic bullet," the firewall. The game of cannons and walls is over, however, and the cannons have won; those who depend on walls are in for a shocking future. What is the proper response, then? What defenses are there The reality is that just like in physical warfare, the defenses will take some time to develop and articulate. more

New Cybersecurity Regulations in New York Go Into Effect

Major financial firms operating in New York will face stiff cybersecurity obligations starting Wednesday under a new regulation introduced in the city. more

Security Researchers Announce First SHA-1 Collision, Confirming Fears About Its Vulnerabilities

In a joint announcement today, Dutch research institute CWI and Google revealed that they have broken the SHA-1 internet security standard "in practice". more

Hacked ICANN Data Still Selling on Black Market Years After Breach

"Three years after hackers used a spearphishing attack to successfully gain access to internal data at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the data is still being passed around and sold on black markets for $300, complete with claims that it’s never been leaked before," reports Patrick O'Neill in CyberScoop. more

Interpol’s Michael Moran Receives 2017 M3AAWG Litynski Award

Michael "Mick" Moran, who has helped rescue thousands of child abuse material victims since he started working in the field in 1997, challenged the internet industry to do more to protect innocent children as he received the 2017 M3AAWG Mary Litynski Award. more

Deloitte: DDoS Attacks to Enter Terabit Era in 2017

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks will become larger in scale, harder to mitigate and more frequent, says Deloitte in its annual Global Predictions report. more

Reaction: Do We Really Need a New Internet?

The other day several of us were gathered in a conference room on the 17th floor of the LinkedIn building in San Francisco, looking out of the windows as we discussed some various technical matters. All around us, there were new buildings under construction, with that tall towering crane anchored to the building in several places. We wondered how that crane was built, and considered how precise the building process seemed to be to the complete mess building a network seems to be. more