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Obama administration cybersecurity advisor Melissa Hathaway, in her much anticipated speech before the RSA Conference on Wednesday, suggested that the findings of a study she submitted Friday to President Obama calls for cybersecurity policy to be run from the White House. "The White House must lead the way forward with leadership that draws upon the strength, advice and ideas of the entire nation," said Hathaway, acting senior director for cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils. Scant on details, Hathaway in her 2,400-word speech did not explain how federal cybersecurity should be governed, even if it's based in the White House. Two months ago, President Obama charged Hathaway to head up a team to review current cybersecurity policies and processes. "It can be said that the federal government is not organized appropriately to address this growing problem because responsibilities for cyberspace are distributed across a wide array of federal departments and agencies, many with overlapping authorities and none with sufficient decision authority to direct actions that can address the problem completely," Hathaway said. "We need an agreed way forward based on common understanding and acceptance of the problem." Hathaway said the team she assembled addressed all missions and activities associated with the information and communications infrastructure, including the missions of computer network defense, law enforcement investigations, military and intelligence activities and the intersection of information assurance, counter intelligence, counter terrorism, telecommunications policies and general critical infrastructure protection. Task force members held more than 40 meetings with different stakeholder groups during the 60 days and received and read more than 100 papers that provided specific recommendations and goals, she said. "We identified over 250 needs, tasks, and recommendations," Hathaway said. "We also solicited input from gov

US senators have drafted legislation that would give the federal government unprecedented authority over the nation's critical infrastructure, including the power to shut down or limit traffic on private networks during emergencies. The bill would also establish a broad set of cybersecurity standards that would be imposed on the government and the private sector, including companies that provide software, IT work or other services to networks that are deemed to be critical infrastructure. It would also mandate licenses for all individuals administering to strategically important networks. The bill, which is being co-sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee chairman John Rockefeller IV and Senator Olympia Snowe, was expected to be referred to a senate committee on Wednesday. Shortly after a working draft of the legislation began circulating, some industry groups lined up to criticize it for giving the government too much control over the internet and the private companies that make it possible. "This gives the president too much power and there's too little oversight, if there's any at all," said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "It gives him the power to act in the interest of national security, a vague term that has been broadly defined." Nojeim was pointing to language in the bill that permits the president to "order the limitation or shutdown of internet traffic to and from any compromised federal government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network" after first declaring a national cybersecurity emergency. A separate provision allows the executive in chief to "order the disconnection of any federal government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security." "It applies to any critical infrastructure," Nojeim added. "Surely, the internet is one." The bill would also require NIST, or the National Institute of Standards and Techn

China has denied allegations that it hacked into a Pentagon IT system and recovered plans for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The combat aircraft which is to be procured by Britain as well, is being produced by Lockheed Martin. In allegations first reported in the Wall Street Journal, hackers stole "several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems". The most sensitive data however on weapons systems and its stealth technology was not breached since it is kept on computers not connected to the internet. IT experts have said that they suspect the hackers came from China although it will be difficult to identify their exact origins. Hacking into IT systems as complex as the DoD's would require the help and capabilities of another government. Recovering data on the JSF would allow countries or rogue groups who could face the aircraft in future conflicts to develop counter measures based on the aircraft's weaknesses. The Chinese strongly denied that the breach originated from their country. "China has not changed its stance on hacking. China has always been against hacking and we have cracked down very hard on hacking. This is not a Chinese phenomenon. It happens everywhere in the world," a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry said. This is not the first time the JSF's security has been breached. Early on in the contract the DoD and Lockheed Martin admitted that there was no universal IT security policy for the 1,200 sub contractors and that leaks may have occurred. BAE subsequently admitted that their IT security for JSF material was lax and that leaks could have occurred. Britain is scheduled to buy 150 of the aircraft by 2018.

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."

Former Booz Allen Hamilton management consultant Melissa Hathaway's much anticipated 60-day review of U.S. cybersecurity policy is scheduled to hit President Obama's desk this Friday. All eyes of the tech security community will be watching. It will signal what approach Obama will take in the complicated task of stemming cyber threats. Obama has said he will make the Internet safer for citizens and businesses, while playing catchup to China and Russia who are far ahead in the cyberwarfare arms race. "We're trying to do cybersecurity in a democracy," says Leslie Harris, President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology. "Doing cybersecurity in China, my guess, is a lot easier." CDT held a press briefing this morning at which it warned that a cybersecurity bill, introduced earlier this month by Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va, and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is the first of several that likely will be proposed once Hathaway's review is out. Harris said CDT agrees with a provision in the Rockefeller-Snowe bill that would create a cabinet-level cybersecurity adviser reporting directly to President Obama, but questions some of the extraordinary federal enforcement powers that could be created. CDT says it doesn't want citizens' civil liberties trampled upon. CDT general counsel Greg Nojeim gave Hathaway high marks for keeping her review process relatively open, in contrast to the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy. "So far the White House review team gets high grades on transparency," Nojeim said. Hathaway has held closed briefings in the past several weeks with Congressional committees, industry groups and privacy organizations, said Nojeim. "But the real test will be whether their recommendations reflect a commitment to transparency in the execution of the program," said Nojeim.

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A New Jersey credit-card processor disclosed a data breach that analysts said may rank among the biggest ever reported. Heartland Payment Systems Inc. said Tuesday that cyber criminals compromised its computer network, gaining access to customer information associated with the 100 million card transactions it handles each month. The company said it couldn't estimate how many customer records may have been improperly accessed, but said the data compromised include the information on a card's magnetic strip -- card number, expiration date and some internal bank codes -- that could be used to duplicate a card. Heartland, of Princeton, N.J., processes transactions for more than 250,000 businesses nationwide, including restaurants and smaller retailers. Avivah Litan, an analyst at research company Gartner, called it the largest card-data breach ever, based on her conversations with industry executives. Previously, the largest known breach occurred when around 45 million card numbers were stolen from retail company TJX Cos. in 2005 and 2006. Robert Baldwin, Heartland's president and chief financial officer, said it was too early to say how many records were accessed and that calling it the largest-ever breach would be "speculative." Representatives of Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. alerted Heartland to a pattern of fraudulent transactions on accounts the processor handled sometime last fall, Mr. Baldwin said. But an internal investigation and audits failed to detect a security breach. Last week, however, a forensic investigator discovered evidence of the breach. Mr. Baldwin said Heartland was targeted with malicious software that was "light-years more sophisticated" than malevolent programs commonly downloaded from the Internet.

Since Obama's landmark speech on cybersecurity in May, his administration hasn't revealed much about its long-percolating plans to shore up the government's defenses against hackers and cyberspies. But privacy advocates monitoring the initiative are already raising concerns about what they know and what they don't: the details that have trickled out--including the involvement of the National Security Agency--and the veil of classified information that still covers much of the multibillion-dollar project. "It feels like the Bush administration all over again," says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. "Not enough people know the details about these programs to have a good public discussion. We all want good security of government systems, but you have to balance the cloak and dagger elements with civil liberties."

The ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee told the chief executive of Heartland Payment Systems that she was "astonished" a breach the company's information system lasted for nearly 1½ years without being detected. At a panel hearing Monday on protecting industry against growing cyber threats, Sen. Susan Collins, R.-Maine, asked Heartland CEO Robert Carr to explain how this delay happened. Carr responded that a breach is usually detected when the processing payer is notified of fraudulent use of cards, and that didn't occur until the end of 2008. "Isn't there software in the systems to detect such a breach?" Collins asked.

Recent hacking attacks on Sony Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. grabbed headlines. What happened at City Newsstand Inc. last year did not. Unbeknownst to owner Joe Angelastri, cyber thieves planted a software program on the cash registers at his two Chicago-area magazine shops that sent customer credit-card numbers to Russia. MasterCard Inc. demanded an investigation, at Mr. Angelastri's expense, and the whole ordeal left him out about $22,000.