In-brief: A White House-backed effort to develop a system for rating software security is set to launch at this week’s Black Hat briefings with famed hacker Peiter Zatko (aka “Mudge”) at the helm.
Hacks & Hackers
Clues in language often tip hacker’s hand | CSMonitor.com
In-brief: forensic investigators are using language clues to help identify the source of sophisticated and targeted attacks, like those on Democratic Party committees and the campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Hacker threat extends beyond parties – POLITICO
In-brief: Politico writers Cory Bennett and Bryan Bender note that the hack of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Clinton Campaign underscore lax federal oversight of election infrastructure.
Auto Industry Publishes Best Practices for Cybersecurity
In-brief: An Automotive industry information sharing group has published Best Practices” document, giving individual automakers guidance on improving the cybersecurity of their vehicles.
Trainwreck: Study Calls for Rethink of Rail Security
The folks over at SCADA Strangelove turned me on to this article from the International Railway Journal that presents the findings of an analysis of the security of industrial control and SCADA systems used to manage railway networks. The conclusion: railways are rife with “faults and vulnerabilities (that will) allow cyber criminals to not only degrade key reliability parameters and bypass safety mechanisms (and) carry out attacks which directly affect rail traffic safety.” The study was conducted by Valentin Gapanovic, the senior vice president of Russian Railways, Efim Rozenberg, the first deputy director general at the Moscow based research firm NIIAS JSC and Kaspersky Lab Deputy Chief Technology Officer Sergey Gordeychik. At issue is not just the systems that are used to manage railway networks, including the movements of trains and critical switching systems that configure tracks. Rather: it is the culture of safety and security in the rail sector which, the study concludes, is still silo’d between physical […]
