router

Cisco Eyes Security Services For Connected Cars

Connected vehicles are a big new area of investment. We saw evidence of that at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and we’re  hearing a lot more about it this week, as carmakers strut their stuff at the North American International Auto Show.   Security isn’t generally part of the conversation, but as we’ve noted here on more than one occasion: connected vehicles introduce a myriad of challenging security problems, from authentication to communications and system integrity, not to mention data privacy. [Read more Security Ledger coverage of connected vehicles here.] Now networking giant Cisco says that it sees a role for its technology in protecting vehicle area networks (VANs), just as the company’s networking equipment enabled and protected local and wide area networks (LANs and WANs) over the last two decades. In a blog post, Cisco said it is rolling out “a range of products and services” that it […]

NSA Toolbox Included Hacks For Juniper, Cisco, Dell

The German magazine Der Spiegel made headlines this week with its story detailing the US National Security Agency’s (NSAs) offensive hacking capabilities. The story is based on classified NSA documents absconded with by former contractor Edward Snowden and lays bare a Webster’s Dictionary full of classified hacking tools and programs.   Among the highlights of the story: + The NSA developed and deployed a wide range of hacking tools that could compromise hardware from leading IT and networking equipment makers including Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks and the Chinese vendor Huawei and Dell Inc.   + The NSA tools were designed to provide persistent access that allowed the NSA to monitor activity on the compromised endpoint, avoid detection by third party security software and survive software and firmware updates. One such tool, DEITYBOUNCE, provided persistent access to Dell’s PowerEdge servers by “exploiting the system BIOS” and using “System Management Mode to […]