cybersecurity

Conficker infected critical hospital equipment, expert says

The Conficker worm infected several hundred machines and critical medical equipment in an undisclosed number of U.S. hospitals recently, a security expert said on Thursday in a panel at the RSA security conference. "It was not widespread, but it raises the awareness of what we would do if there were millions" of computers infected at hospitals or in critical infrastructure locations, Marcus Sachs told CNET News after the session. Sachs is the director of the SANS Internet Storm Center and a former White House cybersecurity official. It is unclear how the devices, which control things like heart monitors and MRI machines, and the PCs got infected, he said. The computers are older machines running Windows NT and Windows 2000 in a local area network that was not supposed to have access to the Interne ›
CyberWAR

U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses

When American forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a trap, they hacked into one of the group’s computers and altered information that drove them into American gun sights. When President George W. Bush ordered new ways to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb last year, he approved a plan for an experimental covert program — its results still ›
CyberSECURITY

U.S. Needs to Clarify Cyberwar Plans, Panel Says

The United States has no clear military policy about how the nation might respond to a cyberattack on its communications, financial or power networks, a panel of scientists and policy advisers warned Wednesday, and the country needs to clarify both its offensive capabilities and how it would respond to such attacks. (NY Times) ›
CyberTHREATS

Cyber 'threat' to London Olympics

The Olympic Games in London could suffer a severe "cyber attack" unless urgent action is taken, according to former home secretary David Blunkett. He said terrorists could hack into computer and communications systems causing a "complete meltdown". The Labour MP said such an attack would be "devastating" but systems existed to block it. He is urging a co- ›
CyberTHREATS

Hackers: the China Syndrome

For years, the U.S. intelligence community worried that China’s government was attacking our cyber-infrastructure. Now one man has discovered it’s worse: It’s hundreds of thousands of everyday civilians. And they’ve only just begun. (PopSci) ›
CyberSECURITY

NSA Chief: 'We Do Not Want to Run Cyber Security'

NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, speaking at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco, told the audience of security professionals on Tuesday that the NSA does "not want to run cyber security for the United States government." Aiming to dispel news reports -- and counter previous intelligence agency statements -- that the National Security Agency ›
CyberTHREATS

Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project

Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project -- the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever -- according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks. Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case ›
CyberSECURITY

American hackers called upon to help U.S. to fight overseas hackers

General Dynamics Information Technology has announced last month that Homeland Security Department was seeking to hire people, who understand hackers' tools and tactics and are able to analyze Internet traffic and identify vulnerabilities in the federal systems. It is also known that Pentagon plans to increase the ›
CyberSECURITY

Control of Cybersecurity Becomes Divisive Issue

The National Security Agency has been campaigning to lead the government’s rapidly growing cybersecurity programs, raising privacy and civil liberties concerns among some officials who fear that the move could give the spy agency too much control over government computer networks. (NY Times) ›
CyberSECURITY

FBI Spyware Has Been Snaring Extortionists and Hackers for Years

A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, newly declassified documents show. As first reported by Wired.com, the software, called a "computer and internet protocol address verifier ›
CyberSECURITY

Oracle Delivers Major Security Patch Update

Oracle released 43 security fixes on Tuesday for a range of applications, including its flagship database, Oracle Application Server, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise and WebLogic Server. Sixteen of the patches are for various database versions. The most severe vulnerability, which affects versions 9.2.0.8 and 9.2.0.8DV, "can potentially allow an att ›
CyberSECURITY

Microsoft patches 23 security flaws

On Tuesday, Microsoft issued eight security updates which are promised to fix 23 security vulnerabilities, six of which were targeted by exploit code, in its Windows Operating Systems and other Microsoft Software. The patch covers security updates for Wordpad and Office converters, corrects a denial of service threat in Forefront, delivers a cumulative security patch for ›
CyberTHREATS

Organized crime caused big data breach spike, says Verizon

A new study from Verizon Business claims that organized crime is responsible for a large increase in the number of breached corporate electronic records, which totaled roughly 285 million last year. According to the study, which Verizon Business compiled using data from the 90 confirmed corporate network breaches it recorded last year, roughly 93% of all re ›