In-brief: Cisco Vice President Scott Harrell says that small and mid-sized organizations are in the crosshairs of sophisticated cyber criminals. Unfortunately, such firms often lack the tools and skills to identify and contain such threats.
incident response
Was Malware Behind A Billion Dollar Heist?
In-brief: The New York Times reports on a massive online heist involving more than 100 banks worldwide and losses of between $300 million and $1 billion, according to the security firm Kaspersky Lab.
Threats in 2014: Bears and Pandas and Malware – Oh My!
In-brief: a report from the firm CrowdStrike finds sophisticated nation-backed hacking groups were very active in 2014, with attacks on governments, pro-democracy advocates as well as banks and retailers.
Report: Chaos of Sony Response Prompts Creation of New Cyber Agency | The Washington Post
In-brief: The Washington Post reports that the Obama Administration will announce the creation of a new agency to coordinate intelligence about cyber attacks. The move is, in part, a response to confusion following the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment in November.
FBI Director: Sloppy Sony Hackers Exposed North Korea
The Director of the FBI James Comey offered his most direct retort to date to those who doubt the Bureau’s case against the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), saying that the hackers who pillaged Sony Pictures Entertainment were “sloppy” and revealed the source of the attack – IP addresses linked to the reclusive government, Ars Technica reports. Comey was speaking at ICCS, the International Conference on Cyber Security in New York City on Wednesday. He said that, while the Sony attackers largely concealed their identity by using proxy servers, on several occasions they “got sloppy” and connected directly to Sony’s network, revealing their own IP address in the process. Those slip-ups provided evidence linking North Korea to the attack on Sony’s network, he claimed. The IP address isn’t the only evidence, however. (Thankfully.) Comey also said that “analysts at the FBI found the patterns of writing and other identifying data […]
