The US House Passes Cybersecurity Bill

US house today approved the Cybersecurity Act that reauthorizes several National Science Foundation cybersecurity programs. Janie Lorber of the New York Times reports: "The House today overwhelmingly passed a bill aimed at building up the United States’ cybersecurity army and expertise, amid growing alarm over the country’s vulnerability online. The bill, which passed 422-5, requires the Obama administration to conduct an agency-by-agency assessment of cybersecurity workforce skills and establishes a scholarship program for undergraduate and graduate students who agree to work as cybersecurity specialists for the government after graduation."
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Google, NSA Join Forces in the Effort to Build Better Cyberattack Defense System

Google and NSA, a leading electronic surveillance organization, are said to be entering a partnership where the two organizations could share critical data without violating Google's policies or other privacy laws, according to sources. Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reports: "Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack." more»

Despite China's Denial, US Says It Will Aggressively Press the Cyber Attack Issue

The denial was issued as the US administration continues to demand that Beijing provides an official "explanation" for the attacks which White House officials said had "troubled" the President Barack Obama."Any accusation that the Chinese government participated in cyber attacks, either in an explicit or indirect way, is groundless and aims to discredit China," said a spokesman for China's ministry of industry and information technology. more»

China's CNCERT Response to Google

Gadi Evron writes: "China responds to Google's accusations on its CNCERT web site, here. Johannes Ullrich just brought this to my attention on Facebook. In short, CNCERT wrote that China is the biggest victim of cyber attacks, and that Google lacks evidence to link the recent attacks to China as the perpetrator. I am certain more details and analysis will become available soon." more»

Reality Check on Google-China Saga

Reporting over at Dark Reading, Gadi Evron writes: "We've all heard about the Chinese attacks against Google by now. We've heard of Google's moral standing, how corporations now impact international relations, and how censorship is bad and freedom is good. However, some important questions lost in the fog of war need to be asked. Nobody knows for sure that it was China who attacked Google and the other affected corporations, and if they do, they are not saying so publicly. In fact, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt told Newsweek that he has no clear evidence, but invites us to draw our own conclusions." more»

Obama Pressured to Put Cyber Security Back on Top of the Agenda

Peter Warren reporting at the Guradian: "For the past month or so a curious game has been going on in the world of rumour and uncertainty that passes for the intelligence community. At the heart of it is an attempt to force the US president, Barack Obama, to put cyber security back to the top of his agenda and to usher in increased monitoring of the internet. Despite an initial promise of action and a demand for a report on the risks to the US technology infrastructure to be on his desk in 60 days, little in policy terms has been heard since." more»

Information Warfare Publicly Admitted, No Longer Just a Tool for Espionage

Gadi Evron reporting today on Dark Reading: "A National Journal Magazine article called "The Cyberwar Plan" has been making waves the last few days in our circles -- it's about how cell phone and computer attacks were used against Iraqi insurgents by the National Security Agency (NSA). Its significance is far more than just what's on the surface, however. The article describes several issues and that in my opinion confuses what matters..." more»

60 Minutes Investigates Cybersecurity and the Reality of Sabotaging Critical Infrastructure

CBS's 60 Minutes aired a special report last night investigating how hackers can get into the computer systems that run crucial elements of the world's infrastructure, such as the power grids, water works or even a nation's military arsenal. From the report: "At the Sandia National Laboratories, Department of Energy security specialists like John Mulder try to hack into computer systems of power and water companies, and other sensitive targets in order to figure out the best way to sabotage them. It's all done with the companies' permission in order to identify vulnerabilities. In one test, they simulated how they could have destroyed an oil refinery by sending out code that caused a crucial component to overheat." more»

US Opens Unified Cyber Security Command Centre

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today opened the new National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) — a 24-hour, DHS-led coordinated watch and warning center that will improve national efforts to address threats and incidents affecting the nation's critical information technology and cyber infrastructure. more»

China a Decade Into Sweeping Cyber Warfare and Espionage Capabilities

According to a report released today by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, China is well into a "military modernization program that has fundamentally transformed its ability to fight high tech wars." The report further indicates that if Chinese operators are in anyway responsible for even some of the current exploitation efforts targeting US Government and commercial networks, "then they may have already demonstrated that they possess a mature and operationally proficient CNO [computer network operations] capability." more»

ITU Putting Global Cyber Security on Top of Its Agenda

Lisa Schlein of the Voice of America reports: "A new system for tackling the growing number of Global Cyber Attacks has been unveiled at ITU Telecom World 2009, a mammoth exhibition, which showcases the latest advances in ICT or information and communications technology. The International Telecommunications Union, which is sponsoring the event, has put global cyber security at the heart of its agenda. 'As you well know, the next world war could happen in the cyber space and that would be a catastrophe,' said ITU secretary-general, Hamdoun Toure." more»

14 ISPs in Netherlands Serving 98% of Consumers Form Anti-Botnet Treaty

Last month 14 ISPs in Netherlands serving 98 percent of the consumer market initiated a joint effort to fight against malware-infected computers and botnets. The effort includes: Exchange of information within the coalition; Quarantine of infected computers; and notification of end-users by their ISP. Gadi Evron over at Dark Reading reports: "In recent years, bot-infected computers have been a growing problem for end-user ISPs as more and more resources are being wasted, and not paid for. And the growing global threat of DDoS attacks and other security concerns have shown ISPs that in order to get help in case of DDoS attack, they need to be a more friendly and reputable service themselves." more»

DHS Cybersecurity Chief: We Want to Build Cybersecurity Into DNA of Infrastructure

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity top official Phil Reitinger was recently interviewed by the InformationWeek stating: "Cybersecurity always has been and always will be a distributed effort. If people want to say, well, there's a single locus of cybersecurity and anything and everything will be handled from one point, I say, dream on. We want to build cybersecurity into the DNA of the infrastructure, into the DNA of the businesses, into the DNA of all the government entities." more»

Dozens of US House of Representatives Websites Hacked

US House officials have confirmed hackers breaching several websites belonging to House of Representatives members in the past week. Portions of the websites were replaced by digital graffiti which began earlier this month, according to zone-h. Brian Krebs of the Washington Post reports: "Rep. Spencer Bachus has sent a letter to the House's chief administrative officer, requesting more information about the attacks. Bachus cites information provided to him by Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Warner suggested that the break-ins at the House sites were caused not by password guessing [as reported initially], but by 'SQL injection,' an attack that exploits security weaknesses in Web server configurations." more»

Twitter Taken Down by DDoS Attack, Company Confirms

The Twitter micro-blogging service was knocked offline this morning for several hours as a result of a denial of service attack (DDoS). Twitter has confirmed and reported the attack in a post on its official blog earlier today: "We are defending against this [DDos] attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate." The company later reported that the service as been resumed but they are still continuing to defend against and recover from this attack. No further updates have been provided yet. more»