Hopkins research lab reports cyber attack

The Web site for Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, which works closely with the military and NASA on research projects, was hit with a cyber attack that officials discovered Sunday and which led them to take down the site until they analyze their computer systems, a spokesman confirmed Tuesday. Officials at APL, which is based in Laurel, discovered "penetration from an unwanted source" on its external Web site over the weekend, prompting them to take the site offline, according to Helen Worth, a spokesman. Worth said the Web site had been victimized in the past by smaller attacks, but this recent one was the most significant incident to date. (Baltimore Sun) ›

Cyber attacks grow on SKorea military networks

South Korea's military computer networks are under ever-growing cyber attack with 95,000 cases reported daily on average, officials said. The Defence Security Command said in a report to a security forum that every day the military counters an average of 10,450 hacking attempts and 81,700 computer virus infections in addition to other cases. (AFP) ›

International Phone Hacking Ring Busted; Stole $55 Million Worth of Calls

Authorities in several countries have helped bust an international phone hacking ring that cracked into thousands of corporate phone networks in the U.S. and elsewhere in order to route calls through the networks at the expense of the hacked companies. Three foreign nationals were indicted in the U.S., according ›

Feds Shutter ‘Black Hat’ ISP

For the first time, the Federal Trade Commission is shuttering an internet service provider it alleges, “recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of illegal, malicious and harmful electronic content” such as botnets and child porn. The company, doing business as 3fn.net and APS Telecom, “actively recruited” to its hosting service th ›

Colleges give themselves C+ for network security

Most (84%) of higher-education IT professionals queried say their networks are more secure today than five years ago but overall those who answered still score the security of their networks an average of 3.7 out of 5 - roughly a C+. Based on results of the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education (ACUTA) surve ›

BlackBerry maker warns on security vulnerability

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd has issued a security patch for the popular device, whose users include U.S. President Barack Obama, warning that it is vulnerable to attacks by hackers. Research in Motion issued the security warning last week in a bulletin on its web site, but officials could not be reached to comment on details of the patch. (reute ›

Hacker Threatens to Make Virginians' Personal Info Public

More than a half million Virginians received the unsettling news that their personal and medical information may have been hacked. The Virginia Department of Health Professions is contacting 530,000 people whose prescription records, including Social Security numbers, may have been accessed by hackers. (NBC) ›

Report: Cybercime Riches Are Hard To Come By

Turns out the profitability of cybercrime may have been greatly exaggerated. According to a new report by two researchers for Microsoft's research organization, cybercrime doesn't equal easy money after all, despite findings to the contrary. In their report, titled "Nobody Sells Gold for the Price of Silver: Dishonesty, Uncertainty and the Underground Econo ›

Is A Security Auditor Liable If There's A Security Breach?

Wired is discussing the suddenly relevant legal question of whether or not a security auditor should be held liable if it claims a company's data is secure, and then there's a data leak. The specific lawsuit in the spotlight right now involves Savvis -- who had audited the security of CardSystems' computer systems and determined that the company "had impleme ›