security

‘Brilliant’ Snowden Digitally Impersonated NSA Officials

"The 30-year-old's role as a 'system administrator' meant that he was able to access NSAnet, the agency’s intranet, using those user profiles and without leaving any signature. An official told NBC that the NSA identified several instances in which the elite NSA-trained hacker impersonated officials, and that the spy agency's forensic investigation is 'trying to figure out which higher level officials Snowden impersonated online to access the most sensitive documents.' Last week Michael Isikoff, Cole, and Esposito reported that the NSA is 'overwhelmed' - does not know the full extent of the tens of thousands of documents the former NSA contractor took from its system." Continue reading →

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Bomb Syria, Get Cyber Attacked

"The U.S. used to parade around the world, and life would go on as usual back home. But American military muscle isn’t the be all and end all anymore. Land, sea, air and space superiority are so 20th century. Cyberstrike capabilities have leveled the battlefield. And the scrappy countries are holding more bargaining chips. 'One of the risks is that you’ve got Iran talking to Russia,' says James Lewis, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'You have Iran talking to North Korea; you’ve got the Syrians talking to Iran.' The Pentagons realize the catastrophic damage that cyberattacks pose. And they want to be able to cause that damage just as much as they want to prevent it here at home." Continue reading →

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Following the Bitcoin trail

"Before the paranoid start dumping their Bitcoins, Ms Meiklejohn says that changes could be made to reduce the trail that her group followed. Mixing services, for instance, can take money from one party and return it using entirely an new key. 'Those kinds of services would completely thwart our kind of analysis', she says. But caveat emptor: in the team’s testing of four mixing services, one stole their money and another returned the same key. She says the trust required and volume necessary for mixing simply doesn’t yet exist. The fundamental problem is that 'right now there are not enough ways to buy and sell Bitcoins,' which means that it is difficult to take advantage of the underlying protocol’s anonymity." Continue reading →

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Who Built the Syrian Electronic Army?

"A hacking group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has been getting an unusual amount of press lately, most recently after hijacking the Web sites of The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others. But surprisingly little light has been shed on the individuals behind these headline-grabbing attacks. Beginning today, I’ll be taking a closer look at this organization, starting with one of the group’s core architects." Continue reading →

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NSA’s Prism Could Cost Global IT Service Market $180 Billion

"James Staten, a Forrester analyst who follows IT services, argued in a blog post Wednesday that financial losses could prove substantially higher when other market segments are considered. In calculating his higher estimate, Mr. Staten said that in addition to the $35 billion estimated by the ITIF, vendors of hosting and outsourcing services – which offer many of the same services as cloud companies, but use different processes and revenue models — could suffer an additional $100 billion in lost business. Moreover, non-U.S. cloud service providers could lose $35 billion worth of business from international customers, as awareness grows of the surveillance activities of other governments." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA’s Prism Could Cost Global IT Service Market $180 Billion

Banker Groups Sue Treasury, IRS Over Account Reporting Rule or (DATCA)

"Two banker groups sued the U.S. challenging rules that require financial institutions to report information on accounts held by nonresident aliens that may be shared with 72 foreign governments. The Texas Bankers Association and the Florida Bankers Association, in a lawsuit filed today against the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service in federal court in Washington, said the rules are discouraging investment in the U.S. by nonresidents who fear their information may be shared with the governments of countries including Egypt, Pakistan and Venezuela." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBanker Groups Sue Treasury, IRS Over Account Reporting Rule or (DATCA)

Researcher: Facebook spammers make $200 million just posting links

"Spammers posting links on Facebook fan pages to send people to third-party scam sites are earning $200m every year, according to calculations by a team of Italian security researchers who have investigated hundreds of thousands of posts on the social network. Trying to catch and get rid of the spammers is a growing problem for Facebook. The revenue that the spammers do not form part of Facebook’s revenue, but instead piggyback on the success of the social network, which now has more than a billion users worldwide. In April, the Italian team uncovered the multimillion-pound business of selling fake Twitter followers, estimating then that as many as 20m were created by spammers." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingResearcher: Facebook spammers make $200 million just posting links

Bitcoin offers privacy—as long as you don’t cash out or spend it

"Using special algorithms, the researchers were able to associate large numbers of seemingly anonymous bitcoins addresses with certain major services such as exchanges and payment processors, said Sarah Meiklejohn, a doctoral candidate in computer science at UC San Diego, who assisted in the research. For example, they linked more than 500,000 Bitcoin addresses with Mt. Gox, a popular exchange in Japan where users buy and sell bitcoins. 'We saw a lot of people deposit into Silk Road directly from their Mt. Gox address,' Meiklejohn said. In those cases, law enforcement would have minimal work to obtain the name of a user if they presented a legal order to Mt. Gox." Continue reading →

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American anti-virus mogul McAfee warns Canadians about government spying

"As an anti-virus software tycoon at the head of McAfee Security, he says his early clients ranged from the CIA to the American navy and air force. 'The first six years of McAfee, 90 per cent of our income came from the government. The First Gulf War I donated $40 million worth of software to the U.S. Army,' he says. McAfee said intelligence officials were worried that encryption technology would get out of the U.S. and into the wrong hands. McAfee also says the growth of electronic currencies like Bitcoin is unstoppable, despite efforts by governments to curb their use. 'It will be everywhere and the world will have to readjust. World governments will have to readjust.'" Continue reading →

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Facebook to pay 614,000 users $15 each over privacy concerns

"A lawsuit that accused Facebook of misappropriating users’ images ended with a settlement on Monday. The agreement states that the social media site has to pay approximately 614,000 Facebook users $15 each for using their information for advertising purposes. While approximately 150 million Facebook users’ images and likenesses were allegedly used to promote products and services through the Sponsored Stories program, only users who entered a claim form by May 2, 2013, were eligible to receive settlement funds. As part of the settlement, Facebook will give users greater information about and control over how they are featured in the Sponsored Stories." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFacebook to pay 614,000 users $15 each over privacy concerns