Government Archives

Tag: Government

NSA’s PRISM Puts Privacy Startup Silent Circle Into Orbit

July 2, 2013 Paul Roberts

Government surveillance has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, with the leak of classified information about spying by the National Security Agency using information provided by U.S. telecommunications and Internet firms including Verizon, Facebook, Google and Apple. The stories have revealed the very different legal standards that govern electronic communications and more traditional communications such as phone and postal mail. They have also put many otherwise lawful Internet users in search of technology that will keep their private conversations and thoughts well…private. That, in turn, has sparked concern in the government that civilian use of encryption will hamper lawful interception of communications. Wired.com reported last week that, for the first time, encryption thwarted government surveillance under court-approved wiretaps. That report, from the U.S. Administrative Office of the Courts (AO), said encryption was reported for 15 wiretaps in 2012, compared with just 7 wiretaps conducted during previous years. […]

Richard Clarke: Car Hacking Possible In Crash That Killed Michael Hastings

June 25, 2013 Paul Roberts

OK – let me start by saying that The Security Ledger isn’t a web site that’s going peddle in rumor or unfounded conspiracy theories. Period. AND let me note that Richard Clarke, the former Cyber Security Czar and U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism just told the Huffingtonpost.com that he thinks a car hack may have played a role in the suspicious, single car accident that killed investigative reporter Michael Hastings last week. Whoa! If you don’t know, Hastings was a Polk Award winning correspondent for the web site Buzzfeed.com, where he covered national security. He died, at age 33, in a fiery, single car crash in Los Angeles last week after the Mercedes he was driving hit a tree and burst into flames. The car was almost totally destroyed. The Los Angeles County Coroner confirmed Hastings identity but said it would likely take weeks to determine the cause of […]

Don’t Call It A Hack Back: Crowdstrike Unveils Falcon Platform

June 19, 2013 Paul Roberts

Lots of aspiring technology start-ups dream of getting their product written up in The New York Times or Wall Street Journal when it launches. For Crowdstrike Inc. a two year-old security start-up based in Laguna Niguel, California, media attention from the papers of record hasn’t been an issue. This reporter counted twelve articles mentioning the company in The Times in the last year, and another two reports in The Journal. Much of that ink has been spilled on stories related to Crowdstrike research on sophisticated attacks, or the company’s all-star executive team, including former McAfee executives George Kurtz (CEO) and Dmitri Alperovitch (CTO), as well as former FBI cybersecurity chief Shawn Henry (Crowdstrike’s head of services), who left the Bureau in April, 2012 to join the company. For much of that time, Crowdstrike has been known mostly as a security services and intelligence firm, but the goal was always to […]

Beware BitCoin Users: The Tax Man Cometh!

June 18, 2013 Paul Roberts

Beware you barrons of BitCoin – you World of Warcraft one-percenters: the long arm of the Internal Revenue Service may soon be reaching into your treasure hoard to extract Uncle Sam’s fair share of your virtual treasure. That’s the conclusion of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on virtual economies, which found that many types of transactions in virtual economies – including bitcoin mining and virtual currency transactions that result in real-world profit – are likely taxable under current U.S. law, but that the IRS does a poor job of tracking such business activity and informing buyers and sellers of their duty to pay taxes on virtual earnings. The report, “Virtual Economies and Currencies: Additional IRS Guidance Could Reduce Tax Compliance Risks” (GAO-13-516) was released this week. It was prepared in response to a request from the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, which asked GAO to look into virtual […]

FDA: Medical Device Makers, Hospitals Need To Boost Cyber Security

June 14, 2013 Paul Roberts

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued guidance to medical device makers and hospitals that use their products to pay more attention to cyber security and the potential for cyber attacks on vulnerable medical instruments. The FDA released its “Safety Communication for Cybersecurity for Medical Devices and Hospital Networks” on Thursday – the same day that the Department of Homeland Security’s ICS (Industrial Control System) CERT issued a warning about the discovery of hard coded “back door” passwords in some 300 medical devices from 40 separate vendors, including drug infusion pumps, ventilators and patient monitoring systems. The FDA said it expects device makers to “review their cybersecurity practices and policies to assure that appropriate safeguards are in place to prevent unauthorized access or modification to their medical devices or compromise of the security of the hospital network that may be connected to the device. Hospitals were instructed to harden […]