September 20, 2012
There may be no silver bullet to detect or prevent insider threats, but there are sophisticated technological solutions that can help.
Online attacks this week by the hacktivist group protested treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Russian band Pussy Riot. The targeted websites appear to again be functioning normally.
The whistleblower site, in the midst of publishing revelatory emails belonging to intelligence company Stratfor, has signed up with DDoS mitigation service CloudFlare.
The attacks are arriving as the whistleblower site continues publishing new information related to Stratfor, the global affairs firm that hacker collective Anonymous infiltrated late last year to steal roughly five million emails.
Anonymous, WikiLeaks, DNSChanger, Stratfor, global cyber crime ring...and other breaking news.
Anonymous has taken credit for hacking computer systems to yield 2.4 million emails on Syrian politicians, ministries, and government-connected companies.
May 01, 2012
The operating environment itself must be altered, says Verdasys' Dan Geer.
The order follows a seven-month, government-wide review, prompted by the leak of classified U.S. documents by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.
October 04, 2011
The answer is "no," but that doesn't mean security professionals are hopeless in defending their networks against politically minded intruders. Not to mention, you have more in common with them than you might think.
Former HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr has withdrawn from a scheduled appearance at the DEFCON conference after being threatened with legal action, according to a report.
A top Sony executive said in a letter Wednesday to a Congressional subcommittee investigating the PlayStation Network breach that evidence shows Anonymous was responsible.
April 01, 2011
Do revelations stemming from the Anonymous hack that HBGary Federal was engaged in shady, potentially illegal, activities cast the security industry as a whole in a negative light?
Disgraced HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr has resigned, according to a report Monday in Threatpost. Barr's troubles began early last month when he told the Financial Times that he was prepared to reveal information about the Anonymous hacking group at a security conference in San Francisco the following week. Anonymous responded by hacking into security firms HBGary and HBGary Federal (whose site is currently offline) and publishing tens of thousands of emails belonging to its executives. The emails revealed some troubling things, including plans by HBGary Federal and two other firms to silence WikiLeaks supporters, including Salon.com journalist Glenn Greenwald. Barr said he was stepping down "to focus on taking care of my family and rebuilding my reputation." - DK
March 01, 2011
Dust off your company's risk assessment process and make sure it is up to date because this is where your approach to defending against a WikiLeaks type of threat is going to start.
Despite its original intentions, Anonymous has defaced the website of the hate-spewing Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.
The hacking collective known as Anonymous apparently does not plan to next target the hate-mongering Westboro Baptist Church.
Security professionals fretting a WikiLeaks-style disclosure at their organization should be much less concerned with Julian Assange's whistleblower site and more worried about copycat sites already on the rise, said Kevin Poulsen, senior editor at Wired.com.
February 13, 2011
When guarding against data breaches, organizations must consider the security postures of their closest partners, such as law firms and cloud providers.
Most security companies, I like to believe, are noble and ethical enterprises. Yes they make good money out of the fact that the online world is a dark, scary place, but they also provide an invaluable service: protecting innocent individuals and organizations from the dangers that lurk in the shadows.
HBGary has "completely unplugged from the internet" as the security firm moves into investigatory and damage control mode following the infiltration of its network by the hacker group Anonymous.
After speaking last night with a journalist who is covering the anti-government protests in Egypt, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow joked that she had been tempted to stop everything during the interview to tweet what the reporter had been telling her.
More members of the Anonymous gang have been charged for their role in DDoS attacks against anti-WikiLeaks websites.
Federal departments and agencies that handle classified data are required by Jan. 28 to complete an assessment of the safety measures they have in place to protect national security information, an effort prompted by the leak of confidential U.S. documents by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.
Advocacy groups and independent media face a variety of damaging cyberattacks, and there is little they can do to stop them, a new study from Harvard University concludes.
Could a cargo ship's thwarted piracy reveal more than bullet holes and bloodstains? A theoretical view of why compromised shipping cargo information could make pirates and hijackers rich.
Was the delay of the Stuxnet worm cleanup the true motive behind the assassination of Iranian cyberwarfare and nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari? Was Wikileaks content responsible for the timing of the attack? Analysis follows.
