Group items tagged

Securing our Nation against cyber attacks has become one of the Nation's highest priorities. To achieve this objective, networks, systems, and the operations teams that support them must vigorously defend against external attacks. Furthermore, for those external attacks that are successful, defenses must be capable of thwarting, detecting, and responding to follow-on attacks on internal networks as attackers spread inside a compromised network. A central tenet of the US Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) is that 'offense must inform defense'. In other words, knowledge of actual attacks that have compromised systems provides the essential foundation on which to construct effective defenses. The US Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee moved to make this same tenet central to the Federal Information Security Management Act in drafting FISMA 2008.

"The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reported its annual breach data for 2009 last week, and for the first time malicious attacks were more frequently identified as the source of those breaches than human error. In its "2009 Data Breach Report," the ITRC found 498 publicly disclosed breaches last year, down from 657 the year before. The downturn could have resulted from changes in breach disclosure, rather than a real drop-off in system compromises, the organization says. Interestingly, paper breaches now account for 26 percent of data leaks, up 46 percent compared to 2008. Malicious attacks outnumbered breaches attributed to human error for the first time in the three years the report has been compiled. The business sector accounted for 41 percent of data breaches, up from 21 percent the year before. Approximately 222 million records were compromised, the organization says -- and about 130 million of those came from the single breach at Heartland Payment Systems. Out of 498 breaches, only six reported they had either encryption or other strong security features protecting the exposed data, the ITRC says . "

Expect more action from the FTC on data privacy breeach

"A new proof-of-concept (PoC) application enables an attacker to remotely activate a BlackBerry microphone and listen in on surrounding sounds and conversations. The application, called PhoneSnoop, was released last week on the blog of security researcher Sheran Gunasekera. To download and install the application, an attacker would need physical access to a BlackBerry device and to know a PIN, if the owner uses one to lock his or her device. After PhoneSnoop is installed on a device, when a call is received from a preconfigured number, the BlackBerry automatically answers the phone, allowing an attacker to listen in, Marc Fossi, senior researcher at Symantec Security Response told SCMagazineUS.com on Thursday. Once the call is connected, the BlackBerry is set to speakerphone, increasing the microphone's sensitivity to pick up sound from far distances. "First and foremost, the most important thing about this is it's a proof of concept, Fossi said. "It's not something you need to worry about right now.""

Heartland Payment Systems, the sixth-largest payments processor in the U.S., announced Monday that its processing systems were breached in 2008, exposing an undetermined number of consumers to potential fraud. Meanwhile, Forcht Bank, one of the 10 largest banks in Kentucky, told its customers it would begin reissuing 8,500 debit cards after being informed by its own card processor of a possible breach. In the case of Heartland, while the company continues to assess the damages inflicted by the attack, Robert Baldwin, the company's president and CFO, says law enforcement has already noted that the attack against his company is part of a wider cyber fraud operation. "The indication that it is tied to wider cyber fraud operation comes directly from conversations with the Department of Justice and the U.S. Secret Service," Baldwin says. The company says it believes the breach has been contained. Heartland, headquartered in Princeton, NJ, handles approximately 100 million transactions per month, although the number of unique cardholders is much lower. "It is still a question as to the percentage of the data flow they were able to get," Baldwin says, adding he would not speculate on the number of cards potentially exposed. Specifics surrounding when the breach occurred are still being analyzed. But Baldwin says two forensic auditing teams have been working on the breach analysis and investigation since late 2008, after Heartland received the notification from Visa and MasterCard. The investigation began immediately after the credit card companies told Heartland they saw suspicious activity surrounding processed card transactions. Described by Baldwin as "quite a sophisticated attack," he says it has been challenging to discover exactly how it happened.

VANDALS who attacked Fred Goodwin's mansion could have been helped by Google's new Street View, it was claimed yesterday. Security experts say the attackers may have "cased" the shamed banker's £3million Edinburgh home using the detailed images provided by the controversial new service. It could have helped them plan the attack, in which windows were smashed and a car wrecked, by showing them how to get in and escape unnoticed.

A very heated reaction has followed the interview I conducted yesterday with Robert Carr, CEO of Heartland Payment Systems. One reader even said the resulting Q&A made his "blood boil." Why the outrage? Because Carr did something a lot of people find unacceptable. He threw someone else under the proverbial bus for his company's failure to keep customer credit and debit card numbers out of evil hands. Specifically, he thrust an angry finger at the QSAs who came in to inspect the security controls Heartland had in place to meet the requirements of PCI security. In the article, [Heartland CEO on Data Breach: QSAs Let Us Down] Carr said, "The audits done by our QSAs (Qualified Security Assessors) were of no value whatsoever. To the extent that they were telling us we were secure beforehand, that we were PCI compliant, was a major problem. The QSAs in our shop didn't even know this was a common attack vector being used against other companies. We learned that 300 other companies had been attacked by the same malware. I thought, 'You've got to be kidding me.' That people would know the exact attack vector and not tell major players in the industry is unthinkable to me. I still can't reconcile that." That one comment brought down the house, and not in a favorable way. "I just read Bill Brenner's interview with Heartland Payment Systems' CEO Bob Carr and truthfully, my blood is boiling," Mike Rothman, SVP of strategy at eIQnetworks and chief blogger at Security Incite wrote in a counterpoint piece CSOonline ran today. "Basically, he's throwing his QSA under the bus for the massive data breach that happened under his watch. Basically, because the QSA didn't find anything, therefore he should be off the hook. I say that's a load of crap."

As Forrest Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does." The 2009 Verizon Business data breach investigation report confirmed what the 2008 report revealed -- attackers usually gain a foothold through stupid, basic errors. "In virtually all the cases, we found that lots of the things that were simple and straightforward, had they been deployed, would have stopped the attack," said Peter Tippett, vice president of research and intelligence for Verizon Business Security Solutions. "Simple things like changing the password from the word "password" on the system, those basic errors were somewhere, endlessly; they were everywhere." In fact, the 2009 Verizon Business Data Breach Investigations Report showed that 67% of the 90 confirmed data breaches that Verizon investigated last year revealed that kind of error, usually on a third-party system, often tangential to the heart of the enterprise. But they open the door to the good stuff: thousands or even millions of customer records.

Like this http://www.hdfilmsaati.net Film,dvd,download,free download,product... ppc,adword,adsense,amazon,clickbank,osell,bookmark,dofollow,edu,gov,ads,linkwell,traffic,scor,serp,goggle,bing,yahoo.ads,ads network,ads goggle,bing,quality links,link best,ptr,cpa,bpa. www.killdo.de.gg

More electronic records were exposed in 2008 than in the previous four years combined and most of those breaches -- nine out of 10 -- could have been easily avoided with basic preventative controls consistently applied. In its 2009 Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Business Data Breach Investigations Report, Verizon Business Security Solutions analyzed 90 confirmed breaches that occurred in 2008, affecting 285 million compromised records. The company's previous data breach report covered from 2004 through 2007, a period that saw 230 million compromised records. About a third of the breaches in Verizon Business' caseload have been publicly disclosed, and additional disclosures are expected before the end of the year. But many breaches will remain unreported because of the absence of any applicable disclosure requirement. Among the report's findings: 91% of all compromised records were linked to organized criminal groups; customized malware attacks doubled; and the most common attack vectors were default credentials and SQL injection. In a statement, Peter Tippett, VP of research and intelligence for Verizon Business Security Solutions, described the report as a wake-up call. Businesses need strong security and a proactive approach, he said, particularly because the economic crisis is likely to spur even greater criminal activity.

Like this http://www.hdfilmsaati.net Film,dvd,download,free download,product... ppc,adword,adsense,amazon,clickbank,osell,bookmark,dofollow,edu,gov,ads,linkwell,traffic,scor,serp,goggle,bing,yahoo.ads,ads network,ads goggle,bing,quality links,link best,ptr,cpa,bpa. www.killdo.de.gg

Cyber espionage, attacks, breaches, viruses - they are all among the concerns President Barack Obama cited Friday when he announced he will create a new White House office of cyber security, with that cyber czar reporting to the National Security Council as well as to the National Economic Council. The nation's vulnerability to cyber attacks has long been a concern. The Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a December report that the U.S. Defense Department alone has said its computers are probed hundreds of thousands of times each day. These publicly known cases of hacks, thefts and viruses at government, military, utilities and educational sites are just some examples

IT directors are adding multiple layers of protection to their networks and constantly upgrade those measures to adjust for new threats. Is this good? Is the Internet too broken to fix? Is there a better path to enterprise network security? One option is a new "gated community" Internet, where users give up their freedoms and anonymity for safety. My initiation to the Internet and the World Wide Web occurred in 1994 in a large meeting room at an Atlanta hotel. Most of the 100 or so seats were empty. Those in attendance seemed fairly rabid about this new network and took exception to one speaker's prediction that the Web would become a major marketing vehicle. "Not gonna happen," said one attendee. "We'll spam them into submission if they try. We won't let this become commercialized." I kind of chuckled to myself. Those early adopters were mainly concerned with protecting the Internet from commercialization and marketing. Security was not even part of the discussion. Now, it is threatening to dismantle the Internet as a communication and commerce tool. Cyber attacks on U.S. government computer networks increased a reported 40 percent in 2008, according to data from the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. More than 100 million credit card accounts at Heartland Payment Systems were compromised last year. In November, the Pentagon suffered from a cyber attack in the form of a global virus or worm that spread rapidly throughout a number of military networks, and caused the agency to ban the use of external storage devices, such as flash drives and DVDs. And this is just the tip of the Internet security Relevant Products/Services iceberg. Enterprise networks are being used to launch phishing Relevant Products/Services and other Internet scams, such as the Conficker worm that infected 12 million computers late last year. IT directors everywhere are adding multiple layers of protection to their networks and constantly having to upgrade those measures to adjust fo

Banks and financial firms are placing more emphasis on internal threats to cut the flow of data leakage as a result of employee mistakes or workers disgruntled with layoffs and downsizing during the economic crisis, according to a recent survey. The report, "Protecting What Matters: The Sixth Annual Global Security Survey," is based on a Deloitte survey of 250 CISOs in the financial-services industry. It found that 36% of respondents believe the internal threat represents the greatest risk to organizations, compared to 13% who said external threats are the biggest concern. Mark Steinhoff, head of Deloitte's financial services security and privacy practices, said an organization's biggest mistake would be to let its guard down. While the number of security breaches may have declined over the last year, cybercriminals are not rationing back their efforts. "The number of breaches that are occurring are really at the hands of insiders and organizations are understanding that there is a real threat of malicious attacks and exposure of personal information by insiders," Steinhoff said. The failing economy may be driving the increased concern over insider threats, Steinoff said. "The climate we're in today causes concerns about disgruntled employees," he said. "We are seeing the layoffs and other forms of downsizing. Frankly with limited budget and less than satisfied employees, it really raises the parameter on that threat." Human error is the leading cause of information systems failure, and is likely to be the main cause of security attacks in the near future, according to 86% of those surveyed. To protect against employee mistakes that lead to a breach, financial firms should focus on risk rather than compliance to protect themselves, Steinhoff said. "[Organizations] need to look at what they want to protect and look at various types of threats internally and evaluate who has access to the data and who has access to which system, and approach it from that persp

A nationwide ATM heist late last year netted thieves $9 million in cash in one day, according to published reports. The coordinated attack stemmed from a computer intrusion at payment processor RBS WorldPay. Atlanta-based RBS WorldPay announced on Dec. 23 that hackers had broken into its database and made off with personal and financial data on 1.5 million customers of its payroll cards business. Some companies use payroll cards in lieu of paychecks by depositing employee salaries or hourly wages directly into payroll card accounts, which can then be used as debit cards at ATMs. RBS said that thieves also might also have accessed Social Security numbers of 1.1 million customers. New York's Fox 5 cites FBI sources as saying that thieves used the stolen payroll cards recently to withdraw $9 million from ATMs from 49 cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Montreal, Moscow, and Hong Kong. Steve Lazarus, a spokesman for the FBI's Atlanta field office, said the withdrawals were carried out by a small army of so-called "cashers," or people who work with cyber thieves and fabricated cards to pull money out of compromised accounts. From the Fox piece: "Shortly after midnight Eastern Time on November 8, the FBI believes that dozens of the so-called cashers were used in a coordinated attack of ATM machines around the world."

According to Mandiant's Kevin Mandia, retailers are being compromised by one attack in particular: SQL injection. In this keynote speech from Information Security Decisions 2008, Mandia takes you through a common retail hack and points out the attack tools being used to gain domain credentials and credit card numbers.

Should responsibility for defending against cyberattacks be moved from the Dept. of Homeland Security to the military? Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton suggested as much at a Congressional hearing where he warned of U.S. vulnerability to cyberwarfar "across the spectrum." Such attacks "potentially threaten not only our military networks, but also our critical national networks," Chilton told a House Armed Services subcommittee, the Washington Post reported. As head of Strategic Command, the general isn't responsibel for defending civilian networks, just government computers. [Stratcom's responsibility is] "to operate and defend the military networks only and be prepared to attack in cyberspace when directed. I think the broader question is, who should best do this for the other parts of America, where we worry about defending power grids, our financial institutions, our telecommunications, our transportation networks, the networks that support them." Well, that's where the 60-day interagency overview of cybersecurity comes in. At the end of that, Chilton said, responsibility for protecting private sector networks may well fit under Stratcom's duties. So what impact in having the military at the center of cybersecurity? Importantly, it brings offensive ops into the defense game. And where the military is involved, can NSA be far behind? No. Operational control over both [offensive and defensive ops], Chilton said, has been delegated to Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency. … NSA, according to Chilton, already has a role in information security, and the agency's support "has been instrumental in our efforts to operate and particularly to defend our networks," he said. Combining oversight of cyber defense and offense made sense, Chilton said, "because they're so interconnected. . . . As you consider offensive operations, you want to make sure your defense are up."

The U.S. Department of Justice's indictment of Albert Gonzalez on Monday seems to have all the elements of a Hollywood crime drama: A hacker gains access to millions of credit and debit card numbers and has the power to take down a nation. Too bad for Tinseltown, the attack itself was about as sexy and a pile of routers. According to the indictment, Gonzalez, 28, gained a foothold into the systems of credit card processors such as Heartland Payment Systems ( HPY - news - people ) and retailers like OfficeMax ( OMX - news - people ), Barnes & Noble ( BKS - news - people ) and TJX Cos. ( TJX - news - people ) using an amateur hacking technique called "wardriving," which uses wireless access points to find vulnerable networks from which to launch attacks. Once connected to those private networks, Gonzalez used a well-known technique called "SQL injection" to trick Web applications into forking over private information that gave him deeper access into networks. Even though it sounds complicated, techies liken this kind of hack to simply turning the front doorknob to get into a house.

The Air Force is seeking an entrepreneurial innovator to develop technology to analyze the conduct of insiders to determine if they pose a threat to government IT systems. In a call for proposals aimed at small businesses, posted on Tuesday, the Air Force is asking outside developers to "define, develop and demonstrate innovative approaches for determining 'good' (approved) versus 'bad' (disallowed/subversive) activities, including insiders and/or malware." For their initial efforts, the Air Force will pay up to $100,000. The proposal says current techniques that monitor illicit activities only address the most blatant violations of policy or the grossest deviations from accepted behavior. Most systems concentrate their resources on repelling attacks at the network borders with little attention devoted to threats that evade detection and/or emanate from within. The proposal states: "As such, there currently exists a great need across the federal, military and private sectors for a viable and robust means to provide near-real-time detection, correlation and attribution of network attacks, by content or pattern, without use of reactive previously-seen signatures. Many times, these trusted entities have detailed knowledge about the currently-installed host and network security systems, and can easily plan their activities to subvert these systems."

Network Solutions Hack Compromises 573,000 Credit, Debit Accounts Hackers have broken into Web servers owned by domain registrar and hosting provider Network Solutions, planting rogue code that resulted in the compromise of more than 573,000 debit and credit card accounts over the past three months, Security Fix has learned. Herndon, Va. based Network Solutions discovered in early June that attackers had hacked into Web servers the company uses to provide e-commerce services - a package that includes everything from Web hosting to payment processing -- to at least 4,343 customers, mostly mom-and-pop online stores. The malicious code left behind by the attackers allowed them to intercept personal and financial information for customers who purchased from those stores, Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade said.

On Friday, Brunswick, Maine-based heating and hardware firm Downeast Energy & Building Supply sent a letter notifying at least 850 customers that the company had suffered a data breach. Downeast sent the notice after discovering that hackers had broken in and stolen more than $200,000 from the company's online bank account. The attack on Downeast Energy bears all the hallmarks of online thieves who have stolen millions from dozens of other businesses, schools and counties over the past several months. In every case, the thieves appeared more interested in quick cash than in pilfering their victims' customer databases. Nevertheless, the intrusions highlight an additional cost for victims of this type of crime: complying with state data breach notification laws. "This is something new to us, fortunately, but we have responsibilities under Maine statute to report these things to our customers and employees," said the company's president, John Peters, in an interview with Security Fix. At least 44 other states and the District of Columbia have similar data breach notification laws. Sometime prior to September, attackers planted keystroke logging malware on Downeast's computer systems, and stole the credentials the company uses to manage its bank accounts online. Then, on or around Sept. 2, the hackers used that access to initiate a series of sub-$10,000 money transfers out of the company's account to at least 20 individuals around the United States who had no prior business with Downeast Energy. This type of crime is impossible without the cooperation of so-called "money mules," willing or unwitting individuals typically hired via Internet job search Web sites to act as "local agents" or "financial agents" responsible for moving money on behalf of a generic-sounding international corporation, legal experts say.The mules are then instructed to withdraw the cash and wire it via Western Union or Moneygram to fraud gangs overseas, typically in Eastern Europe.

In a little more than three years, Twitter has become "the SMS of the Internet" for millions of people. Many find it a useful and productive form of communication, but recent attacks against the service and its users have highlighted the potential dangers of Twitter and other social networking sites. Enterprises have had to tackle not only the productivity and privacy issues associated with Twitter, but also a number of direct security threats. Unfortunately, the success of microblogging sites like Twitter relies on the same elements of human nature as social engineering attacks, particularly a natural desire and willingness to share and engage with those we trust. Most people have learned not to open attachments or links in emails from people they don't know. Yet because Twitter is seen as a friendly, group-based service, many will not hesitate to click on a shortened Twitter link, having no clue as to where it will take them.

Social networking users are more vulnerable than ever and taking more risks with their online privacy. According to the 'Bringing Social Security to the Online Community' poll by AVG, while the social networking community has serious concerns about the overall security of public spaces, few are taking the most basic of steps to protect themselves against online crimes. Participants indicated concern over growing phishing, spam and malware attacks, and nearly half of those surveyed are very concerned about their personal identity being stolen in an online community. Despite widespread use of social networks at home and/or at work, 64 per cent of users infrequently or never change their passwords on a regular basis, while 57 per cent infrequently or never adjust their privacy settings. Further, 21 per cent accept contact offerings from members they do not recognise, more than half let acquaintances or roommates access social networks on their machines, 64 per cent click on links offered by community members or contacts and 26 per cent share files within social networks. As a result of this widespread proliferation of links, files and unsolicited contacts, nearly 20 per cent have experienced identity theft, 47 per cent have been victims of malware infections and 55 per cent have seen phishing attacks.