- George Burns
The five radical types: democrats, Manicheans, identitarians, propagandists, and technocrats. We need more of the first and the last. Cass Sunstein explains
William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. Winner of a Pulitzer, this remains one of the essential takes on mid-20th century Soviet history and is highly readable as well.
Schneider on Security: “Some of us — myself included — have proposed lawful government hacking as an alternative to backdoors. A new report from the Center of Internet and Society looks at the security risks of allowing government hacking. They include:
- Disincentive for vulnerability disclosure
- Cultivation of a market for surveillance tools
- Attackers co-opt hacking tools over which governments have lost control
- Attackers learn of vulnerabilities through government use of malware
- Government incentives to push for less-secure software and standards
- Government malware affects innocent users.
Sharpest jello kitchen knife in the world
‘Pussy Riot’s Producer’ In Critical Condition After Suspected Poisoning
Pyotr Verzilov, who has collaborated extensively with the Russian feminist punk collective for years (one member is his partner, another his ex) and took part in the group's protest at the World Cup final, started to feel ill after a court hearing on Tuesday; within a few hours, he became unable to see, then to speak, then to walk. … [Read More]
Nextgov
September
13, 2018
As the 2019
appropriations process wraps up, lawmakers will have one last chance to add
money to the Technology Modernization Fund or effectively cap it at 2018 levels.
Congressional appropriators from the House and Senate met
The Hill
September
13, 2018
Rep. Jacky
Rosen (D-Nev.) on Thursday unveiled legislation to create a Department of Labor
grant program for apprenticeships in cybersecurity.
Nextgov
September
13, 2018
In the long
run, agencies’ heavy reliance on software patching could create more problems
than it solves, according to one tech-savvy lawmaker. And with billions of
internet-connected devices expected to flood government facilities in the years
ahead, he said, the situation is only going to get worse
The Hill
September
13, 2018
The House
Homeland Security Committee on Thursday advanced a pair of bills addressing
cyber vulnerabilities at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Only minor
amendments were offered for both bills, which were passed during what is
expected to be the committee’s final markup of the legislative session. Rep.
John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) introduced an amendment to make technical changes to
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) bill, which would create a
cyber vulnerability policy at DHS.
CyberScoop
September
12, 2018
The State
Department must do more to shore up its cybersecurity posture, according to a
bipartisan group of senators. The department is woefully behind on hitting
various federal cybersecurity benchmarks, and it is weak on basic measures to
protect against phishing, hacks and other cyberattacks, wrote Ron Wyden,
D-Ore., Cory Gardner, R-Colo.
FCW
September
11, 2018
The federal
government is nearing an Oct. 16 deadline to comply with a Department of
Homeland Security directive on email and website security. One U.S. Senator
believes that date should mark the beginning -- not the end -- of the
department's work with the trove of data that the order has produced. Last year,
DHS issued a binding operational directive requiring federal agencies to
implement a series of tools to protect public-facing federal websites and email
from spoofing.
Inside
Cybersecurity
September
10, 2018
A
scaled-down breach-notification bill applying only to the financial industry
could be marked up “imminently” in the House Financial Services Committee, a
panel GOP source said, while stressing that the effort to move a narrow,
sector-specific measure shouldn't be interpreted as a surrender on eventually
passing comprehensive data security and consumer notice legislation.
ADMINISTRATION
CyberScoop
September
13, 2018
A top State
Department official says President Donald Trump’s new executive order to combat
foreign election-meddling serves as a check on the optics of the Helsinki
Summit in July, where Trump questioned whether the Russian government
interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
FCW
The Defense
Department's newest combatant command is nearly a decade old but still doesn't
steer its own acquisitions. That could change in fiscal 2019, however, as U.S.
Cyber Command staffs up its contracting office and seeks a bigger acquisition
budget. "Acquisition authority is limited at the moment.
CyberScoop
September
13, 2018
Another
cybersecurity expert at the FBI is headed for the private sector. Trent Teyema,
the FBI’s section chief for cyber readiness and chief operating officer of the
bureau’s Cyber Division, has been named senior vice president and chief
technology officer for the government-focused wing of Parsons Corporation.
Nextgov
September
13, 2018
Military
combatant commands were inadequately resourcing their cyber missions and not
effectively communicating about cyber requirements as recently as 2014,
according to an investigative report.
SP
September
12, 2018
A federal
judge who's considering whether Georgia should have to switch from electronic
voting machines to paper ballots for the November election called the situation
"a catch-22." Voting integrity groups and individuals sued state and
county election officials, arguing that the touchscreen voting machines Georgia
has used since 2002 are vulnerable to hacking and provide no way to confirm
that votes have been recorded correctly because they don't produce a paper
trail.
Gov Info
Security
September
12, 2018
The Food
and Drug Administration should increase its scrutiny of the cybersecurity of
networked medical devices before they're approved to be marketed, a new
government watchdog agency report says. FDA says it will carry out the report's
recommendations. The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of
Inspector General's report recommends that FDA better integrate the review of
cybersecurity in the agency's processes for premarket assessments of medical
devices.
Nextgov
September 12,
2018
Half of
government and military employees were using easily crackable passwords as of
2012, according to a report released Wednesday. That’s only slightly better
than the 52 percent of the general public that was using passwords that were
far too weak at the time, according to the report from the cybersecurity firm
WatchGuard.
Nextgov
September 10,
2018
As the
government barrels toward an Oct. 1 deadline for contractors to have Kaspersky
Lab software completely scrubbed from their networks, technologists and
acquisition experts worry contractors aren’t prepared. In some cases,
contractors may not even be aware that Kaspersky, a Russian anti-virus
provider, is running on their networks because it came pre-installed with
unrelated software, cyber watchers said
INDUSTRY
Vice
Motherboard
September
14, 2018
In 2016,
Apple’s head of security surprised the attendees of one of the biggest security
conference in the world by announcing a bug bounty program for Apple’s mobile
operating system iOS. .
Ars
Technica
September
14, 2018
In May of
2017, the WannaCry attack—a file-encrypting ransomware knock-off attributed by
the US to North Korea—raised the urgency of patching vulnerabilities in the
Windows operating system that had been exposed by a leak of National Security
Agency exploits. WannaCry leveraged an exploit called EternalBlue, software
that leveraged Windows' Server Message Block (SMB) network file sharing
protocol to move across networks, wreaking havoc as it spread quickly across
affected networks.
Nextgov
September
14, 2018
Attorneys
for Kaspersky Lab faced tough questioning Friday from a three-judge federal
appeals court panel in what could mark the Russian anti-virus company’s last
chance to make a public case against a U.S. governmentwide ban. That December
2017 congressional ban came after months of alarms across government that
Kaspersky software might be used as a spying tool for the Russian government or
that the company might be compelled to collect and turn over U.S. government
information under Russian law.
Gov Info
Security
September
14, 2018
Intel has
had a challenging time lately on the vulnerability front. Computer security
researchers have dug deeply into the chip manufacturer's wares, finding
vulnerabilities such as Meltdown, Spectre and Foreshadow, all of which proved
to be difficult to fix or mitigate.
The
Telegraph
September
13, 2018
Two thirds
of German manufacturers have fallen victim to cyber attacks costing the
industry $50bn, according to IT experts. Small and medium-sized companies
(SMEs), often described as "the backbone of German business", are the
most vulnerable to threats from hackers, according to a survey of cyber
security chiefs by German IT industry body Bitkom.
CyberScoop
September
13, 2018
wo
companies that provide enterprises with privileged access management (PAM)
services are coming together in an acquisition announced Thursday.
Atlanta-based Bomgar is acquiring Phoenix-based BeyondTrust in a deal expected
to close in October, the terms of which the companies did not disclose.
The Wall
Street Journal
September
12, 2018
Two years
before Equifax Inc. stunned the world with the announcement it had been hacked,
the credit-reporting company believed it was the victim of another theft, only
this time at the hands of Chinese spies, according to people familiar with the
matter.
Krebs on
Security
September
12, 2018
The four
major U.S. wireless carriers today detailed a new initiative that may soon let
Web sites eschew passwords and instead authenticate visitors by leveraging data
elements unique to each customer’s phone and mobile subscriber account, such as
location, customer reputation, and physical attributes of the device.
Wired
September
11, 2018
On Friday,
British Airways disclosed a data breach impacting customer information from
roughly 380,000 booking transactions made between August 21 and September 5 of
this year. The company said that names, addresses, email addresses, and
sensitive payment card details were all compromised. Now, researchers from the
threat detection firm RiskIQ have shed new light on how the attackers pulled
off the heist. RiskIQ published details tracking the British Airways hackers'
strategy on Tuesday, also linking the intrusion to a criminal hacking gang that
has been active since 2015.
Wired
September
10, 2018
Tesla has
taken plenty of innovative steps to protect the driving systems of its
kitted-out cars against digital attacks. It's hired top-notch security
engineers, pushed over-the-internet software updates, and added code integrity
checks
INTERNATIONAL
The
Washington Post
September 14,
2018
North Korea
accused the United States on Friday of circulating “preposterous falsehoods”
after Washington charged an alleged hacker for the North Korean government in
connection with major cyberattacks, including a 2014 assault on Sony Pictures
Entertainment.
Gov Info
Security
September
14, 2018
Less than
four months after GDPR enforcement began, Europe has arguably entered - if at
times screaming and stumbling - into the modern data breach notification era.
In the U.K. last week, British Airways warned that it had been hacked and up to
380,000 customers' payment card details stolen.
AP
September
14, 2018
Dutch authorities arrested and expelled two suspected Russian spies
months ago for allegedly trying to hack a Swiss laboratory that conducts
chemical weapons tests, Switzerland’s government confirmed Friday as it
summoned the Russian ambassador to protest an “attempted attack.”
CyberScoop
September 14,
2018
highly-active
hacking group known for targeting Middle Eastern governments is updating its
tools. OilRig, a hacking group that has been linked by researchers to Iran, has
been observed using an updated version of the BONDUPDATER malware to target a
Middle Eastern government in spearphishing attacks, according to new research
from the U.S. cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks.
BBC
September
14, 2018
A security
analysis of cyber-attacks against universities and colleges in the UK has
discovered staff or students could often be responsible, rather than organised
crime or hacking groups. A government-funded agency that provides
cyber-security has examined the timing of 850 attacks in 2017-18.
The
Economist
September
13, 2018
On
September 6th, President Donald Trump tweeted his gratitude to Kim Jong Un for
the North Korean leader’s “unwavering faith” (in Donald Trump). “We will get it
done together!”
Gov Info Security
September
13, 2018
A Romanian
court has ruled that the notorious hacker "Guccifer," who discovered
the existence of Hillary's Clinton's private email server, will be extradited
to the U.S. to serve a 52-month prison sentence after he finishes serving a
seven-year sentence in his home country. Guccifer - a portmanteau of Gucci and
Lucifer - was the hacker handle used by Romanian Marcel Lehel Lazar, 46, a
former taxi driver who has admitted to perpetrating a string of email and
social media account compromises.
CyberScoop
September
12, 2018
Russian
national Peter Levashov pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to controlling one of
the world’s largest-ever botnets, known as Kelihos.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
September
12, 2018
Lego is
normally associated with child's play rather than cyber security, but more than
70 government and private sector hackers are currently bunkered down in
Canberra attacking and defending a plastic brick city.
CyberScoop
September 12,
2018
A Latvian
hacker was sentenced to 33 months in prison on Wednesday after earning over
$150,000 in a “scareware” scheme that infected computers after visiting the
Minneapolis Star Tribune’s website in 2010.
The
Irish Times
September
11, 2018
Insurers in
Ireland do not have adequate data to price cybersecurity insurance, despite it
becoming “as prevalent as all other insurance” products, PwC has said.
The Times
September
8, 2018
Britain may
have to resort to helpful cyberhacking in retaliation against Russia as the
authorities cannot risk an escalation to attacks on the country’s
infrastructure, security experts said.
Ars Technica
September
13, 2018
Cold boot
attacks, used to extract sensitive data such as encryption keys and passwords
from system memory, have been given new blood by researchers from F-Secure.
CyberScoop
September
11, 2018
When it
comes to protecting faith-based organizations from hackers, divine intervention
will only get you so far. Congregations, like any other collection of people,
can benefit from trading threat intelligence to mitigate the spread of malware.
W
