In-brief: A hacker appears to have compromised a U.S. government network and made off with hundreds of Gigabytes of data, including personal data on tens of thousands of employees of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. Editors Note: This story was updated to include comment from the DOJ and DHS as well as expert commentary and analysis. PFR Feb 8 2016.
In-brief: research by the security firm Rapid7 has uncovered security flaws in new, interactive “smart toys” by Fisher Price and other toy makers that could divulge personal information related to children and their families. Editor’s note: this story was updated to include comments from Mark Stanislav of Rapid7. PFR Feb 2, 2016.
In-brief: The web site of the Fraternal Order of Police, an organization representing law enforcement officers in the United States, was offline Friday after reports that data stolen from the Order was posted online.
In-brief: Mike Tyson famously said of an opponent that ‘everyone has a plan until they get hit.’ That’s useful advice for information security teams worried about whether their existing network security plans will hold up to the onslaught of the Internet of Things, says Marc Blackmer of Cisco.
In-brief: Software updates were released to address a serious and exploitable security flaw in the Linux kernel on Tuesday. The issue, in a feature called keyring, could impact embedded systems as well as mobile devices.
