OK – let me start by saying that The Security Ledger isn’t a web site that’s going peddle in rumor or unfounded conspiracy theories. Period. AND let me note that Richard Clarke, the former Cyber Security Czar and U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism just told the Huffingtonpost.com that he thinks a car hack may have played a role in the suspicious, single car accident that killed investigative reporter Michael Hastings last week. Whoa! If you don’t know, Hastings was a Polk Award winning correspondent for the web site Buzzfeed.com, where he covered national security. He died, at age 33, in a fiery, single car crash in Los Angeles last week after the Mercedes he was driving hit a tree and burst into flames. The car was almost totally destroyed. The Los Angeles County Coroner confirmed Hastings identity but said it would likely take weeks to determine the cause of […]
Business
Facebook Mum On Future Of Ghost User Accounts
Facebook acknowledged on Friday that a flaw in a feature that lets users download their own profile information exposed personal information on approximately six million users, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses that were not shared with the site, but is staying mum on the future of wide ranging information harvesting practices revealed by the bug. In a blog post, the social networking giant said the security hole was disclosed by an independent security researcher and forced the company to disable the Download Your Information (DYI) feature until it could be fixed. Despite the large number of people affected, Facebook said individual pieces of private data like an e-mail address or telephone number were only exposed to one or two other Facebook users. However, Facebook has not said whether it will cease using non-public data from users’ contacts to fill out dossiers on other Facebook users, a practice that has […]
HBR: Internet Of Things Has ‘Profound’ Impact On Risk
The advent of a global network of Internet connected devices – sometimes referred to as the “Internet of Things” will bring about a “data democratization” that will upend traditional IT security models and pose considerable risks for organizations. That’s the conclusion of two leading authorities on the so-called “Internet of Things” (IoT), Christopher J. Rezendes and W. David Stephenson, who write that its impact on businesses will be “profound,” and that cyber security will be one of the biggest challenges that organizations must address. In a guest post on the Harvard Business Review blog on Friday, Rezendes, the president of INEX Advisors, and Stephenson, an author and consultant specializing in the Internet of Things argue that “the very principle that makes the IoT so powerful — the potential to share data instantly with everyone and everything (every authorized entity, that is) — creates a huge cybersecurity threat.” The authors predict […]
Don’t Call It A Hack Back: Crowdstrike Unveils Falcon Platform
Lots of aspiring technology start-ups dream of getting their product written up in The New York Times or Wall Street Journal when it launches. For Crowdstrike Inc. a two year-old security start-up based in Laguna Niguel, California, media attention from the papers of record hasn’t been an issue. This reporter counted twelve articles mentioning the company in The Times in the last year, and another two reports in The Journal. Much of that ink has been spilled on stories related to Crowdstrike research on sophisticated attacks, or the company’s all-star executive team, including former McAfee executives George Kurtz (CEO) and Dmitri Alperovitch (CTO), as well as former FBI cybersecurity chief Shawn Henry (Crowdstrike’s head of services), who left the Bureau in April, 2012 to join the company. For much of that time, Crowdstrike has been known mostly as a security services and intelligence firm, but the goal was always to […]
Beware BitCoin Users: The Tax Man Cometh!
Beware you barrons of BitCoin – you World of Warcraft one-percenters: the long arm of the Internal Revenue Service may soon be reaching into your treasure hoard to extract Uncle Sam’s fair share of your virtual treasure. That’s the conclusion of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on virtual economies, which found that many types of transactions in virtual economies – including bitcoin mining and virtual currency transactions that result in real-world profit – are likely taxable under current U.S. law, but that the IRS does a poor job of tracking such business activity and informing buyers and sellers of their duty to pay taxes on virtual earnings. The report, “Virtual Economies and Currencies: Additional IRS Guidance Could Reduce Tax Compliance Risks” (GAO-13-516) was released this week. It was prepared in response to a request from the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, which asked GAO to look into virtual […]
