In-brief: Google warned its users that unauthorized digital certificates have been issued for several of its domains. The certificates are linked to an intermediary certificate authority for CNNIC, which administers China’s domain name registry. Updated with comment from Kevin Bocek of Venafi. Paul 3/27/2015
Phishing
Medical Information on Millions Stolen from Premera Blue Cross
In-brief: Premera Blue Cross said on Tuesday that it was the victim of a sophisticated attack. The hackers had access to Premera’s network for more than six months, stealing information on as many as 11 million members and employees.
SMEs Face Advanced Threat Sophistication Gap
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.
Update: Superfish is the Real End of SSL
In-brief: Outrage over Lenovo’s promotion of privacy busting adware continued to grow amid lawsuits and more spying revelations. The big question: is this the final – final straw for the beleaguered Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology? (Updated to add comment from Kevin Bocek of Venafi.)
N.S.A. Breached North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack – NY Times
The New York Times claims that the U.S. National Security Agency used intelligence gleaned from a clandestine operation to compromise North Korea’s cyber warfare unit to pin the blame for the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack on the reclusive Communist country. According to the story by David Sanger and Martin Fackler, the Obama Administration’s decision to quickly blame the hack on the DPRK grew out of a four year-old National Security Agency (NSA) program that compromise Chinese networks that connect North Korea to the outside world. The classified NSA program eventually placed malware that could track the internal workings of the computers and networks used by the North’s hackers and under the control of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the North Korean intelligence unit, and Bureau 121, the North’s hacking unit, which mostly operates out of China. It has long been recognized that North Korea, which lacks a mature information technology infrastructure, does much of […]
