The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued today its first Guidelines for Smart Grid Cyber Security, which includes high-level security requirements, a framework for assessing risks, an evaluation of privacy issues at personal residences, and additional information for businesses and organizations to use as they craft strategies to protect the modernizing power grid from attacks, malicious code, cascading errors, and other threats. more
A report, released today by McAfee, Inc., titled "Security Takes the Offensive," says that traditionally, security technology companies and computer users have taken a defensive posture, putting the cyber equivalent of body armor on computers, networks and in the cloud. The report's authors say it is now time to avoid enemy strikes altogether by taking a more aggressive stance, aligning forces and involving law enforcement. more
Garth Bruen writes: A report in LegitScript takes a look at Russian rogue Internet pharmacy hacking US government website. "As rogue Internet pharmacy networks become more sophisticated, even US government websites are at risk. Today, we're taking a look at how a rogue Internet pharmacy linked to a criminal network operating out of Russia and Eastern Europe has hacked into a US government website. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US foreign aid agency, utilizes a ".gov" top-level domain, which is assigned to the control of the US government. Domain names ending in .gov are typically administered by the General Services Administration." more
A study conducted by the Verizon Business RISK team in cooperation with the United States Secret Service has found that breaches of electronic records in 2009 involved more insider threats, greater use of social engineering and the continued strong involvement of organized criminal groups. more
J. Nicholas Hoover reporting in InformationWeek: "The White House on Wednesday issued an update of the Obama administration's ongoing cybersecurity work, detailing some of the steps being taken in an effort to secure the nation's networks against cyber attacks and in the process offering some new insight into the administration's future plans. The progress report, issued immediately after a meeting held by White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt with agency secretaries, cybersecurity experts..." more
M86 Security today released it's bi-annual security report for the first half of 2010, highlighting the evolution of obfuscation through combined attacks. From the report: "This threat trend is the latest to emerge as cybercriminals seek new ways to limit the effectiveness of many proactive security controls. Because existing techniques for 'covering their tracks' are becoming less effective, cybercriminals have begun using combined attacks, which are more complex and difficult to detect. By splitting the malicious code between Adobe ActionScript language - built into Adobe flash - and JavaScript components on the webpage, they limit the effectiveness of many of the the proactive security detection mechanisms in place today." more
I just finished reading Richard Clarke and Robert Knake's book Cyberwar. Though the book has flaws, some of them serious, the authors make some important points. They deserve to be taken seriously. I should note that I disagree with some of my friends about whether or not "cyberwar" is a real concept. Earlier, I speculated that perhaps it might be a useful way to conduct disinformation operations, but it need not be so limited. more
Security expert Bruce Schneier in a blog post today writes: "It's about who is in charge of cyber security, and how much control the government will exert over civilian networks. And by beating the drums of war, the military is coming out on top. ... General Keith Alexander, the current commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, hypes it every chance he gets. This isn't just rhetoric of a few over-eager government officials and headline writers; the entire national debate on cyberwar is plagued with exaggerations and hyperbole." more
There is a classic scene in the movie, "Jaws," when Roy Scheider gets a look at the size of the shark circling his fishing vessel and says, "We're going to need a bigger boat." The same case can be made for CIOs dealing today with application security. Hackers from all over the world are circling business and government like great whites looking for vulnerabilities in Internet-facing applications. The growth of applications is great for doing business but they have become chum in the water for predators. more
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post posing the question of whether or not more government regulation is required in order to secure the Internet. On the one hand, anonymity is viewed in the west as a forum for freedom of speech. The anonymity of the Internet allows dissidents to speak up against unpopular governments. However, the anonymity afforded by the Internet is not so much by design as it is byproduct of its original designers not seeing how widespread it would eventually become. more
Those who have been involved in the ICANN process as long as I have naturally become accustomed to ICANN controversies at all levels. But the latest is a "wrong" of international ramifications. The four (4) versions of the Guidebook for the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) have been hundreds of pages long with a lot of The Good, The Bad, and to some, The Ugly. However, something new has appeared in the 4th and latest version called DAG4 can be called: "The Disturbing". more
BP and the Oil Industry are taking a lot of heat these days - much of it rightly so. Moving beyond the drama and evaluating the overall response of BP and others reinforces much of what is taught in incident response training and preparation... by showing the outcomes when one does not respond well. This is probably the most important incident that the responders involved will deal with in their professional lives. For those of us working to protect Internet Infrastructure and resources there are useful lessons as we consider what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and their response effort. more
Introduced by ranking Senate members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, S.3480 is intended to create an Office of Cyber Policy in the executive branch of the government, confirmed by the Senate and ultimately reporting to the president. Senators Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Tom Carper introduced the bill publicly on June 10, and a critical part of the bill is that critical infrastructure networks such as electricity grids, financial systems and telecommunications networks need to cooperate with the Office of Cyber Policy. more
In a report released today by The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), cyber attacks are among the top high-impact risks -- "with potential to significantly affect the reliability of the North American bulk power system." Certain protections and mitigations are already in place to address these risks, and this study has been released to help public utility commissions, and the federal government to further prepare for these potential risks. more
In case you missed it, last Thursday, May 6, we saw a remarkable day on the stock markets. The day started off with some selling which went down neat and orderly. Suddenly, around 2:40 pm eastern time, the market started selling off rapidly taking huge hits in in the span of 30 minutes. It was an incredible ride and at one point, the Dow Jones average was off 1000 points for the day, the largest drop in history (though not the largest percentage drop). It was kind of like October of 1987. more
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