The Security Ledger is a new, online publication that’s serious about reporting on security and “The Internet of Things.” While we’ve had tremendous success in our first six months of operation, any new endeavor involves some risk. That’s why I’m thrilled to have had the backing of some forward-looking sponsors: Qualys and Veracode. And today, I’m happy to add a new name to that list: The Trusted Computing Group (TCG). For those of you who aren’t familiar with TCG, its best known as the group behind the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) secure, cryptographic chip that ships with almost every modern desktop and notebook PC. The TPM assures a hardware-based root of trust on compliant system, allowing TPM-equipped systems to securely generate cryptographic keys that can authenticate each endpont for use in secure, online transactions and communications. But TCG actually does a lot more. As a security beat reporter, for example, I […]
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Botnet Of Embedded Devices Used To Map Internet
Botnets are mostly linked with spam e-mail campaigns, denial of service attacks and data theft. But global networks of compromised hosts can be used for a variety of ends – not all of them malicious. That was the idea behind “Internet Census 2012,” a stealth project by an unnamed and unknown researcher/hacker to map the entire IPV4 Internet address space using a massive network of compromised devices. The results, published in the form of a research paper, underscore the problem of unsecured embedded devices, including set top boxes, home routers and critical infrastructure, with the hacker able to locate and compromise these systems, creating a botnet of more than 420,000 nodes. According to a copy of the report, the project grew out of an experiment to locate unprotected devices online using nmap, the open source scanning tool. By compromising each vulnerable host and then enlisting it to scan for other […]
ISP Telenor: Execs Laptops Emptied in Cyber Spy Operation
The Norwegian telecommunications firm Telenor told authorities in that country that a sophisticated cyber spying operation compromised the computers of leading executives and “emptied” them of sensitive information, including e-mail messages, computer files and passwords, according to a report Sunday by Aftenposten. Several executives of Telenor were the subjects of “extensive, organized industrial espionage,” the report said, quoting Telenor Norway’s director, Rune Dyrlie. The company has reported the incident to Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet – or NSM – Norway’s national security authority as well as Nor-CERT, Norway’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team and the cyber defense unit Cyberforsvaret. “We take it very seriously by several bosses in Telenor stolen sensitive information. It is quite clear that those behind, got downloaded stolen information. There is no doubt that we have lost data,” Dyrlie told Aftenposten. Dyrlie said that the company missed the initial infection, which used “new, customized software.” The first indication of a compromise came after automated monitoring software operated […]
D.C. Insider Site NationalJournal.com Serving Malware
Watering hole -style attacks are all the rage these days, as our recent coverage on the attacks against Facebook and Twitter suggest. That makes us look askance at any report of a web site compromise – especially at a site that’s known to serve an audience that’s of interest to sophisticated, nation-state backed hacking crews. That’s why it caught our attention this week that the web site for the DC-insider magazine The National Journal (nationaljournal.com) was found serving malware. According to a blog post by Anup Ghosh at the security firm Invincea, The National Journal’s Web site was serving up attacks to visitors of the site on Tuesday. The discovery was surprising, as the magazine acknowledged an earlier compromise on February 28th and said that it had since secured its site. That National Journal, part of The Atlantic Media Company, is widely read within Washington D.C.’s political circles. It […]
The End Of Privacy: Facebook ‘Likes’ Reveal Sensitive Personal Data
We all know that, to online marketers, we’re just the sum of our Facebook Wall posts and “Likes” – the ubiquitous, virtual “thumbs up” that we attach to all manner of online ephemera. But all those ironic comments and votes of approval may be revealing a lot more about us than we’re willing to share, according to a new report from researchers at the University of Cambridge and Microsoft Research in the UK. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the researchers demonstrated that it is possible to use knowledge of an individual user’s “Likes” on Facebook to “automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: your age, and gender, you sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views. The list of guessabl`e information goes on to include other less quantifiable characteristics like your personality traits, intelligence, happiness, your preference (or not) […]
