Gary McGraw on Cyber War, Cyber FUD and Rhetoric

Dennis Fisher talks with Gary McGraw of Cigital about the current climate of FUD and rhetoric surrounding cyber war and cyber espionage, the state of software security in the government and military and the potential need for a software Cash for Clunkers program. Show notes: Cyberwarmongering and...

Chinese National Stole Ford Secrets Worth More Than $50 Million

A ten year veteran of the U.S. automaker Ford Motor Company pleaded guilty in federal court on November 17 to charges that he stole company secrets, including design documents, worth more than $50 million and sharing them with his new employer: the Chinese division of a U.S. rival of Ford’s. Xian...

Richard Clarke Highlights Overlapping Techniques in Cyber Crime, Espionage, and Warfare

The difference between cyber crime, cyber espionage, and cyber war is often just a matter of a few keystrokes, as they use the same techniques. Richard Clarke, chairman of Good Harbor Consulting, highlighted this during his keynote at the RSA Europe 2010 conference in London. Cyber Crime Cyber...

After Twitter Hack, NY Times Debates Social Network Security

In the wake of a high profile though harmless cross site scripting attack launched from Twitter.com’s Web site, the New York Times is sponsoring a debate about the security of online social networks that offers some harsh criticism of the micro blogging site. The Gray Lady pulled together top nam...

Talk on Chinese Cyber Army Pulled From Black Hat

A talk on China’s state-sponsored offensive security efforts scheduled for the Black Hat conference later this month has been pulled from the conference after concerns were raised by some people within the Chinese and Taiwanese government about the talk’s content. The presentation was to be...

Spyware Botnet 'GhostNet' Uses The Cloud

Espionage network GhostNet, first identified about a year ago, is much larger and more sophisticated than previously assumed according to a study entitled “Shadows in the Cloud”, by the Munk Centre for International Studies, the Information Warfare Monitor, the SecDev Group and the Shadowserver...

Google to Enlist NSA to Help Ward Off Cyberattacks

The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity. Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack...

Botnets: Advanced Spy Tools for Hackers

Botnets give the common hacker espionage tools formerly reserved for nation states. Brian Krebs interviews Roland Dobbins on the “democratization of espionage.” Read the full article. CSOonline...

Taking a Page From Singapore's Cybersecurity Playbook

We could all learn a thing or two about developing an effective cyber security strategy from the government of Singapore. I was recently in Singapore to do a keynote for Singapore GovWare on the Changing State of the Endpoint and, while I was out there, I witnessed something interesting the...

A cynic's take on cyber czars and 60-day reports

On July 17, 2008, then Senator Barack Obama held a town hall meeting on national security at Purdue University. He and his panel covered issues of nuclear, biological and cyber security. I blogged about the event here and here. As part of his remarks at the event, Senator Obama stated: Every...

Attack of the mini-botnets

From DarkReading.com Kelly Jackson Higgins Big-name botnets like Kraken/Bobax, Srizbi, Rustock, the former Storm — and even the possible botnet-in-waiting, Conficker — have gained plenty of notoriety, but it’s the smaller and less conspicuous ones you can’t see that are doing the most damage...

GhostNet shows extent of online spying

As a result of some tremendous work done by researchers at the University of Toronto, we now know that there is an enormous network of compromised machines in more than 100 countries around the world, many of them in government agencies, embassies and other sensitive locations. The network has it...

Cisco Online Help System Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability

Multiple Cisco products contain a vulnerability in the Online Help System that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct cross-site scripting attacks. This vulnerability exists because the search feature of the web-based Online Help System interface fails to sufficiently filter...