Hackers, Journalists, Cyberattacks

Watch out, journalists: Hackers are after you - CNET: ".... Speaking on Friday at the Black Hat hackers conference in Singapore, Google security engineers Shane Huntley and Morgan Marquis-Boire reported that 21 of the top-25 news organizations in the world have been targeted by hackers. Those hackers, the researchers told Reuters, are likely sponsored by foreign governments seeking information. State-sponsored hacking has taken on a life of its own over the last several years. Several countries around the world, including the US, China, and Russia, are believed to be engaging in hacking to gain information. It's no surprise that some state-sponsored hackers have broadened their scope to journalists, especially given the information many top journalists have on companies and government officials. Huntley and Marquis-Boire warned that, while the tech industry is coming to grips with online security requirements, many journalists and news organizations are just now becoming aware of the threats...."

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Huawei, NSA, China, cyberattacks

Huawei on NSA: If foreign spies attacked a US firm, there’d be “outrage” | Ars Technica: "Chinese tech company still trying to track down NSA infiltration."

Of course, foreign countries have attacked US companies, including China's "Operation Aurora" waged against Google and other US firms in 2009, and such attacks continue today.

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Your Cyberincident-response Plan?

How good is your cyberincident-response plan? | McKinsey & Company: "Many organizations must face a troubling fact: defending their digital perimeter is not enough. They should assume that successful cyberattacks will occur—and develop an effective plan to mitigate the impact...That’s why it’s not enough to focus, as many enterprises do, on defending the digital perimeter with cybertechnologies such as intrusion detection and data-loss prevention. When determined adversaries such as hacktivists and organized criminal syndicates set their minds on finding a way inside, every organization with valuable digitized information is at risk of having its perimeter breached and its critical assets compromised...." (read more at link above)

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Cyberattacks Against US Corporations Rise

Officials said the aim in a new wave of attacks was not espionage but sabotage, and that the source seemed to be in the Middle East. (source infra)

Cyberattacks on Rise Against U.S. Corporations - NYTimes.com: "A new wave of cyberattacks is striking American corporations, prompting warnings from federal officials, including a vague one issued last week by the Department of Homeland Security. This time, officials say, the attackers’ aim is not espionage but sabotage, and the source seems to be somewhere in the Middle East. The targets have primarily been energy companies, and the attacks appeared to be probes, looking for ways to seize control of their processing systems. The attacks are continuing, officials said. . . ." (read more at link above)


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China’s Cyberattacks — a policy discussion

China’s Cyberattacks — At What Cost? | ChinaFile: " . . . if U.S. policy is in part to advocate for human rights in China by enabling dissidents to communicate and subvert Chinese censorship--i.e., to do something to protect the very sorts of people who the Chinese hackers appear to have been looking for--then we have very little interest in international rules to restrict hacking. Presumably you don't hear about U.S. hacking in China because the National Security Agency’s tradecraft is a lot more solid (and it's lost in the noise of the tremendous insecurity and noise in domestic Chinese networks), as well as because the target set in our case is more focused on national security rather than economics. Furthermore, the activist hacking from the U.S. that isn't directly promoted by the U.S. government is hard to expose because if it is detected, as it must be often, then to publicize it the Chinese would have to publicly talk about internet controls which don't officially exist. . . . "

Twitter hacked, 250,000 users affected | ZDNet: "According to Bob Lord, Twitter's Director of Information Security, the attack was the work of professionals, and Twitter is actively cooperating with law enforcement in an attempt to prevent further damage caused by these attackers. What can you do to protect your Twitter account? Ensure that in case you receive a password-reset email from Twitter, it indeed points to Twitter's domain, as opportunistic cybercriminals could easily start impersonating Twitter, and mass mail millions of emails in an attempt to gain access to your account. If you do receive a password-reset email from Twitter, ensure  that you're using a strong password, and that you've changed it from a malware-free host."

50 million cameras exposed to hackers due to massive security breach — RT: " . . . Internet routers that use a protocol called Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) allow network-connected devices such as computer and printers to make themselves easily discoverable, but new research by the security firm Rapid7 shows that this discoverability can be exploited by hackers. Many routers are set to use the UPnP by default, thereby subjecting all network-enabled devices using the router to the damage that hackers are able to inflict. As many as 50 million unique devices can be exploited and about 6,900 products are vulnerable to software bugs that have already been found in three different implementations of the protocol. Vendors including Cisco’s Linksys, Belkin, D-Link, and Netgear produce routers that make themselves and their connected devices susceptible to software bugs. . . . "


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