hacks Archives

Tag: hacks

Uncle Sam Taking a Back Seat in Cyber Defense | Bloomberg

October 29, 2014 Paul Roberts

Bloomberg has a story on the collaborative, private sector effort to thwart an industrial hacking campaign linked to Chinese intelligence. The effort, which involved firms like FireEye and iSight Partners “demonstrates for the first time a private-sector model that they believe can move faster than investigations by law enforcement agencies,” the report said. From the article: The take-down largely bypassed traditional law enforcement tools, relying instead on cooperation between companies that are normally fierce competitors. Coalition members — which include Microsoft Corp., Cisco Inc. and Symantec Corp. — say they can act faster than governments because they operate global Internet systems and have business relationships with tens of thousands of companies. Read more via China-Linked Hacking Foiled by Private-Sector Sleuthing – Businessweek.

Cyber insurance: Only fools rush in | ITworld

October 28, 2014 Paul Roberts

Cyber incidents these days tend to follow a familiar pattern: law enforcement is contacted and will begin criminal investigations. Cyber forensic investigators are hired to piece together what happened and security consultants will analyze and remove the malware from any affected systems. Finally: customers who were affected are notified and – typically -offered free credit monitoring services. All of these services come at a cost, of course, as does the business disruption that results. Current cyber insurance policies are structured to recover some or most of those costs. Now companies – from the Fortune 10 on down – are looking to hedge their online risks with various kinds of business insurance. That demand, in turn, is fueling a rapid expansion of the cyber insurance industry that was little more than a niche offering five years ago. But insurance industry experts and corporate security professionals offer words of advice for companies that think they […]

Dusting For Malware’s Bloody Prints

October 25, 2014 Paul Roberts

Malicious software is nothing new. Computer viruses and worms have been around for decades, as have most other families of malware like remote access tools (RATs) and key loggers. But all our experience with malware hasn’t made the job of knowing when our organization has been hit by it any easier. In fact, recent news stories about breaches at Home Depot, Target, Staples and other organizations makes it clear that even sophisticated and wealthy corporations can easily overlook both the initial compromise and endemic malware infections – and at great cost. That may be why phrases like “dwell time” or “time to discovery” seem to pop up again and again in discussions of breach response. There’s no longer any shame in getting “popped.” The shame is in not knowing that it happened. Greg Hoglund says he has a fix for that latter problem. His new company, Outlier Security, isn’t “next generation […]

Is IoT Innovation Outpacing Our Ability To Keep It Safe?

October 20, 2014 Paul Roberts

GigaOm has an interesting, high-level piece that looks at the issue of law, liability and the Internet of Things. The article takes off from a discussion at the Download event in New York City earlier this month, wondering whether adoption of Internet of Things technologies like wearables is starting to run far ahead of society’s ability to manage them. Specifically: is the pace of technology innovation outstripping the ability of our legal system to reign in excess and protect public safety and civil liberties? On the list of ‘what-if’s’ are some familiar questions: How to assign liability. (“If one of Google’s automated cars crashes, is it the fault of the driver or Google?”) Read more Security Ledger coverage of Internet of Things here. What responsibility to users have to take advantage of safety features in connected products? (Does a parent’s failure to password-protect a baby monitor change the manufacturer’s liability when and […]

White House Cyber Chief: JP Morgan Underscores Critical Infrastructure Risk

October 9, 2014 Paul Roberts

The White House’s cyber security czar, Michael Daniel, said the Obama Administration is deeply concerned about the reported hack of systems belonging to banking giant JP Morgan Chase & Co. but sees the incident as part of a larger trend of attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure. Asked about the targeted attack against JP Morgan and other banks and financial institutions, Daniel said that the White House was concerned, but not surprised by the incident. “We have watched for several years the trend of malicious actors in cyber try to figure out how to target critical infrastructure,” he said. “Financial services is critical infrastructure.” The White House was concerned that a major U.S. bank would fall victim to hackers, but sees it in the context of a “broad trend,” rather than an isolated incident, he said. Speaking with Michael Farrell, the Cybersecurity Editor at Christian Science Monitor, Daniel hit on many of the now-common talking […]